Can a “Pandemic Life Adaptation” Digital Technology Curriculum Reduce the Digital Disadvantage of Older Adults During COVID-19? An Intervention Study from Shanghai

ABSTRACT

Older adults are at a digital disadvantage because of social stereotypes and a lack of social support; however, smartphones have become a necessary technology to cope with crises and daily life in China, especially during the pandemic. This study aimed to help marginalized older adults take on new tasks by developing digital technology education that used a framework of social cognitive theory in social work. The study followed a quasi-experimental design in which 153 elderly people were recruited from three community service centers; 90 of the participants received 6-weekly intervention. Intent-to-treat analysis, effect size calculations, and sensitivity analysis were conducted. The findings show that digital education significantly enhanced two domains of digital life adaptation abilities: general digital life adaptation abilities [g = .50, 95% CI (.70, 2.69)] and pandemic digital life adaptation abilities [g = .89, 95% CI (.96, 2.07)]. The intervention also improved three domains of digital self-efficacy: sharing and communication [g = .55, 95% CI (.04, .48)], verification [g = .34, 95% CI (.01, .59)], and influencing others [g = .53, 95% CI (.13, .77)]. The study showed that the new intervention approach reduced the harm to vulnerable older adults in the digital wave, especially during the pandemic.

KEYWORDS:

• Digital divide
• social work intervention
• digital self-efficacy

Acknowledgments

We thank Dr. Zhang Anao for his advice on the data analysis in this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Author contribution

Chenxi Huang: project administration, supervision, and funding acquisition; Zhan Yu: data curation, data Analysis, and writing, review, revise and edit original draft; Jianbo Han: conceptualization; Peijie Yang: data collection and writing original draft; Tiantong Wang: writing original draft; Yihua Chen: critical review original draft.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by Shanghai Municipal Education Commission: Research on Improving Social Policies to Address Relative Urban Poverty [2021-01-07-00-08-E00129], National Philosophy and Social Sciences Research Fund of China: Research on the causes of the phenomenon of digital “incapacitation” of the elderly and coping strategies [23BSH090], Shanghai Social Science Innovation Research Base, for “Research on Transitional Sociology with Chinese Characteristics”.