Aging Alone, Together: Older Adult ICT Use, Health, and Place during the COVID-19 Pandemic

As adults progress into later life, they are likely to experience age-related mobility decline and social isolation. Social isolation has deleterious effects on mental and physical health, including increased anxiety, mortality rates, and cognitive aging. During the COVID-19 pandemic, older adults faced new obstacles to socializing: the closure of third places (e.g., libraries, coffee shops) and increased risk of serious illness. Information and communication technology (ICT) was widely adopted during this time to facilitate daily activities and social connection, but the extent to which it was able to replace the emotional satisfaction of in-person socializing (e.g., reducing feelings of loneliness) and support health is unclear. In this dissertation, I employ multiple methods, including qualitative interviews, structural equation modeling, and time-use cluster analysis, to investigate the relationship between ICT, mobility, and health. Ultimately, the aim of this dissertation is to explore how older adults socialized during the pandemic and the relationship between different modes of socializing (i.e., online or in-person) and health. In Chapter 2, I present qualitative evidence that older adults adopted ICT in a variety of ways to preserve their pre-pandemic routine and modify their homes into activity places. In Chapter 3, I provide details about data collection with an older Chinese migrant community during the pandemic. In Chapter 4, I test a theoretical framework using a sample of older Chinese migrants during the extended COVID-19 lockdown. This social isolation framework breaks the concept into two levels: spatial and technological isolation (conceptualized as community mobility and ICT use). Using a structural equation model, I find that higher community mobility is related to decreased feelings of loneliness, while higher ICT use is associated with better physical health. In Chapter 5, I use older Chinese migrants’ single-day activity diaries to explore socializing behavior, finding that a majority of older migrants were socializing online while relatively few were socializing in person during the extended lockdown. I also find that better physical health is associated with socializing in person. Taken together, the results of this work demonstrate the importance of considering ICT in tandem with spatial measures of social isolation. Findings also suggest that in-person socializing has a greater impact on mental and emotional health while ICT use has the potential to support physical health.

Department dc:contributor.department

Geography

Year dc:date.issued

2023

Author dc:creator

• DeJohn, Amber Dawn

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Widener, Michael J.

• COVID
• ICT
• Mental health
• Migrants
• Older adults
• Social isolation

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1807/130227

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:utoronto.scholaris.ca:1807/130227