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How do older adults cope with IT safety and scams when using smartphone applications?
Date Issued
2024
Conference
Citation
Lam, G., Kwok, P. K., Tsang, C. K., Lau, H. P., Shum, N. Y., & Lui, Y. F. (9 Jul 2024). How do older adults cope with IT safety and scams when using smartphone applications?. CPCE-SHAPE Health Conference 2024, , The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
Type
Conference Paper
Abstract
The ownership of smartphones (57.2%) and internet connection (56.3%) is becoming increasingly common among older adults. According to the Technology Acceptance Model and the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology, technological anxiety is one of the major factors that affects the use of technology. To investigate how older adults cope with scams and IT safety when using smartphones, a 90-minute focus group study was conducted in the summer of 2023. The study included 145 older adults aged 55 years or above, divided into 23 groups of 6 participants each. All interviews were transcribed in the original language (Cantonese), and thematic and content analysis were conducted.
The study found that older adults' approach to coping with IT safety and scams can be divided into three stages: awareness, prevention, and implementation. Regardless of gender and socio-economic status, older adults reported that their awareness of IT scams is generally high due to news coverage, mass media, and peers. In the second stage of prevention, older adults avoided using public Wi-Fi for online banking transactions because they understood that public Wi-Fi is not secure and can lead to personal information leakage. Additionally, older adults checked with family members if they received any phone calls from strangers asking for money of a suspected kidnapping of family members. The last stage, implementation, involves close collaboration with the police in arresting scammers.
Significance of the study:
The Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology suggests that technological apprehension, as well as performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, demographics, and voluntariness of use, are major factors affecting system use. On one hand, it is more common for older adults to use smartphones, especially in the aftermath of COVID-19, as Hong Kong has endured 13 months of compulsory smartphone-based track-and-trace policy to control the spread of the pandemic. On the other hand, although the crime rate is low in Hong Kong, deception (e.g., e-shopping fraud, phishing scams, telephone deception, investment fraud, etc.) has experienced an increase (52.1%) between the first half of 2022 and that of 2023. Deception also ranked in the top 3 among all crimes. It is thus imperative to investigate how technological apprehension affects the use of smartphone applications among older adults and how they cope with IT scams. Given that COVID-19 has lasted for 3 years, it may be difficult to conduct face-to-face focus groups with the elderly. Moreover, since older adults might use smartphone applications more frequently in every aspect of daily life, especially after the pandemic, the post-pandemic era may provide an opportune time to embark on this study.
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