OVERCOMING SOCIAL ISOLATION WITH DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES AMONG AGEING POPULATIONS DURING COVID-19

Autor: Andrejs Ivanovs, Ilze Koroļeva, Ieva Reine, Ilona Gehtmane-Hofmane, Inta Mieriņa
Přispěvatelé: The study was performed within the project 'Impact of Covid-19 on ageing populations in Latvia: recommendations for mitigation health and social effects and preparedness for potential crises in the future' in the framework of VPP-COVID-2020/1-0011 'Impact of COVID-19 on health care system and public health in Latvia, ways in preparing health sector for future epidemics'.
Rok vydání: 2021
Předmět:
Zdroj: SOCIETY. INTEGRATION. EDUCATION. Proceedings of the International Scientific Conference; Vol 4 (2021): SOCIETY.INTEGRATION.EDUCATION. Proceedings of the International Scientific Conference. May 28th-29th, 2021, Volume IV, LIFELONG LEARNING, PUBLIC HEALTH AND SPORT, ART AND DESIGN, DESIGN EDUCATION; 171-178
ISSN: 2256-0629
1691-5887
Popis: During Covid-19 social isolation has become more common worldwide, however, some groups, especially elderly people, might have experienced dramatically limited communication due to the lack of skills and access to digital technologies. In this paper, we examined if education was associated with the use of digital technologies to maintain contacts with a family, friends, other social networks and services. The survey was conducted in June-August 2020 by doing 1089 computer-assisted telephone interviews. The questions examined how people aged 50 years and older coped with socioeconomic and health-related impact of COVID-19.We used logistic regression analysis to study the association between the use of digital technologies and the level of education by gender and age. The higher the education was, the more it strongly associated with the use of digital technologies (OR 5.85; 95% CI 3.78-9.03). As expected, age was a strong explanatory factor, however, we did not find consistent age and gender differences. Among those who used digital technologies, analyses showed that overcoming social isolation was related to the education level. The conclusion of the study is that education has inevitable impact on the use of digital technologies and social contacts, however high education level is not crucial for the acquisition of information. It seems that digital technologies are important tools to prevent social isolation and are related to education that includes digital access and competencies.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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