In this conversation with John Palfrey, President of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and Eszter Hargittai, Professor of Internet Use & Society at the University of Zurich, about their book Wired Wisdom: How to Age Better Online, we explored surprising research findings that challenge common myths about older adults and technology, revealing how many over-sixties are actually nimble online users who may be less likely to fall for scams and fake news than their younger peers. Drawing on original interviews and surveys from thousands of people sixty and over, Palfrey and Hargittai discussed both the hidden strengths and unseen risks of this demographic’s internet use.
Lecturer bios:
Eszter Hargittai is Professor and holds the Chair of Internet Use and Society at the Department of Communication and Media Research at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. Prior to this appointment, she was the Delaney Family Professor of Communication Studies at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois where she continues to be affiliated as Adjunct Professor. She has been a fellow in residence at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford (2006-07), Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society (2008-09), and Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy (2022). She has held visiting positions at the University of St. Gallen (Switzerland), the University of Queensland (Australia), the University of Vienna (Austria), Trinity College Dublin (Ireland), and the William Allan Neilson Professorship at Smith College (USA, 2023 and 2024).
Hargittai has published over 140 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters that have been cited over 45,000 times. She is a graduate of The OpEd Project’s Public Voices Fellowship program. She has published opeds in such outlets as The Washington Post, Scientific American, Slate, Wired, The Chicago Tribune, Huffington Post, among others.
Hargittai is elected Fellow of the International Communication Association, external member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and has received numerous professional awards. In addition to having presented her work across the US, she has also given invited talks in numerous countries on four continents. She has keynoted 24 meetings, given over 180 invited talks, and has presented at countless conferences. Her research has been supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Google, Facebook, Nokia, Microsoft Research and Merck, among others.
John Palfrey is President of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, one of the nation’s largest philanthropies with assets of approximately $8 billion, and offices in Chicago, New Delhi, and Abuja, Nigeria.
Palfrey is a well-respected educator, author, legal scholar, and innovator with expertise in how new media is changing learning, education, and other institutions. Throughout his career, he has demonstrated a commitment to rigorous thinking, disruption, and creative solutions often made possible by technology, accessibility of information, and diversity and inclusion. Palfrey has extensive experience in social change spanning the education, nonprofit, and philanthropic sectors.
Prior to joining the Foundation, Palfrey served as Head of School at Phillips Academy, Andover, the only school of its kind to maintain need-blind admissions. During his tenure, the number of faculty members of color doubled, and the student body grew more diverse. He oversaw the creation of the Tang Institute at Andover, which seeks to reform and democratize excellent teaching and learning.
Palfrey was the Henry N. Ess III Professor of Law and Vice Dean for Library and Information Resources at Harvard Law School. In that role, he expanded the Library’s reach and services, finding innovative ways to use digital technologies to enhance the school’s scholarship and teaching.
From 2002 to 2008, Palfrey served as Executive Director of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, which seeks to explore and understand cyberspace. He is founding board chair of the Digital Public Library of America, and is the former board chair of LRNG, a nonprofit launched and supported by MacArthur.
Palfrey has published extensively on how young people learn in a digital era, as well as the effects of new technologies on society at large. He is the author or coauthor of several books; most recently, he co-authored Wired Wisdom: How to Age Better Online with Eszter Hargittai. His other publications include Safe Spaces, Brave Spaces: Diversity and Free Expression in Education and Born Digital: How Children Grow Up in a Digital Age, which he co-authored with Urs Gasser.
Palfrey is the board chair of the United States Impact Investing Alliance, co-chairs the Disability and Inclusion Forum’s Presidents’ Council on Disability Inclusion in Philanthropy, and serves on the board of the Fidelity Non-Profit Management Foundation. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and serves on the governance council. He is the former board chair of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
Palfrey holds a JD from Harvard Law School, an MPhil from the University of Cambridge, and an AB from Harvard College.
Transcript:
Seth Green: Welcome all for our discussion on Wired Wisdom, How to Page Better Online, a conversation with Eszter Hargitai and John Palfrey. We are thrilled to have you both with us, and we are very excited for the conversation ahead. On a morning like this one, I’m especially grateful to say that I’m the dean here at the University of Chicago Graham School, and I will welcome you all to our gorgeous campus, which is this beautiful today, because the autumn is alive here, and it is actually an incredibly gorgeous 70-degree day, so for anyone who says Chicago is not the best weather in the world, you are not here today. For those who don’t know us, we are 134 years young. The Graham School is a founding division of this university, and we are here because of the university, since our founding. I want to engage the life of the mind across all ages and stages, and so we are the home of truly trailblazing lifelong learning, from great books education to advanced leadership. And we have many gatherings coming up in the weeks ahead, and so you can see them here, and you’ll receive more after this event. And I’ll just mention that we are starting autumn, and our winter course registration is now open, so for those who want to continue their journeys, it’s a good time to come into class, because many are now filling up. But that is not why you are here. You are here to hear from our two spectacular authors, and so let me introduce them. Eszter is professor and holds the chair of Internet Use and Society at the Department of Communication and Media Research at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. Prior to this appointment, she was here in the Chicago area as the Delaney Family Professor of Communication Studies at Northwestern. John Palfrey is the president of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, one of the nation’s largest philanthropies, with assets of approximately $8 billion. Palfrey is a well-respected educator. He led an important school. He is a well-known author, having authored many books. He is a legal scholar with past appointments at Harvard, and he is an innovator with expertise in how new media is changing learning, education and other institutions. And so, with that, let me start with maybe a straightforward question, given that you have written this book. You both have extensive backgrounds in digital research. What drew you, and maybe, Eszter, we can start with you, specifically to focus on older adults’ online experience, and what made you feel this story wasn’t being told accurately until your book?
Eszter Hargittai: Sure, well, thank you so much for having us, and having this conversation. We’re delighted to be here. Yeah, so a little bit of background on my research, because a lot of it initially wasn’t about older adults. What I have been interested in for 25 years, over 25 years, is this area called digital inequality, which is the idea that there are a lot of differences among people from different backgrounds in how they use digital technologies. And initially, I did a lot of work on younger cohorts and, there, I already, in the beginning, started focusing on skills and people’s abilities and using digital technologies, and again, a lot of this was on young adults at first, and partly I was interested in this because as a college professor, we are constantly, in contact with the new young adults, right? We get older, but they stay the same age, they’re always 18 coming in. And I could tell that even though the public rhetoric seemed to be that young adults are just super savvy with technologies because they grew up with it, I could tell that that wasn’t the case. So I did all sorts of empirical studies on that question. And then eventually, I started realizing, okay, not only is that a stereotype. There seems to be a stereotype about the other end of the age spectrum, which is that older adults don’t know how to use technologies. And my personal experiences didn’t really support this. But I mean, that’s personal. So then I thought, okay, well, let’s go see what the research says about this. And so a few years ago, I did a review of… I reviewed the then-existing scholarly literature about what we know about older adults and internet use. And it turned out that about 6-7 years ago, we really didn’t know that much at all. That the literature was very basic, and it was basically, who… are older adults online, and if yes, does that matter? But it… there was no nuance there whatsoever. And so that’s when I thought, okay, it is time to do some more rigorous research on this, and that’s when I started my research, and I’d like John to explain why he’s interested in this age group as well, because that’s a good story.
Seth Green: Before we come to you, what engages you about this sphere?
John Palfrey: Thank you, Dean Green, and I know you as Seth from before, but I love being able to say Dean Green, it just sounds so great and so exciting for you in this post and what you’re doing at the Graham School. And I think I’d be remiss not to thank the University of Chicago Press, which of course has been a wonderful home for this work, and grateful to be connected. And I am in Chicago, where it is a spectacular day, if you’re not here. So glad to be with you on this topic. So, there is a story around Eszter actually coming to talk to me and saying, would you like to do a book? And in part because a great editor, Joe, at University of Chicago Press, had discussed the book, but my interest predates that. My interest, like Eszter , my personal research focus as a legal scholar, in large part on young, young people and technology. I’d written a book called Born Digital, which is still actually in print and, and is, was co-authored with a, also, in this case, Swiss law professor Urs Gosser, and that book really looked… came out first in 2008, in the first edition, at the way in which kids were using technology differently, and as Eszter said, that was sort of the novelty at the time, and it was… it was important to me in part as a scholar, but also because I had two little kids, and my wife, Catherine, was an early childhood education specialist, and we had slightly different viewpoints on how we’d raise our kids in life of technology, so I kind of wanted to do my homework in public, and we wrote this book, and then Orson and I also wrote a book called Connected Parent, and The Connected Parent was looking at it from the other angle. How do we as parents think about, you know, the job of parenting in light of what we know about kids? But when I came to MacArthur. First of all, I have two wonderful parents who are now about 80, and so I have personal experience on that end of the spectrum, too, and really wanted to learn about how to be a supportive younger person in their life. But the specific thing that is MacArthur-related is I went and did a little research on what John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur had in mind in 1970 when they set up this foundation first started making grants in 1978. And if you go online, you’ll see that there’s a story, which is that Mr. MacArthur said, I made the money, now you fellows figure out how to spend it. That’s the apocryphal line. And that results, in a way, in the Genius Grants that we’re well known for, the Fellows Program, which is to say we can give it in any field of endeavor, and we have a very broad remit with our grant making and take advantage of that for various reasons. But it wasn’t the case that he was totally silent on what he wanted to do. It’s not constraining, but it’s an aspiration. And one of the two things he put in his charter was to study older people, retired persons, and you may know that there are other institutions around town in Chicago and elsewhere that have MacArthur money who do this kind of study. And one of the best things when I came in to say, well, what has MacArthur been best at, was actually a research series of studies, a research network on successful aging, results in a book of that name, which I think is actually a terrific book, and Eszter and I relied on it some as a basis. So MacArthur has this long interest in this area. We have funded some work that Eszter’s done in studies in this area through her research center. We built on some of those data, and we were delighted to bring this public-facing book, forward, through University Press, so it’s grounded in good data, but hopefully making the case to anybody here and to your friends and people you may want to give it to at the holidays or otherwise, to learn more about how we support older adults better than we’ve done before.
Seth Green: Well, so let’s come to the book. It is excellent, and it is surprising, in my view. Your research shows that people over 60 are far more technologically savvy than common perception and stereotype suggests. They are less likely to fall for scams than younger people, which I thought was striking. They are less likely to actually fall for fake news, so, there’s a number of ways in which you show they’re less likely to be fooled. And so, can you talk a bit about the persistent myths about older adults and technology, and then walk us through your data and how it actually reveals and challenges these assumptions? And maybe, John, can we start with you this time?
John Palfrey: Thanks, Cynthia. I’ll go very quickly and then turn it to Eszter , who, as the real social scientist here, should talk about the data, and maybe where some of the gaps are, too, and where future work should come in. But I think you highlighted two of the areas that were most of interest to me, which had to do with older adults and scams, because of course that’s in the headlines all the time, and on the minds of older persons. As well as mis- and disinformation. And just briefly, what the data show is that, you know, of course there’s huge diversity within older people. And, you know, I work at MacArthur with people who are well into their 70s doing this work with us, who have been online for a long time. They do quarterly training in cybersecurity. They are very technically able and savvy. Nobody would put them in the category of hapless. And I know younger people who I’m constantly helping to, you know, like the blinking light on the VCR issue that we’ve all had, so there is more diversity. Second, you know, a very, very important point, is that it is true that older people are subject to more scams, and actually are scammed out of more money in many ways. The FBI shows this. But the key thing is, they’re just targeted more. And why? They have more money. Right? Older people have more money, they are a target, and people perceive older people to be hapless, and so there are many, many more attacks on older people, and the FBI data bear this out as well. So, thinking about, okay, why is it that more older people are subject to scams? It actually may not be that they are invariably hapless. In some cases they are, of course, but so are young people, right? It is that they are targeted, and they’re targeted in particular ways that are pernicious, and ways that we’re not taking account of. So there’s more we can do. So when you think about a public policy solution to that, which is where I come in as a lawyer, you need to have the underlying data to say it’s not just that they’re hapless, it’s because they’re targeted more, and here’s why, and in which ways. So anyway, those are the kinds of things that I think are interesting about the data. It’s maybe not quite man bites dog, like, I don’t know if it’s a Tribune headline here in Chicago, but it’s really interesting, and I think it informs, you know, better kinds of policy interventions, whether through the government or these days, frankly not through the government, more likely through private means. But Eszter, maybe you want to speak to the data in a more scholarly way, or however you like.
Seth Green: Yeah, so let’s come to you. And I’m eager, as well, to dig in across the data, and especially the news. I think that’s a really interesting facet of it as we think about citizenship and broader implications. But yeah, let’s hear from you on the data side.
Eszter Hargittai: Sure, yeah, so I’ll start by just restating a point John already made, possibly twice already, actually, but it’s so important that I just want to emphasize it a third time, which is that a key finding overall is just the level of diversity across older adults and younger adults, right? So, it’s just to recognize that there’s just a huge diversity in terms of skills and what kinds of things people do online, and so among older adults, there are lots who are savvy, there’s many who are not, but also among younger adults, there are lots of younger adults who are actually not that savvy, and so we need to keep all of that in mind as we think about these issues. Now, specifically about, right, so let’s take misinformation, and misinformation regarding news types of news content. So, one of the ways, an important way that scholars have approached this question is to look at who shares… who shares content, right? Who shares information? And then you could look at who shares fake news. And, so first of all, one of the big findings of really rigorous research that wasn’t ours, other people have done this, that has shown that not that fake news is shared. Not that much, sorry, not that much fake news is shared, overall, right? We hear so much about it, but it’s actually… it’s not that common a phenomenon. So that’s… that’s one point. So regardless of age, kind of just… just as a very basic descriptive of the situation, it’s just not that common, actually. So that… that’s one thing. Or this was a study about the 2016 election, so this goes back to then. And later, we can address what’s happening with AI and how that’s affecting things, and the other thing that, so, one of the findings beyond the fact that it’s not that common was that older adults are more likely to share fake news, though. And so then, people ran with that, thinking, oh, so they’re being duped a lot. But in interviews we did, in our research, we found that older adults aren’t… when they share something, it’s not because they necessarily believe it.
Seth Green: Right? So to assume that someone’s sharing something because they believe it, and to have that be an empirical test.
Eszter Hargittai: The fact that they’ve been duped is not a good scientific approach, because some people share things more out of shock value, like, look at this crazy thing this presidential candidate said. Can you believe how insane this is, right? So that is not a measure of, wow, they’ve been duped. That’s just a shock value. And so, and then, more generally. The reason it seems that older adults are better often with, understanding the source of whether they should find content credible or not is actually their decades of experience that younger adults, even just by definition of being much younger, don’t have decades of experience of watching different types of news, whether it’s online or television, and becoming skeptical of some of it, and so not believing everything, whereas it is often the case that young adults just… they’re actually more likely just to believe the things they see online. And so that’s, that’s some of where this is coming from.
Seth Green: That’s fascinating. I want to investigate one other area that comes up in the book, and maybe, John, I can start with you again here, because this relates to some of the themes you’ve written about before with, you know, young people and technology. How do they use it correctly? What do parents think about it? And obviously, there’s a huge conversation in the country about technology and social relationships. And a lot of that is focused on teens and concerns… I’m raising two daughters about, you know, how this technology potentially gets in the way of relationships. Substitute, even though, as we know emotionally, it doesn’t substitute for the emotionality of deep, meaningful human relationships. And so, can you talk a little bit about what you learned in this space about technology, and often we have a perception of older adults and loneliness. And we can see technology potentially contributing so I’m curious what you found in this, and also how this age group might compare to how we think about this at other stages of life.
John Palfrey: Thanks, Seth, and I’ll leave that last empirical question for Eszter to think about, because she’s looked at these data with CARE. It’s a wonderful question, and, you know, I think that there are a number of ways to approach it. One is, I think that, you know, let’s scroll back 20 or 25 years. We used to think about two worlds, online and offline.
Seth Green: Right.
John Palfrey: And there was this time, particularly as young people were spending more time online, and adults hadn’t yet sort of come online in various ways. This is actually even pre-social media, to be honest, but social media blows it up. And you’d have people talk about, like, what are those kids doing online? And I… the experience as a teacher back then both a law professor and then as the head of a high school, I would walk into a room, and sometimes what was fascinating to me was the kids were all talking about something, and knew about something that had happened in this other space that I was not in. We sometimes call the kid world, but it was online, right? And I wasn’t in it, and they were in it, and it was this totally different thing. So we often would sort of think about these worlds as distinct, and one of the things that came very clear was that for young people, there’s no distinction in the sense that it’s all just part of life, right? Life is connected in these ways. It’s not that there’s… they’re not distinctions. If you’re bullied online versus bullied in person, it can have a different effect and so forth, obviously. More reach online, maybe more physical, threat in person, et cetera, et cetera. But for young people, they weren’t really distinguishing, like, their two forms of life. Now I’m in my online life, here I’m in my, you know… And what’s interesting about studying older people, is that for many of them, this has also happened. And for some, it might be… Eszter wrote a wonderful book called Connect in Isolation from MIT Press, but it looks at the way in which older adults during the COVID period also connected, how that had an effect. And so, take COVID for a second as the period. You know, older people have to be isolated for a variety of reasons, when all of us were, but in particular older people, and being able to use the technologies was a lifeline. Right? It was a lifeline to connect to grandchildren, to children, to friends who were elsewhere, etc. And that is a hugely important part, as we know, of successful aging, and the Harvard study and all the other things that talk about successful relationships. So there is that dynamic in such an important way, which we cannot lose sight of. Now, is it a substitute for other kinds of relationships? Of course not, and we can talk about what those distinctions are, but can it be for somebody who is feeling more isolated for one reason or another, a part of a healthy social life, 100%, and the data bear this out. Now, when you get deeper into it, and Eszter can, if she wishes, get into it, you know, there are questions about whether or not higher levels of use by older people of the technology can contribute to forms of depression and other mental health issues. That is true, and it is absolutely also true with young people. We know, for instance, from data, that young people, and particularly girls who spend a lot of time on Instagram, can be more likely to develop an eating disorder, or if they have those underlying traits, to have a terrible eating disorder. So there are things like that that also can be true, but I think we shouldn’t lose sight, ultimately, of the potential connections. I don’t know if there’s going to be time, but my favorite chapter of the book is about learning, and I think the ability to do, and you guys are all about this at the Graham School, to connect through ideas in a way that just wasn’t possible 100 years ago, right? Or 130 years ago, when you guys got started, literally what we’re doing right now is a social good, and I think it is a part of the social connection, even though it might be, you know, connecting around ideas. But, Eszter , I don’t know if you want to jump off from any of that.
Seth Green: So I want to turn to you. I just want to affirm exactly what you’ve said, John. We just graduated in June, because it’s a four-year Great Books program. The class that joined us just after the pandemic. So, it was the autumn of 21, you know, when… or 20, rather, when people were still in… and so they just talked very passionately about how this was the lifeline, you know, because they were in these small groups having discussions, even amidst isolation and so it’s very true to see that really become a meaningful part of their lives, and a part where, you know, many of them were in tears as they graduated because of how… and they were in an online space, but felt very human. Eszter, let’s come to you on the data side.
Eszter Hargittai: Sure, yeah, so this… this topic’s actually throughout the book. We have a separate, chapter specifically on well-being, but as John alluded to, we have, towards the end a chapter on learning, and it is also one of my favorite sections, because I feel like that’s where we talk about so much potential to people spending time online and connecting and the data about loneliness and internet use, right? So this is very complicated, and I’ll just point out one… one issue that really complicates this scientifically, which is that there’s always the question of, is it the lonely people who are lonely in the first place, who then go online, or is it being online that makes you lonely? And then this can go in both directions, and decoupling this in studies is quite difficult. What I want to mention specifically from the data is that what really matters is what people are doing online, less how much time they’re spending online, but really what they’re doing online, and several studies of ours and other people’s have found this. In particular things like just scrolling, or what people sometimes refer to as doom scrolling, right? If you’re just scrolling fairly passively, that’s rarely particularly healthy or helpful. However, if people are engaging, if they’re communicating with others, if they are contributing content, that can have all sorts of positive outcomes. And now, then, one thought one has is, we hear so much about how horrible social media are, and people are always fighting, etc. Well, one of the things that we did on the survey that we ran for this book was to ask people about… to tell us different types of various positive and negative experiences that they’ve had while they use social media, and the positive ones were way more common. And actually, I’m gonna… I’ll make one more point. On this, we start the book with a chapter on adoption and switching services, and here we talk about how older adults are really good at leaving services that are not doing it for them. And so, I suspect what may be going on is if someone’s not liking what they’re getting from some platform they just walk away. They don’t feel like they need to stay. And so, older adults seem better about this than younger adults. And so, I think this may also explain why there are, in fact, not that many, necessarily many negative experiences, because then they just move on.
Seth Green: Well, so can we build on that, Eszter? I think it’s such an interesting question to ask, what can we learn from older adults? About how to use technology right, and what could even be taught to the younger generation? Because a big point that comes out in your book is this is actually being used in some ways more responsibly and successfully and so I’m curious, both through this research, through Connected in Isolation, where you reveal how older adults are actually doing better than other groups during lockdown, as John mentioned, you know, what would you say are some of the tips for maybe, you know, the broader population from what older adults are actually doing in this space that has allowed them to be more successful.
Eszter Hargittai: Yes, so, as I mentioned, this idea that if you decide, you realize that something isn’t doing for you, doing it for you, it’s okay to step away, right? So, we talked to lots of people who were retired, and they would say, well, yeah, I may still have my LinkedIn account, but I don’t… it just doesn’t… doesn’t do anything for me anymore, I don’t use it anymore, and that’s okay. And so, I don’t know if it’s more of this FOMO, fear of missing out with younger people, that they don’t necessarily leave a platform. But yeah, it’s completely okay to move on to a platform that meets your needs better. That would be one. I’ll mention the other point, and then, John, feel free to jump in. So, one thing that… and this is more of a general societal point that I think is worth emphasizing, because it seems like we’re really missing out on some opportunities here that older adults can be really helpful peer support for each other. So, by assuming that older adults are not good at technology, no one’s turning to older adults for help, and in our interviews, this came through often, that older adults would be more than happy to help others. It’s just that no one’s asking them to. And they can help others because, as we said, many of them are quite savvy. And they’re also able to figure things out together. But part of this is, how that help is provided, which one of the things is that it has to be patient, it has to be respectful, and it’s also very helpful if it comes early, right? When you’re introducing someone to something new, to support them in the early stages, so then they stick with it. I have more things to say, but John, I don’t want to take up all the space here.
John Palfrey: But you handled it so beautifully, Eszter , and covered so much great ground. I’ll just add a couple little notes. I think when you said it’s okay to switch services if they’re not meeting your needs, I think the answer is please do, in part because I think right now, there is basically no regulation of the technology space that’s really meaningful, honestly, at least in the US. There’s more going on in Europe. But the main regulator is the market. Yeah. So, if you don’t switch services, you don’t actually exercise that, then I think it’s not necessarily going to get better. And I do think that one of the things that’s important is that you think about Myspace, for instance, from the aughts, like, if you were a band or a young person in, whatever, 2006, and you were not on MySpace and all of it, you didn’t exist, right? But now, MySpace basically doesn’t exist. And that’s happened multiple times through technology, technology’s history in the last 25 years or so, with AI. Now, with new generations of technology, there’s more and more investment here. We actually have to act as consumers with our feet, and that’s important. The second one that’s that… How we learn from older adults is such a great point, and I’m a big believer, particularly as I get older myself, that wisdom actually does matter. It’s one of the reasons we had it in the title. And we do have lots to learn from our elders on lots of things, and ought to do that more often. And what’s interesting about the technology space is there’s absolutely a fetishization, if that’s a real word, of young people and youth and so venture capitalists love to give money to the 22-year-old wonderkin, and then have a staff only of people 22 to 28 and whatever. And so the designers of the technologies, the investors’ technologies, are all coming from a very young perspective, and all the testing and QA is often done by young people. So you think about it, very few technologies are actually designed by and for older people, which means that we do have, it’s one of the persistent problems in space.
Seth Green: Lots of digital haves and have-nots, for various reasons. Eszter ‘s research has shown some of these inequalities.
John Palfrey: Along various dimensions, not our topic for today, but it’s an interesting dynamic. That will only persist if the only people investing in running, designing the technologies tend to be younger, right? And we’re going to learn from how older people use the technologies in ways that are going to improve the technologies. And as a side note, this is true also for grantmaking and work we do in disability, not that older people are always disabled, or it’s one and one, although we will all have a disability in our life at some point. The more that you design for people with disabilities, you often create more inclusive communities, better communities, stronger communities, and I think the same thing would be true relative to older people and technologies. I think by designing with and for and including older people, it’s just going to be a richer fabric and a richer technology.
Seth Green: Can we double-click on that, John? I mean, you lead a very significant philanthropy, you’ve thought about policy. How do these findings specifically influence how you think about digital inclusion initiatives, are there specific ways, after looking at the research, that you might change the approach to digital inclusion based on what you’ve learned?
John Palfrey: Yeah, I mean, in particular, we have a program which is called Technology and the Public Interest, and for me, then, to go back and look at our grant making across this area and say, are we thinking about older people? Like, we have tended, I think, and Eszter , correct me if I’m wrong, but as a field, to kind of skew younger, in part because we’ve just studied kids, and there are some real things to work on with kids, for sure. But we really have sort of not looked at older adults and so forth as much, and so as we think about what it means to build and invest in technology for the public interest, I think it’s a lens, as I think disability inclusion is, and other lenses. It’s not the end-all, be-all, or the only thing that’s important, but it’s a lens through which we can see the whole, and as I mentioned learn from, actually use it as an iterative loop, so it’s easiest to land it there, but I think it’s, but it’s something we… I wouldn’t say, are particularly good at it yet.
Seth Green: Eszter, anything to add?
Eszter Hargittai: Yeah, I mean, I’m happy to, because… so, it’s great that John brought up the angle on disabilities. There is so little… There is even less research on digital media use, by disabled people, and again, not older… older adults, but many older adults have disabilities, and we need so much more research in this area. One of the things that we looked into as we were writing the book was just answering this question of why is this missing so often is that older people, not just having to do with the internet, generally, and there have been studies on this, are just kind of invisible to younger people. And this is a huge problem, and this is where there needs to be intervention in society much more generally, and I see this… right now, I’m teaching a class on older adults and digital media use. And, I mean, it’s just my class, it’s anecdotal, but it’s just the comments the students constantly make, even though I… every time, I emphasize that their assumptions are not backed up by evidence, and I mean, one of my big goals is that by the end of the semester, hopefully they have shed some of these stereotypes.
Seth Green: Well, so we have a lot of great questions in the chat, so I want to come to them. Jean LePage asked, many older adults went to school in a time in which critical thought was not only encouraged, but practice could be a contributing factor to your results? In particular, I think she’s pointing to this question of being able to decipher fake news. And whether it may not have to do with technology literacy, but it may have to do with just their experience with a different news and critical information environment as they were growing up than today. Any thoughts on… I know it’s probably impossible to disentangle, but why do you see an ability to spot the fake news at a maybe higher level, or not be fooled by it as often?
John Palfrey: I’ll do a quick answer and then pitch it to Eszter. You know, I think the questioner, Jean, has asked a very astute question, and a really important reminder that these are multifactorial results, right? And many factors are going to go into it in terms of generational differences. But I do think, and let’s just take the U.S.-based, since we’re at University of Chicago today, at least virtually, a Chicago-centered answer, which is, yeah, I mean, look, I think we have, in our educational system, been better at different times about genuine critical thinking. Obviously, Chicago remains a bastion of that. Not every place I’ve taught or studied is as good. I think we’ve lost the plot a little bit. It has led to some of the polarization and so forth that we have. And we gotta get back to that to some degree. So there’s a… there’s sort of an element, I think, of how we think about education that no doubt, you know, that at least some people, some demographics, some places do have that sense of critical thinking that we’re seeking to instill in young people, and that would be one contributor. But, Eszter , I don’t know if you want to go further. I know there are a lot of questions, but I don’t know educational system that well at younger stages, and currently, I feel like, I mean, certainly, so John and I are both in our early 50s, that, I mean, I think we were trained in critical thinking, but we also went to very particular institutions, so it’s hard to say how widespread that is. One of the things I like to emphasize is that often even though we think of age as a really major variable in some finding, it’s actually other factors that are much more important. So, for example, education, people’s educational level, educational background, is so much more important in so many ways to, for example, whether they fall for fake information. So, we just need to have this almost paradigm shift, that age is not the most important factor, it can be other factors.
Seth Green: There’s a question here from Pia Lopez about your thoughts on some of the specific platforms and how that may relate, and they mentioned TikTok, which obviously right now is a big conversation from a federal perspective. They also mentioned Facebook, Instagram. I’ll just say, I mean, to your points about how we haven’t had policy regulations, so individuals are now regulating and trying to create these better outcomes. I’ve been struck, I have a 14-year-old at how quickly, she just has come into social media. This year, she entered high school. The platforms have moved in her world, which may not be representative towards Snapchat, because it’s viewed as less predatory than Instagram for a variety of reasons. Anyway, I’m fascinated by how quickly some of these things are moving, but I’m curious for your recommendations there, because, you know, within the parent world I’m in, there’s a lot of conversation about these, and which ones are best for your kids, which ones aren’t, all of those things.
Eszter Hargittai: So I would say a general response to this. I think it’s fair to say that it’s not gonna be one platform over another, it’s gonna be, again, how you use it. So we don’t want to give too much weight to the technology itself without thinking through the details. Now, of course, different technologies enable us to do different things, and that might make a difference, and we can think about that carefully. In terms of TikTok, we talk about examples of how older adults are embracing it very well, and there are all sorts of elder care facilities with TikTok accounts, and I actually believe that they’re doing a really good job addressing some of that issue that I brought up a few minutes ago about, older people being invisible, so actually TikTok, I think, is helping them become more visible and showing their energy and creativity and love for life and dancing and art. And, so I think there’s lots of potential there. But going back to some of the findings I mentioned earlier, it is better to be actively engaged than passively scrolling for hours on end.
Seth Green: John, anything to add?
John Palfrey: I know there are lots of other questions, but I would just refer anybody who can get their hands on the book, pages 22… sorry, 32 and 33, there are some… even some data on there, charts that Eszter ‘s responsible for, so there are specifics on platforms. Of course, those change over time, and it’s one funny thing about doing the printed versions of books, they become obsolete relatively quickly. In the case of Born Digital, we’re on our third, you know rewrite of the book, so we’ll see how this one goes. But, anyway, I hope you might check it out, and obviously libraries, I suspect, at University of Chicago also can get you a copy if you don’t want to buy it.
Seth Green: Yes, we definitely have copies here. Go for it, Eszter.
Eszter Hargittai: Yeah, I just wanted to say, I mean, John is of course right that the data changed, but having studied these kinds of questions for over 25 years now, the patterns don’t change that much per se, right? So, yes there will be a change in the percentage of people who use a particular platform, but which one is more popular than another is surprisingly stable over time. I’ll just say one thing, which shocks everybody, Pinterest remains one of the most popular social media platforms. We never talk about it, almost nobody does research on it. But a lot of people use it, so you just never know.
Seth Green: Florence Michonne asks, how can we make sure all older adults, independent of their education and economic background, gain safe digital skills so they can truly be part of the wired world? This speaks, Eszter , to how big a role education can play in your ability to protect yourself online. What are your thoughts on that? I mean, obviously, you know, the aim would be to have more people fully engaged in their education, but knowing that is not a likely outcome immediately, you know, how do we make sure that these skills are transferred, even if they’re not going through, you know, higher education.
Eszter Hargittai: Absolutely. I mean, of course, a lot of people are past their education… formal educational institutions at this point in their life. That doesn’t mean that they should be thought of as a lost cause. We talk in the book, we have… we address different constituents, we talk about what libraries can do, what community centers can do, what technology companies can do and, so one of the things we talk about is how places like public libraries and community centers can offer support, for people, including older adults. There are all sorts of models that different communities have implemented that work well, so that’s one way that, publicly, we can address these questions. I mean, there’s also the level of policy, and that’s more John’s area, but I like to say, when people say, oh, but this shouldn’t be people’s… individuals’ work to get over this, but, I mean, it is, because the policy is so far behind we need to focus on giving people better skills. It’s absolutely important. But, things like continuing education are perfect for that.
Seth Green: We have an interesting question here from Marley White regarding use of technology. Has anyone looked, and I think you both have, so I think you may be the anyone in this question, at the depth of utilization versus simple use? Meaning how deeply a user may use a platform versus simply accessing it. Do older people dig into software or online resources to maximize their experience, or do they vote with their feet, to the comment you made earlier, Eszter , early, before fully understanding what might actually be possible within a resource? And so, curious for your thoughts on the Kind of expert level to which these older adults are able to engage with these resources.
Eszter Hargittai: So this is a good point, to emphasize just how much older adults economically can vote to fit their feet, because they carry so much more of the financial resources available to buy technologies. Right? So, this is another reason why it’s actually economically silly for companies to ignore this demographic. They’re the ones who have the money to buy the technologies that they’re creating. And they do vote with their feet, as we’ve discussed. If something isn’t meeting their needs, if something is, you know, if you can’t change the size of the font, and they can’t read your… what you’re writing, they’re gonna move on to the next thing that is meeting their needs.
John Palfrey: And I’ll just add to that a couple of data points that I think are important. We have not hit this directly, but in the context of our work, we’ve adopted the World Health Organization’s definition of older adults, which is 60 and up. And to Eszter’s point about wealth by virtue of almost any, whether it’s wealth, income, whatever, people between, say, 60 and in their 70s tend to be the wealthiest, you know, in that zone. So, that is where the money is. It’s like, why does, you know, the guy, Willie Horton, why do you rob banks, that whole thing? Anyway, Willie Sutton, I think, bank robber. Anyway, whatever that expression was, you rob banks, that’s where the money is. The idea that tech companies, others are not going after this incredibly, you know, dynamic group. It seems crazy. At the same time, the other piece that’s important is that it’s the fastest growing demographic online. So, if you’re older than 60, you are the fastest… you’re most likely to be adopting the technologies. So, to all of Eszter ‘s points, the market actually is working in the direction that we want it to, and that’s the dynamic, I think, that we’d love to see that go in the right direction. And on public policy, right now, particularly in the federal government of the U.S, there’s not going to be meaningful public policy on this score. There just isn’t, for various reasons. There’s policy, for sure. The whole TikTok thing is a hugely important policy regime, but it’s going to be about, you know, U.S. competition with China, or whatever it might be, or AI policy. It’s not specifically going to be about this adoption. So we have to think about what are the either non-profit mechanisms, the things like libraries, and other institutions like that. Maybe they’re sort of the low-profit type things. So I thought one of the things we talk about in the last chapter of the book is the OLLI program, much like this one, in the… based at Northwestern. In the context of the online learning efforts, they have a cohort of younger people for pay, but not very much, who can come to your home and help you with the technology and so forth. So I think there’s a layer of Not-for-profit, low-profit kinds of things that we could do that would make a big difference, and ultimately would support the extent to which we are, we are able to, you know, develop better technologies and support, the closing of these divides that the question points to.
Seth Green: So, let me build on that last example you have, John, about these younger people potentially coming to the homes of people in Ali, and ask a final question, because we’re at time in a couple minutes, which is, you mentioned earlier, John, wisdom as this really big value, and yet underappreciated. And that’s a broader theme, I think, that we have lost, because this is something that was core to the American experience, especially for families that have multi-generations and a house. We’ve lost that intergenerational connectivity. There are lots of studies of this. I’m curious, as we just come to the end here, to come back to that idea and ask you both, given where we are with technology being widespread, with people over 60 being the biggest adopters. Can technology be a vehicle for building more intergenerational connectivity than we’ve given it credit for, and how might we pursue that? I’m curious for any final thoughts on that before we close.
John Palfrey: I’ll do a quick one, and then let Eszter have the last word. The answer is, of course, what a great softball question to end with. It’s a huge part of what we would love to see come out of this… out of this work, is really to pay attention to the ways in which the focus on older adults and technology can be a two-way street, and one that… and by the way, the beneficiaries of that are not just the older adults and how they use technology, but the younger people who gain the wisdom that we were talking about before from our elders, and of course, those rich friendships that hopefully all of us have had in our life at one point with older persons. But Eszter, I bet you have thoughts on it, too.
Eszter Hargittai: I just want to mention that we mention specific examples, in the book, in several chapters, we talk about this, and how much both generations are getting out of it. And I’ll just say about the book more generally that, while we recognize, also from the research, that there can be negative implications and difficulties with technology, we ultimately do have a positive take, right? We really do believe that there can be lots of gains, both to older adults and young adults, when adopting technologies in careful, thoughtful… careful, thoughtful ways and supportive ways. So, maybe leave with that thought.
Seth Green: Well, those are wonderful thoughts to leave with. I also take away the thought that if I want to look at these different platforms and see the data, if I want to hear these stories, I need to get the book. And so, I have actually read it. I highly recommend it to everyone here. I think it will really add a lot of color to all of the insightful observations that you’ve shared with us, and you can already see the chat up with thank yous to both of you for your insights. So, we truly appreciate your being with us today. We are grateful for your publishing with the best press in the world, and we look forward to continuing this conversation with both of you. Have a great morning, or almost afternoon here, and hope everyone has a great day.
