From Hostile to Benevolent Ageism: Polarizing Attitudes Toward Older Adults in German COVID-19-Related Tweets.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Previous studies have linked coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) to a rise in ageism. While a growing body of research examined hostile ageism during the pandemic, benevolent ageism received less attention. Drawing on the stereotype content theory and the classic tripartite model of attitudes, the current study explored how benevolent and hostile ageism are reflected in the cognitive, affective, and behavioral dimensions of attitudes toward older adults in German COVID-19-related tweets. The study examined the most prevalent attitudes as well as changes in prevalence between the first and second lockdown period in Germany. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: Seven hundred and ninety-two German tweets concerning COVID-19 and aging were collected and coded using Mayring's qualitative content analysis with a dominantly inductive approach. Quantitative methods were used to identify the most prevalent subthemes as well as changes in prevalence. RESULTS: The coding resulted in 21 subthemes. Most tweets (60.73%) contained either hostile or benevolent ageist attitudes, with benevolent ageism being more prevalent. The top 5 subthemes in terms of prevalence and reach contained several opposing attitudes, such as devaluation and opposing devaluation. The chi-square tests revealed a shift from a promotion to an evaluation of COVID-19-related policies between the 2 lockdowns. DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS: Results highlight social media's polarizing effect and its potential contribution to both hostile and benevolent ageism in the context of COVID-19 in Germany. Results indicate the need to consider the adverse effects of benevolent ageism and use of chronological age as risk factor, when designing COVID-19-related policies.

Impact of Media-Based Negative and Positive Age Stereotypes on Older Individuals' Mental Health.

OBJECTIVES: During the COVID-19 pandemic, stigmatization of older persons increased in traditional and social media. It was unknown whether this negative messaging could be detrimental to the mental health of older individuals, and whether the relatively uncommon positive messaging about older individuals could benefit their mental health. METHOD: To address these gaps, we designed age-stereotype interventions based on actual news stories that appeared during the pandemic, and divided them into negative and positive versions of what we term personified (i.e., individual-based) and enumerative (i.e., number-based) age-stereotype messaging. The negative versions of the 2 types of messaging reflected the age stereotype of decline, whereas the positive versions of the 2 types of messaging reflected the age stereotype of resilience. RESULTS: As expected, the exposure of older individuals to the negative-age-stereotype-messaging interventions led to significantly worse mental health (i.e., more anxiety and less peacefulness), compared to a neutral condition; in contrast, the positive-age-stereotype-messaging interventions led to significantly better mental health (i.e., less anxiety and more peacefulness), compared to a neutral condition. The findings were equally strong for the personified and enumerative conditions. Also as expected, the interventions, which were self-irrelevant to the younger participants, did not significantly impact their mental health. DISCUSSION: This is the first-known study to experimentally demonstrate that institutional ageism, and statistics that reflect stereotypes about older individuals, can impact mental health. The results demonstrate the need for media messaging aimed at empowering older individuals during the pandemic and beyond.

Mental health and aging in the 2020s.

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought age bias and the unmet mental health needs of older adults into bold relief. Even before the pandemic, the psychological needs of older adults often went unaddressed, or were poorly addressed by a system that lacks an adequate number of providers and insufficiently integrates geropsychological services across care settings. In the decade ahead, the number of older adults in the United States will continue to grow, with the potential for expanded demand and contracted service options. Life changes that typically occur with aging will interact with societal upheavals (pandemic, civil unrest, economic inequality) to exacerbate the mental health needs in the current cohort of older adults and the "near old." At the same time, ageism, inequitable access, and financial and policy constraints may limit health care access. Following a review of current demographic and epidemiological data, we describe several trends that will affect the prevalence of mental health issues among older adults and how mental health care is delivered, and we discuss their implications for education, research, and practice. For both personal and professional reasons, all psychologists can benefit from understanding these trends in aging. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Ageism in the COVID-19 pandemic: age-based discrimination in triage decisions and beyond.

Ageism has unfortunately become a salient phenomenon during the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, triage decisions based on age have been hotly discussed. In this article, I first defend that, although there are ethical reasons (founded on the principles of benefit and fairness) to consider the age of patients in triage dilemmas, using age as a categorical exclusion is an unjustifiable ageist practice. Then, I argue that ageism during the pandemic has been fueled by media narratives and unfair assumptions which have led to an ethically problematic group homogenization of the older population. Finally, I conclude that an intersectional perspective can shed light on further controversies on ageism and triage in the post-pandemic future.

Ageism in COVID-Related Newspaper Coverage: The First Month of a Pandemic.

OBJECTIVES: Media sources have consistently described older adults as a medically vulnerable population during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, yet a lack of concern over their health and safety has resulted in dismissal and devaluation. This unprecedented situation highlights ongoing societal ageism and its manifestations in public discourse. This analysis asks how national news sources performed explicit and implicit ageism during the first month of the pandemic. METHOD: Using content and critical discourse analysis methods, we analyzed 287 articles concerning older adults and COVID-19 published between March 11 and April 10, 2020, in 4 major U.S.-based newspapers. RESULTS: Findings indicate that while ageism was rarely discussed explicitly, ageist bias was evident in implicit reporting patterns (e.g., frequent use of the term "elderly," portrayals of older adults as "vulnerable"). Infection and death rates and institutionalized care were among the most commonly reported topics, providing a limited portrait of aging during the pandemic. The older "survivor" narrative offers a positive alternative by suggesting exceptional examples of resilience and grit. However, the survivor narrative may also implicitly place blame on those unable to survive or thrive in later life. DISCUSSION: This study provides insight for policy makers, researchers, and practitioners exploring societal perceptions of older adults and how these perceptions are disseminated and maintained by the media.

Measures of self- and other-directed ageism and worries concerning COVID-19 health consequences: Results from a nationally representative sample of Israelis over the age of 50.

Worries associated with COVID-19 health consequences are well-justified. They may motivate people to take safety precautions, but may hinder if they become too intense. Current research has examined mainly age and gender as potential correlates associated with worries. This study instead, is focused on self-perceptions of aging (SPA) and perceived age discrimination as potential predictors of worry, in the light of the ageism pandemic which has co-occurred with the COVID-19 outbreak. The study is based on a national sample of 1,092 adults aged 50 and above in Israel. Phone interviews were conducted between March 29 2020 and May 3 2020, when Israel gradually moved from strict to partial lockdown. Respondents were queried about their worries related to COVID-19 health consequences, demographic characteristics, known-risk factors, SPA and perceived age-based discrimination in the healthcare system. Our findings show that in addition, to sex, financial status and chronic illness, SPA and age-based discrimination in the healthcare were significant predictors of worries and explained additional 8% of the variance. The findings point to the potentially negative impact of the ageism pandemic in an area that has not received much attention, thus far, namely people's worries. Interventions that address ageism directed by self or others might alleviate worries in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The twin faces of ageism, glorification and abjection: A content analysis of age advocacy in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

While the government responses to the COVID-19 pandemic have varied across the globe, there has been a unifying cry from academia and public health professionals warning of the detrimental effects of attaching our understanding of this new threat to our already ageist attitudes. What is inescapable is that COVID-19 has an age-related risk component and the latest data shows that risks start to rise for people from midlife onwards. As governance agencies, professional practice, and academia work towards assessing, communicating, and addressing this risk, we ask: are existing gerontological conceptualisations of ageism appropriate for this exceptional situation and what is being (re)produced in terms of an aged subjectivity? Following van Dyk's (2016) critique of gerontology's 'othering' through both 'glorification' (third age) and 'abjection' (fourth age), a content analysis of statements and policy documents issued in response to COVID-19 provides evidence of well-meaning and inadvertent ageism through homogenizing language, the abjection/glorification binary within 'old age', and the power binary constructed between age and an age-neutral midlife. The paper concludes with reflections on future directions for ageism research beyond COVID-19.

Is It "Aging" or Immunosenescence? The COVID-19 Biopsychosocial Risk Factors Aggravating Immunosenescence as Another Risk Factor of the Morbus. A Developmental-clinical Social Work Perspective.

COVID-19 has proliferated ageism. The impetus of this article is to show that immunosenescence is a risk factor to COVID-19 and not aging per se. Based on the idea that some older people are also healthier than younger ones, the emphasis of this article is on immunosenescence and not aging as a risk factor of COVID-19 complications. The paper utilizes a biopsychosocial approach to expound on the link between immunosenescence and COVID-19 risk factors. The article explores biological factors such as malnutrition, comorbidities, substance abuse, and sex. It also expands on psychosocial factors such as mental health disorders, homelessness, unemployment, lack of physical exercises, stigma, and discrimination. The article calls for gerontological social work to assume a developmental-clinical social work perspective to prevent the early onset and progression of immunosenescence. It calls for gerontological social work to prevent factors that promote unhealthy aging. The article promotes a preventative stance to practice and not just curative approaches. Treatment involves primary prevention which emphasizes on avoiding the onset of unhealthy aging. It is this approach that gerontological social work should aim also to address in building resilience in the face of pandemics.

Old Overnight: Experiences of Age-Based Recommendations in Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic in Sweden.

The Swedish response to the COVID-19 pandemic included age-based recommendations of voluntary quarantine specifically for those 70 years of age or older. This paper investigates the experiences of a sudden change of policy in the form of an age restriction that trumped the contemporary active aging ideal. A web-based qualitative survey was conducted in April 2020. Through manual coding of a total of 851 responses, six different ways of relating to the age-based recommendations were identified. The results show that age is not an unproblematic governing principle. Instead, in addition to protecting a vulnerable group, the age-based recommendation meant deprivation of previously assigned individual responsibility and, consequently, autonomy. It is shown how respondents handled this tension through varying degrees of compliance and resistance. Findings highlight the importance of continuously tracking the long-term consequences of age-based policy to avoid negative self-image and poorer health among older adults.

Age-Based Healthcare Stereotype Threat during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Older adults have been identified as a high-risk population for COVID-19 by the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Though well-intentioned, this nonspecific designation highlights stereotypes of older adults as frail and in need of protection, exacerbating negative age-based stereotypes that can have adverse effects on older adults' well-being. Healthcare stereotype threat (HCST) is concern about being judged by providers and receiving biased medical treatment based on stereotypes about one's identity - in this case age. Given the attention to older adults' physical vulnerabilities during the COVID-19 pandemic, older adults may be especially worried about age-based judgments from medical providers and sensitive to ageist attitudes about COVID-19. Online data collection (April 13 to May 15, 2020) with adults aged 50 and older (N = 2325, M = 63.11, SD = 7.53) examined age-based HCST. Respondents who worried that healthcare providers judged them based on age (n = 584) also reported more negative COVID-19 reactions, including perceived indifference toward older adults, young adults' lack of concern about health, and unfavorable media coverage of older adults. The results highlight the intersection of two pandemics: COVID-19 and ageism. We close with consideration of the clinical implications of the results.

Culture Linked to Increasing Ageism During COVID-19: Evidence From a 10-Billion-Word Corpus Across 20 Countries.

OBJECTIVES: Older adults experience higher risks of getting severely ill from coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), resulting in widespread narratives of frailty and vulnerability. We test: (a) whether global aging narratives have become more negative from before to during the pandemic (October 2019 to May 2020) across 20 countries; (b) model pandemic (incidence and mortality), and cultural factors associated with the trajectory of aging narratives. METHODS: We leveraged a 10-billion-word online-media corpus, consisting of 28 million newspaper and magazine articles across 20 countries, to identify nine common synonyms of "older adults" and compiled their most frequently used descriptors (collocates) from October 2019 to May 2020-culminating in 11,504 collocates that were rated to create a Cumulative Aging Narrative Score per month. Widely used cultural dimension scores were taken from Hofstede, and pandemic variables, from the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker. RESULTS: Aging narratives became more negative as the pandemic worsened across 20 countries. Globally, scores were trending neutral from October 2019 to February 2020, and plummeted in March 2020, reflecting COVID-19's severity. Prepandemic (October 2019), the United Kingdom evidenced the most negative aging narratives; peak pandemic (May 2020), South Africa took on the dubious honor. Across the 8-month period, the Philippines experienced the steepest trend toward negativity in aging narratives. Ageism, during the pandemic, was, ironically, not predicted by COVID-19's incidence and mortality rates, but by cultural variables: Individualism, Masculinity, Uncertainty Avoidance, and Long-term Orientation. DISCUSSION: The strategy to reverse this trajectory lay in the same phenomenon that promoted it: a sustained global campaign-though, it should be culturally nuanced and customized to a country's context.

#BoomerRemover: COVID-19, ageism, and the intergenerational twitter response.

Early reports of COVID-19 often inaccurately presented the virus as a serious concern only among older adults. On the social media platform of Twitter, #BoomerRemover originated as a hashtag intended to express the age-related disparities of COVID-19. This study used a content analysis to examine tweets over a two-week period in March 2020 that used #BoomerRemover to discuss COVID-19 among older adults. A total of 1875 tweets were analyzed. Salient themes include: (1) There's a Real Intergenerational Divide, (2) Young People are Affected Too, (3) It's Being Used for Political Gain, and (4) #BoomerRemover is Simply Disrespectful. Findings suggest that many of the tweets employing #BoomerRemover were grounded in either personal or political ageism. In addition, a significant portion of tweeters used #BoomerRemover to defend older adults and speak out against ageism. This study highlights the importance of recognizing and addressing the growing intergenerational divide on social media, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ageism as a Modifying Influence on COVID-19 Health Beliefs and Intention to Social Distance.

Objectives: Commentaries have suggested that initial emphasis on the higher susceptibility and mortality rates of older adults to COVID-19 has instigated ageism within the public discourse and policy decisions. Using the health belief model, the current study examined ageism in interaction with other factors influencing intention to social distance. Methods: Threat of contracting COVID-19, benefits and barriers to social distancing, benevolent and hostile ageism, and intention to social distance were examined in 960 adults (M = 37.81 years, SD = 11.65). Results: Benevolent and hostile ageism were significant moderators for both perceived threat and barriers on intent to social distance; hostile ageism also moderated benefits on intent to social distance. Discussion: The current study demonstrates how ageism influences behavior during a pandemic. With initial reports of COVID-19 presenting older adults as a homogenous group, ageism negatively interacted with intention to social distance and may place older adults at greater risk.

COVID-19 Amplifiers on Health Inequity Among the Older Populations.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is affecting the population disproportionately and is continuously widening the health gap among the population. Based on some recent studies on COVID-19 and the older population, the various cascades toward health inequity have been projected. This study highlights how the COVID-19 is met by health inequity triggers, such as global trade inequality, ageist social regulations, and the existing social inequity. While those triggers are applicable to all the populations, there seems to be specific amplifiers for health inequity among the older populations. In particular, six types of amplifiers have been identified: (1) expansion of riskscape, (2) reduction of social ties, (3) uncertainty of future, (4) losing trust in institutions, (5) coping with new knowledge, and (6) straining on public spending. While the fundamental mitigating responses to health inequity among the older population is tackling existing inequalities, this study may help to shed light on emerging vulnerabilities among the older population to alleviate far-reaching consequences of COVID-19 of the identified inequity amplifiers.

Ethical Issues in COVID-19 Communication to Mitigate the Pandemic: Dilemmas and Practical Implications.

Communication plays a critical role in all stages of a pandemic. From the moment it is officially declared governments and public health organizations aim to inform the public about the risk from the disease and to encourage people to adopt mitigation practices. The purpose of this article is to call attention to the multiple types and the complexity of ethical challenges in COVID-19 communication. Different types of ethical issues in COVID-19 communication are presented in four main sections. The first deals with ethical issues in informing the public about the risk of the pandemic and dilemmas regarding communicating uncertainty, using threats and scare tactics, and framing the pandemic as a war. The second concerns unintended consequences that relate to increasing inequities, stigmatization, ageism, and delaying medical care. The third raises ethical issues in communicating about specific mitigation practices: contact tracing, wearing face masks, spatial (also referred to as social) distancing, and handwashing or sanitizing. The fourth concerns appealing to positive social values associated with solidarity and personal responsibility, and ethical challenges when using these appeals. The article concludes with a list of practical implications and the importance of identifying ethical concerns, which necessitate interdisciplinary knowledge, cross-disciplinary collaborations, public discourse and advocacy.