Aspen Digital

At the start of 2024, Aspen Digital began to explore the many challenges older adults face in a world becoming far more technologically advanced than the one they were familiar with for the majority of their lives and the challenges companies, civil society, and policymakers face while trying to ensure this population isn’t left behind. 

As part of this work, Aspen Digital, in collaboration with The SCAN Foundation, brought together a group of leaders from across tech, civil society, academia, and public policy for a virtual roundtable discussion on how older adults should be represented at every stage of the innovation design cycle. This roundtable, combined with a number of 1:1 consultations with advocates and tech companies, resulted in last week’s publication of the Older Adults & Digital Equity Playbook.

Throughout our roundtable discussion, it was clear that there is a significant amount of catching up needed before older adults are adequately and thoughtfully integrated in the development and deployment of new technologies, particularly those that rely heavily on the use of human data. It’s not just industry alone that needs to step up. Civil society and public policy have an obligation to strive for increased digital equity of older adults as well as ensuring substantial risk-prevention guardrails are in place.

Here are some highlights from the convening:

Fireside Chat

To help center the overall conversation, our convening kicked off with a fireside chat between Anika Heavener, Vice President of Investments & Innovation, The SCAN Foundation and Kara Carter, Senior Vice President, Strategy and Programs, Staff, California Health Care Foundation. You can watch their conversation in the video below.

Watch session on A.I. & Health Equity

Anika Heavener opened the fireside chat with the observation that “older adults aren’t necessarily the first segment that we think about when we think about tech innovation.” As the Playbook explores in depth, this is particularly true as it relates to new AI-driven technologies. When 1 in 6 adults in the US were 65 years and older according to the 2020 Census, it’s hard to understand why such a significant portion of the population is not a more integral part of the development process of a new piece of technology. 

Kara Carter kicked off the rest of the convening by positing: “how can we make sure that we have representative data, how can we make sure that we are tailoring our solutions to meet the needs of the most?”

Defining “Older Adults”

As the roundtable continued, one of the most prevalent questions we heard from participants is who exactly should be considered an “older adult”? 

• The US Census defines a senior citizen as anyone 65 years old and above, but if age is the only determinant of who is an older adult irrespective of other factors such as industry, geography, race, gender, will that data be as inclusive and useful as it could be? 
• In exploring what it means to be a “senior citizen,” Forbes states that “researchers agree that it’s important to manage perceptions of people of different ages and avoid ageist stereotypes.” This is particularly imperative when building new technology and how it might be used or not used by older adults. As a result, technologists need to have a more specific understanding of who the stakeholders are and intentionally look at the intersectional identities of this group. 
• One roundtable participant made the point that without proactively “going the extra mile to get people who are not usually represented in the data and their experiences included in the development of these tools” we won’t be able to meet the diversity and intersectionality of needs in any group of older adults.

Overcoming the Trust Deficit

Rebuilding trust in communities should be a top priority with all participants agreeing that it should start with honesty, transparency, and a real commitment to mitigating past, current, and future harms. 

• The lack of meaningful digital equity and inclusion in the design of new products has contributed to increasing levels of distrust among older adults and how they view the tech industry as a whole.  
• When additional aspects of a person’s intersectional identity, such as gender or race, are factored in, there is even more significant skepticism that a new tool or service might prove beneficial. 
• These trends among older adults dovetail with a dramatic drop of general public trust in AI-companies, from 50% to 35% in the last 5 years. Participants also pointed to the drop in trust among older adults exacerbated by companies’ seeming unwillingness to take ownership of mistakes that might have caused harm to communities. For example, AI-driven tools are making it far easier for older adults to fall for scams designed to convince them to send money or sensitive personal information to seemingly trusted sources.

Digital Equity Requires Involvement from Everyone

Participants in our roundtable agreed that a holistic approach is necessary to improving digital equity for older adults with important roles for tech, government, and civil society.

• Civil society and community leaders can provide insight on shared definitions and additional data points around older adults and subpopulations 

• Older adult communities must build capacity -and be provided the resources to do so- to better engage with tech companies on a level playing field where their lived experiences and perspectives are easily received and represented in the product design process
• Roundtable participants acknowledged that policymakers have been struggling to match the pace of AI and can better meet the challenge of rapid innovation by working more closely with both tech and impacted communities. 

With adults aged 65 and older on track to make up 22% of the US population by 2040 (up from 17% in 2022), it’s past time for technologists to seriously incorporate them into all aspects of future innovation. There are multiple avenues that need to be taken to increase digital equity in the older adult population to be done correctly. Defining who is an older adult and re-establishing trust with the community are just two of them. With insights from the virtual roundtable and interviews with major technology companies and subject matter experts at the forefront of this work, Aspen Digital created a playbook to help technologists, civil society, and policymakers make significant strides towards increasing the digital equity of older adults in emerging technology.