JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

The World Health Organization, Center of Disease Control, and the Gerontological Society of America have made efforts to raise awareness on ageist language and propose appropriate terms to denote older adult population. The Covid-19 pandemic and older adults’ vulnerability toward the pandemic has perpetuated hostile, ageist discourse on social media. It is an opportune time to understand the prevalence and use of ageist language and discuss ways forward.

Objective:

To understand the prevalence and the situated use of ageist terms on Twitter.

Methods:

We collected 60.32M total Tweets between March and July 2020 containing Covid-19 terms. We conducted mixed methods study of content analysis and descriptive quantitative analysis.

Results:

58,930 tweets contained ageist terms of either “old people” or “elderly.” Appropriate term, “older adult,” were found in 11,328 tweets. Twitter users used ageist terms (e.g., elderly, old people) to criticize ageist messages (17 out of 60, 28%), showing the lack of understanding on the appropriate terms on older adults. Highly hostile, ageist content against older adults came from tweets that contained the derogatory terms “old people” (22 out of 30, 73%) or “elderly” (13 out of 30, 43%).

Conclusions:

The public discourse observed from Twitter show continued lack of the public’s understanding on the appropriate use of terms referring to older adults. We will need efforts to eradicate the perpetuation of ageist messages that challenge healthy aging. Our study contributes to highlighting the need to inform the public about appropriate language use and ageism. Clinical Trial: N/A