Editorial: Post-pandemic digital realities of older adults

摘要

Since the beginning of the 21 st century digital technologies, practices and transformation has been moving quickly, but the events of 2020 exacerbated this leading to services and platforms been the primary 'go-to' place for everyone who owned a digital device, access such as the Internet and the digital skills to engage with the platform(s).Given this phenomenal event has led scholars from across many disciplines to come together, form new networks and collaborate on innovative projects (Earle et al., 2022;Ivan and Culter, 2021a;Marston et al., 2023b;Ratzenböck, 2022;Taipale et al., 2023) in an attempt to capture the lived experiences during 2020 and 2021. The scholarly activity conducted will provide a marker and insight for future scholarly historians, social scientists, technologists, and many more that will be curious to understand how digital transformation came into the fore and how people now adapted to a new way of living in a post-pandemic society, but also learn about the experiences during this time.perspective of the US and Japan; (2) the perceptions of people from the UK on the role of digital companions in reducing loneliness (Martin, Collett, Bell, and Prescott); (3) Chatbots (Iancu and Iancu); (4) the role of the videoconference in the nursing homes in France (Racin, Minjard, Humbert, Braccini, Capelli, Sueur, and Lemaire); (5) mobile and wearable technologies (Fowe and Boot); (6) interacting with QR codes and purchasing items using contactless payment options (Morrison, Nicholson, Woo, and Biggs); (7) digital exclusion, digital skills (Wilson-Menzfel, Gates, Moreland, Raw, and Johnson) taking a UK perspective, digital literacy (Finklestein, Wu, and Brennan-Ing) in the context of the US, and digital inclusion (Reuter, Xu, Iwarsson, Olsson, and Schmidt) observed in Sweden.These papers add to a growing body of research focusing on this lifetime event of the 21 st century (Freeman et al., 2022;Renu, 2021;Smith et al., 2022;Ummer et al., 2021;Vargo et al., 2021), including the wider societal debates of digital technologies and practices by people across the life course and understanding transgenerational technologies perspectives and interactions (Marston et al., 2020a;Marston et al., 2022;Ivan and Nimrod, 2021).Berridge et al. present a study exploring the interest and use of 'companion robots' or 'artificial robots' as a way of mitigating loneliness and understanding the ethical issues associated to them. This study recruited 496 people ranging in ages from 25 to 88 years and statistical analysis explored the relationships between age, health, and perceptions towards the impact of loneliness, comfort surrounding deception. Findings showed 68.7% of participants thought that artificial robots would make them feel less lonely, although nearly 70% reported the use of artificial robots would make them feel somewhat-to-very uncomfortable into making the individual believe that a robot is human. Overall, this study notes how there was no strong belief that artificial robots would alleviate loneliness and based on deception, it is posited that future solutions need to consider design implications to prevent this likelihood.Maalouly et al. present an experimental study in which older adults tele-operated a robot to get involved in prosocial activities in two experimental situations: engaging in a conversation in which they would give information to visitors about their city; and talking with children from a children's centre to offer their support. The two situations were used to understand how older adults experienced remote-controlled work, starting a new job in a remote situation and about how their social interactions have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and are willing to conduct some of their voluntary activities using a remote controlling robot. The results of this study show the potential of robots to replace some of the face to face interactions in organising older adults' meaningful activities in times