Early COVID-19 Public Messaging and its Impact on Older Adult Demonstrations of Personal Agency

Exposure to COVID-19 messaging that conflates older age with risk/infirmity has been suggested to have negative effects on older people's sense of personal agency (i.e., sense of capacity to exercise control over one's life).

This qualitative study sought to determine how older adults perceived this vulnerability narrative within early COVID-19 public messaging and how this may have influenced their personal agency.

Semi-structured interviews with 15 community-dwelling older adults in Manitoba were completed and analysed using inductive thematic analysis.

Study findings suggest that early COVID-19 public health messaging created associations between vulnerability and older age that increased the participants' sense of age-related risk. As a response, many participants described engaging in certain actions (e.g., lifestyle behaviours, following public health protocols, coping mechanisms) to potentially increase their feelings of personal agency.

This study suggests that creators of public messaging pertaining to older age must be mindful of the ways that it may fuel a vulnerability narrative.