For immediate release: September 12, 2003
For more information, contact Susan Griffith at 216-368-1004 or susan.griffith@case.edu

CLEVELAND—A rising generation of technology-savvy senior citizens will rely on e-mail, digital cameras, computers and other high-tech aids to help them cope with the frailties of old age, predicts Case Western Reserve University sociologist Eva Kahana, the leading author on the article "Emerging Lifestyles and Proactive Options for Successful Aging," in Ageing International.

Eva Kahana

This "new elderly" also will be avid health care consumers, individuals concerned about maintaining personal appearances (with cosmetic surgery and other appearance enhancements) and physically fitness and seekers of self improvement through education and spiritual growth, adds Kahana. "They also are more likely to work past retirement age, because they are healthier and living longer," she adds.

"As time has gone on, we realized that the elderly of tomorrow are going to be different from the elderly of today," states Kahana.
For 15 years, Kahana has been studying 1,000 retirees-many of whom are now in their late 80s and 90s-from Cleveland, Ohio, and the retirement community of Clearwater, Fla. From extensive information provided by the retirees, Kahana has designed a model to show how people marshall support and navigate through their environments to successfully age while coping with chronic illness and physical impairments of old age.

Since many of her original seniors have passed away or are approaching the end of their life spans, she has broadened her focus to include the next generation of the country's older Americans, who are 70 years old and older.

With this new group of retirees coming from a more technical business and personal environments are likely to change the way people live their senior lives.

Kahana now will test her predictions for the new emerging lifestyles of older Americans with a five-year, $1.68 million grant from the National Institute on Aging.

The new study adds more than 800 people in their 70s to the original study.

Some of the new study participants are from the "wired" community of Celebration, Fla., an intergenerational and racially diverse community built by Disney World, as well as new senior groups from Cleveland and Miami, Florida, which has a robust population of elderly Cubans. She will compare the new group to the remaining 250 individuals from her original groups from Clearwater and Cleveland studies.

Kahana notes that Celebration offers a unique opportunity to look at the impact of technology on the lives of the elderly. In Celebration, every home is wired for the Internet, and people living in the community can use e-mail in a variety of ways from social chats to wiring blood pressure readings to the doctor or ordering groceries from the store.

While Clearwater is an age-segregated and leisure-oriented community of retirees, Kahana states that Celebration offers an age and racially diverse community as well as one that offers access to employment opportunities at nearby Disney World for seniors who want to continue working.

In studying characteristics of aging, Kahana says sociologist have to determine which characteristics are due to the natural aging process and which are produced by the socioeconomic times in which people lived.

For example, older adults are often known for their frugalness, but Kahana questions whether this was a characteristic of aging or coming into adulthood during the depression and World War II. Her new study will enable her to answer those aging and generational questions.

Her co-collaborators on the journal article are Boaz Kahana from Cleveland State University and Kyle Kercher from Case.

–Case–

 

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