==== Front
Innov Aging
Innov Aging
innovateage
Innovation in Aging
2399-5300 Oxford University Press US 

10.1093/geroni/igaa057.3432
igaa057.3432
Abstracts
Session 10500 (Late Breaking Poster)
COVID-19 Pandemic
AcademicSubjects/SOC02600
Coping With the Impact of COVID-19 Safety Recommendations: The Importance of Pets
Emerson Kerstin 1 Kim Deborah 1 Mois George 2 Beer Jenay 3 1 
University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, United States
2 
University of Georgia, Lawrenceville, Georgia, United States
3 
Institute of Gerontology, Athens, Georgia, United States
2020 
16 12 2020 
16 12 2020 
4 Suppl 1 Program Abstracts from The GSA 2020 Annual Scientific Meeting “Turning 75: Why Age Matters”937 937
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America.2020This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic is disproportionately affecting older adults. Initial research suggests that older adults are experiencing negative emotions and stress during social distancing and self-quarantining. Consistently, literature shows that pet ownership can mitigate some negative emotions, including stress and loneliness. Our goal was to explore the impact of pets on older adults who were restricting their social interactions during the first three to five weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic. The study was based on web-based survey data from 833 persons aged 60 and older in the United States. The sample age of respondents ranged from 60-85, with a majority (80.2%) female and White (95%). About 56% of the sample reported that they owned at least one pet. Respondents with pets did not significantly differ in stress or loneliness measures compared to those without pets. A majority of respondents reported engaging in more distance communication compared to before the pandemic. However, respondents with pets were less likely to report an increase in the following technology-mediated forms of communication: emails, texts, computers, and telephone (all p-values < .05) compared to those without pets. There was no significant difference in other coping mechanisms (e.g. exercise, alcohol intake) by pet ownership. These results suggest that respondents did not rely on pets to reduce stress or loneliness. However, pets may fill other communication/connection needs, and older adults may then rely less on communication with other people. Research on coping with the impact of Covid-19 has implications for interventions, including specific interventions for pet ownership.