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

10.1093/geroni/igaa057.3418
igaa057.3418
Abstracts
Session 10500 (Late Breaking Poster)
COVID-19 Pandemic
AcademicSubjects/SOC02600
Age Differences in the Consumption and Avoidance of COVID-19 Information
Deng Stephanie  Nolte Julia  Loeckenhoff Corinna  
Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, 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”932 933
© 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
Staying informed about COVID-19 is crucial to maintaining public health. Although older adults are at increased risk of complications, recent data (Global Web Index, 2020) suggest that they are less likely to seek out information about COVID-19. This is consistent with prior evidence indicating that information seeking is negatively associated with age (Mata & Nunes, 2010). However, it remains unclear whether older adults merely fail to seek information or intentionally avoid information. In response, we examined whether age is associated with general information seeking and deliberate information avoidance in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on previous work indicating age-related shifts in motivational priorities (Carstensen, 2006) we also examined whether avoidance motives differ by age. In a pre-registered online study, an adult lifespan sample (N=500, Mage=49.90, 51% female, 67% non-Hispanic White) completed self-report measures of media consumption, information avoidance, and avoidance motives with respect to the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, we measured behavioral information avoidance by allowing participants to opt out of receiving valid COVID-19 information. As predicted, age was associated with decreased media consumption (p<.001) and higher information avoidance about COVID-19 on the behavioral measure (p<.01). Self-reported information avoidance, in contrast, was highest among younger adults (p<.05). Further, with the exception of concerns about trustworthiness, older adults were less likely than younger adults to endorse various information avoidance motives (ps<.05). Thus, although information seeking is lower and behavioral information avoidance about COVID-19 is higher in later life, this cannot be traced to explicit intentions or select motives.