ArticleJournal of the American Geriatrics Society2020
Coronavirus, Ageism, and Twitter: An Evaluation of Tweets about Older Adults and COVID-19.
Article in Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 80 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
80 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 218 citations in OpenAlex.
- COVID-19-related misinformation on social media: a systematic review.Bulletin of the World Health Organization · 2021Pooled it
- The Age-Related Risk of Severe Outcomes Due to COVID-19 Infection: A Rapid Review, Meta-Analysis, and Meta-Regression.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2020Pooled it
- [Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and ageism: a narrative review of the literature].Revista espanola de geriatria y gerontologiaPooled it
- Thinking of future as an older individual increases perceived risks for age-related diseases but not for COVID-19.International journal of psychology : Journal international de psychologie · 2022Trial
- Aging Like Milk or Fine Wine: Content Analysis of Reactions to One's Future Self on TikTok.JMIR aging · 2026Article
- The Impact of Ageism and Pain on Pandemic-Related Stress in Older Adults: A Structural Equation Modeling and Mediation Analysis.Journal of aging and health · 2026Article
- A bimodal longitudinal investigation on changes in sentiments over social media interactions owing to COVID-19 pandemic.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Public Discourse Toward Older Drivers in Japan Using Social Media Data From 2010 to 2022: Longitudinal Analysis.JMIR infodemiology · 2025Article
- Geriatrics as a specialty: Insights from Mexican medical students' decision-making process.PloS one · 2025Article
- Questions About Aging and Later Life on Quora.The Gerontologist · 2024Article
- Advocating for Older Adults in the Age of Social Media: Strategies to Achieve Peak Engagement on Twitter.JMIR aging · 2024Article
- A brief version of the Attitudes to Ageing Questionnaire for older Chinese adults: development and psychometric evaluation.BMC psychology · 2024Article
- Using Twitter to Understand COVID-19 Vaccine-Related Ageism During the Pandemic.The Gerontologist · 2024Article
- Article
- Bidirectional Associations of Awareness of Age-Related Change and Attitudes Toward Own Aging With Social Media Use.The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences · 2023Article
- The Role of Mass Media in Influencing the Lifestyle of the Elderly during the COVID-19 Pandemic.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Locked down by inequality: Older people and the COVID-19 pandemic.Urban studies (Edinburgh, Scotland) · 2023Article
- Vulnerability in context; hard numbers, tricky words and grey areas for gerontology.Journal of aging studies · 2023Article
- Media Consumption and COVID-19-Related Precautionary Behaviors During the Early Pandemic: Survey Study of Older Adults.JMIR formative research · 2023Article
- [Older adults in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic: health-related findings of the German Ageing Survey (DEAS)].Bundesgesundheitsblatt, Gesundheitsforschung, Gesundheitsschutz · 2023Review
20 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectivesIn March 2020, the World Health Organization declared coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) a pandemic. High morbidity and mortality rates of COVID-19 have been observed among older adults and widely reported in both mainstream and social media. The objective of this study was to analyze tweets related to COVID-19 and older adults, and to identify ageist content.
designWe obtained a representative sample of original tweets containing the keywords "elderly," "older," and/or "boomer" plus the hashtags "#COVID19" and/or "#coronavirus."
settingTweets posted between March 12 and March 21, 2020. MEASUREMENTS: We identified the type of user and number of followers for each account. Tweets were classified by three raters as (1) informative, (2) personal accounts, (3) personal opinions, (4) advice seeking, (5) jokes, and (6) miscellaneous. Potentially offensive content, as well as that downplaying the severity of COVID-19 because it mostly affects older adults, was identified.
resultsA total of 18,128 tweets were obtained, of which a random sample of 351 was analyzed. Most accounts (91.7%) belonged to individuals. The most common types of tweets were personal opinions (31.9%), followed by informative tweets (29.6%), jokes/ridicule (14.3%), and personal accounts (13.4%). Overall, 72 tweets (21.9%) likely intended to ridicule or offend someone and 21.1% had content implying that the life of older adults was less valuable or downplayed the relevance of COVID-19.
conclusionMost tweets related to COVID-19 and older adults contained personal opinions, personal accounts, and jokes. Almost one-quarter of analyzed tweets had ageist or potentially offensive content toward older adults. J Am Geriatr Soc 68:1661-1665, 2020.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.