Is It About the Right Media, or About the Right Format: Older Technology Generations in Seven Countries and the Evolution of Their Preferences for Media Formats from 2016 to 2020

The concept of ‘technology generations’ [1, 2] has been previously explored showing that the media people use to learn during their formative years tends to remain in their preferences throughout their life course. We collected panel data in three waves, respectively: 2016, 2018 and 2020. We explored the ‘technology generations’ concept in two previous studies (study 1 using Wave 1 [3] and study 2 using Waves 1 and 2 [4]) to test the generational effect on older adults’ media use using data from a longitudinal study conducted among Internet users (65+), in seven countries: Austria, Canada, Denmark, Israel, the Netherlands, Spain, and Romania. In the current study, we used data from all three waves to focus on the differences between the media format older adults use when they access different media content (traditional: TV set, radio set, print), and digital: computer/laptop, mobile phone). The differences in preferences between the three technology generations have not been consistent over tirme and faded from Wave 1 to Wave 3. Indeed, in Wave 1 (2016) the ‘mechanical’ generation preferred (in terms of the time spent) traditional formats, as TV set, radio set and printed newspapers, and they were generally more inclined to prefer such formats over digital ones (computer/laptop, mobile phone). Over time, when we moved to Wave 2 (2018) and Wave 3 (2020), these differences became non-significant. Only in the case of print newspapers, such differences remained stable during all the three waves. Beside the difficulties associated with learning how to access new media formats (e.g., radio on the mobile phone), combined with an unwillingness to invest in such a new media format when the traditional one has the same functionality (e.g., TV set versus TV on a mobile phone), feelings of nostalgia could explain why older adults still prefer a certain format to access media content.