“[It's the] first time I have felt so acutely that I am 'less' because of my age.”: Aging in the time of COVID-19

Background: Initially, many of the measures implemented to promote public health and stop the spread of COVID-19 explicitly targeted older adults. Public discourse, media coverage, and government policy at the beginning stages of the COVID-19 pandemic perpetuated views that older adults are frail, vulnerable, and dispensable. Understanding how the framing of pandemics impacts older adults’ experiences can inform strategies to reduce ageism in the future. Methods: Participants completed an online survey that captured their experiences during COVID-19. At the end of the survey, we asked participants, “What else would you like to share about your experience of living through COVID-19?” One thousand forty-six individuals responded to this open-ended question across all three survey waves with 1700 comments included in the analysis. We conducted an inductive descriptive analysis. Results: The inductive analysis revealed broader implications of age-related overgeneralizations and benevolent ageism. Three implications of public health messaging were identified: intergenerational conflict, age-based vulnerability, and distrust of leadership and information. The results highlight that age-based public health messaging leads to feelings and experiences of prejudice and increases generational divides. Conclusions: The coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic and the open discourse around vulnerability when contracting COVID-19 was framed in terms of age. Experiences with age-based framing perpetuate ‘othering’ between generations and even within generations. Public health messaging and decision-makers must consider intergenerational conflict frames before instituting social policies.