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To understand whether people can identify their optimal touchscreen target sizes, we asked older and younger adults to identify optimal target sizes on a questionnaire and com-pared these chosen sizes to performance on a target acquisi-tion task. We found that older individuals (60+) were better than younger adults at choosing their optimal target sizes. In fact, younger adults underestimated the smallest target size they could accurately touch by almost 6mm. This study sug-gests that older adults may be able to better configure target size settings than younger adults.
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'Don't Fall for This': Communications about Cybersafety from the AARP
Older adults face unique risks in trying to secure their online activities. They are not only the frequent targets of scams and fraud; they are the targets of a barrage of cybersafety communiqués whose impact is unclear. AARP, the United States advocacy group focusing on issues facing older adults over the age of 50, is among those educators whose strategies remain underexplored, yet their reach makes it imperative that we understand what they are saying, to whom, and to what effect. Drawing on an analysis of AARP publications about cybersafety and privacy, we sought to better understand their discourse on the topic. We report on findings that AARP's language may have the effect of portraying bad actors (fraudsters) as individuals, rather than enterprises, which at the target end, personalizes interactions, placing too much onus on individual users to assess and deflect threats. AARP's positioning of, and guidance about, threats may sometimes prompt a thought process that puts users at the center of the narrative and may encourage engagement. Instructing older Americans, or anyone, on the forensics of cyber-sleuthing is enormously difficult. We conclude with a discussion of different approaches to cybersafety, one that involves educating older adults about the rudiments of surveillance capitalism.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1714514
- PAR ID:
- 10510722
- Publisher / Repository:
- ACM Digital Library
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
- Volume:
- 7
- Issue:
- CSCW2
- ISSN:
- 2573-0142
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1 to 21
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1145/3610039
