What AARP’s MythBuster Wants You to Know About Tech & the 50+ | The AgeTech Podcast S4E25 with Dr. Brittne Kakulla

Keren Etkin: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Aged Tech Podcast. My guest today is someone whose work I’ve been following religiously for years. Dr. Brittne Kakulla from the AARP’s Research Division. You probably have read some if not all of her reports. Probably also have been familiar with the tech trends and the 50 plus reports, which in

annual reports that are probably. Among the top most important reports for anyone in the AgeTech space, I’m very excited to have Brittne on the show today. Brittne, welcome to the show.

Dr. Brittne Kakulla: Oh wow. Well thank you for that introduction. Like, wow, you really boosted my confidence here.

Appreciate it.

Keren Etkin: it’s what I’m here for. I’m,

I’m curious, could you share a little bit about your background and your origin story and what even got you, to becoming A senior researcher for AARP

Dr. Brittne Kakulla: Sure. So my background is in social psychology. And I’ve always just loved the study of people. Like I’m one of those people who, you know, could go to the mall and just sit and watch people and come up with these like stories about what are they doing and, you know, what are they looking at and, you know, all that stuff.

So, you know, I’ve always been interested in people and understanding them. You know, a big part of social psychology, we think of like the ABCs of people. So it’s like affect behavior, cognition, how people think, how they feel, and what they do. So that’s always been an interest of mine. And I’ve been at a RP for 20 years in various roles, looking at various topics related to older adults.

And I’ve been focusing on technology. I’ve been a part of the tech trends research since 2018, but it really became like this you know, important annual study that we’re focusing on at covid time. So, you know, you imagine like everything that was happening at Covid and we really needed to know like, what’s going on with older adults.

We had brands that were coming to us like, how can we engage, how do we reach people? So that really brought a new level of importance to the research.

Keren Etkin: there is, there is. have so many questions. Uh, I what was like the initiative stage of this report? Like what even got, uh, your research division focused on publishing this report on an annual basis? ’cause I, I assume it’s, it requires a lot of heavy lifting on your

Dr. Brittne Kakulla: Yeah. This it’s an annual report. I actually start planning in April for this. We, so I try to, what’s going on, what’s happening in the technology field what kind of changes do I think are happening? I also look at the previous year’s report to see like, what was the media. Play what data points were really interesting, like what got talked about a lot, what didn’t, but I thought it was going to get like, a lot of play.

So there’s a lot of the back planning into like, what is the research gonna look like for the current year. And then we have so there are some modules that are consistent every year. So that’s to get a read on like device ownership. Social media, things like that. But every year I also try to include like a new module on like current events or you know, something new that we need to keep a pulse on.

Things that we don’t have a lot of data points on related to consumers. So about two years ago we added a question on digital literacy. And that’s because, you know, I noticed there’s a hole, there’s a lot of different ways that digital literacy is defined, but there’s no. Like national number.

Like there’s different states that have it, there are different organizations that have it. It changes throughout the year. So I wanted to have something that, that we could track and we could trend. So that was kind of, you know, how that question got added. And, you know, this research has been around since 2016.

That’s when we did our first tech study. And it really was just like a pulse check on device. Ownership. And you know, like back then only 55% of older adults had a smartphone. So it really was like, how are they engaging with technology? Like what do we need to know to connect with older adults? So, you know, that’s kind of when the research started and it, I don’t think initially it was going to be an annual study, but things changed so quickly.

That it became like, okay, well that was last year. What did this year’s numbers look like? And then that evolved into this annual study. And then, like I said before, COVID really put a level of importance to this ’cause, like what do we need to know? How people are connecting? How can we understand how they’re connecting?

What are some of the barriers to that we can address to ensure that everyone has access to technology, that they can connect with friends and family, they can connect with. Services that they need as well. So all of that added to just the importance of the research. And then so at this point, you know, we’ve been this 2026 will be the 10th year of the research.

So I’m kind of thinking of like, you know, like a lip ha retrospect comparing 10 years. But you know, if you look back even um, during Covid. We still were focusing on devices ’cause we were still seeing you know, device ownership was lagging compared to younger adults. Like we, so, you know, you saw a lot of adoption with younger consumers and older adults.

I. Like weren’t quite there yet, but Covid like just changed all of that. So, you know, for the top six devices there’s parity now between older and younger adults. So, you know, there’s some multiple price points for different devices so everyone can get something related to, you know, the different types of main technologies that are out there.

So now I’d say the focus is on digital services. So now that. People have devices and you know, 91% of the 50 plus have a smartphone, which is very comparable to the 18 to 49 year olds. So now they have these devices, particularly these phones. What are they doing? And again, how can we I. Ensure that they’re able to use their devices to get the most out of it, and that they’re aware of all the things that are out there for them, the resources, the tools that can help them do so many things, you know, can help them connect with family, can help them manage their health conditions and connect with health providers.

One of the. Things that we’ve consistently found. There’s a lot of research out there about chronic health conditions that older adults have. So there’s age related decline that, you know, everyone just experiences. And then there’s some like chronic health conditions that can be managed and that can be helped.

And technology is like. Such an opportunity to use tools to help people manage those things. So, but there’s still kind of a disconnect between what’s out there and what people are using. So that’s kind of like where my attention is right now, thinking about digital services and growth in some of those areas.

Keren Etkin: that actually brings me to my next question. do you choose sort of, um, among the new modules that you pick and have to pick and choose for each and every year? How do you choose. is the new, module that you’re gonna focus on? or new, multiple modules? ’cause this year you mentioned there was chronic health conditions and, and there were, so also a caregiving module on this series’s report. you pick and choose ’cause there’s so much to choose

Dr. Brittne Kakulla: Yeah. Yeah. And it’s it’s a little bit of art, a little bit of science. So I try to look at you know, what’s happening in the field look at secondary sources. So I like some of the future casting. Resources that we have. One is stylus. So like I, in January we released this joint report with CTA, looking at Smart Home Tech.

And one of the deliverables for that you can find this on the website, is a stylus report that is specifically for AARP looking at smart home tech. So I like those, you know, future casting, like what is, what’s. What is gonna be relevant in the future to older adults? What are some of the things that we need to be focusing on now?

I also think about just our population and AARP, like what are we focusing on? We’ve got a ton of caregiving resources. We have like a caregiving site on the.org. So, you know, understanding caregivers is really important to us. So, you know, I’d be remiss to not include that because that’s part of, you know, our wheelhouse.

And again, it’s just what else do I think is relevant or what’s going to be relevant to older adults? So we had looking at some of the tech categories, there was a piece on Brain health technology this year. And, not a lot of use, or I guess I should say not a lot of adoption yet. So I think that’s a space where there’s an opportunity because we’ve consistently found that this idea of staying sharp and being able to contribute and maintaining your independence is super important to older adults, and this technology is out there that can help them do that.

So it’s like, let’s learn more about what’s available and how that could help people. And what are some of the barriers to them for adopting that. So, you know, the modules are determined by talking to stakeholders, looking at existing research that’s kind of out in the wild. Other organizations, I like to look at Pew.

Like I mentioned some of our futurists. Vendors that we have and the New York Times, they have like a really good tech weekly article that they have. So I like to look at just different stuff to give me ideas of like, you know, what do I think is relevant here? And then also looking at, you know, what did we see in the past and what do I think we should focus on next?

Keren Etkin: So was the Brain Health report an example of something that you initially thought to include as a module and then you realized this is way bigger than a module? Let’s just create a separate report for that, because I feel like there’s also been an inflation in reports over the past couple of years. So there are more reports coming out each and every year. Like every month I see a new report.

Dr. Brittne Kakulla: Well, from a RP research, we’re a research department of about, there’s about 40 people in research and we are looking across the spectrum of experiences for older adults. So yeah, that’s not surprising that you’ll see you know, a bunch of reports because we’ve got a lot going on, so, ’cause there’s a lot going on.

’cause you know, the population’s getting older and on one hand, industries and brands are just starting to take notice. Like, oh yeah, we should probably, learn more about this or demographic, and we should probably get smart on this. I was just at South by last month talking about older gamers and like, there’s so many stereotypes about older gamers because the industry is like ignored them and now they’re like, oh, they’re gonna be like a huge part of the population.

We probably should learn more about them. So, you know, I think it’s the same way in research is, you know, while you’ll see a proliferation of more. Reports coming out now because there’s more of an interest there and it’s a larger, segment of the population. So for the brain health it’s not a separate report.

It was a mod, it was a module that was added in the tech trends. And again, it’s just, you know, I think that there’s value there and it’s something that we could focus on more. And it’s hard too, you know, boiling down the ocean because there’s only so much space in the tech trends. You know, I can’t put everything in there.

You know, the categories that I focused on this year, you know, in, in some of my talks, it’s like, yeah, any, you could come up with like 20 different and tech categories that we could research on. But it’s really what I think is. Where we should be focusing attention. so, yeah, it’s just, you know what, I think that is relevant.

Keren Etkin: when you, when you go and find people to respond to the survey, you, how do you find the right survey respondent to to, any of the surveys

Dr. Brittne Kakulla: so, so we partner with lots of vendors. The vendor that we partner with for tech trends is Newark, which is part of the university. So, and the goal for the tech trends is to be representative of. The United States we’re representative of our population, so we spend a lot of time. That’s why I said we start I start planning in April.

Another piece of that is the sampling. So we wanna make sure that we are representing people by age, by region, by, by gender all these things multicultural to ensure that, you know, we’re representing the United States and we’re representing older adults so that those opinions that we get in the survey are reliable.

That this is, you know, if you asked a random person on the street. What they tell you would be pretty consistent to what we found in the research. Like that’s the goal that it’s representative. So, the vendors that we work with that’s the goal is finding those people to ensure that they’re gonna talk to the research.

So. And there’s a process with recruiting the way that people are recruited into our panels and then ensuring that it’s a real person. Because one issue that’s in research now is professional survey takers and bots. So there are a lot of checks and balances that we include in our research to ensure that it’s a real person.

So sometimes in the middle of a survey, there’s a question that says you know, type this word in. There’s a question that says select the opposite scale. Just things that are security checks to make sure that it’s a real person, not a bot who’s just, you know, going through, filling in questions.

Keren Etkin: That, that makes total sense. Has anyone ever floated the idea of, Hey, we got 38 million members, let’s just email everyone and to, respond to, is this set of questions.

Dr. Brittne Kakulla: Well, I mean, that wouldn’t be good research because one, just because you’ve got 38 million, it’s like, is that the relevant people you wanna talk to? Like the point of survey research is making sure that the group that you’re talking to is relevant enough that it could be, you know, it, you it’s reliable that it could be any person that you’re talking to on the street.

So just because you have a large sample doesn’t necessarily mean that sample is going to be who we wanna talk to or relevant to the topic. You know, we’ve in the research there are consistently. You know, about 10 to 12% of older adults who like don’t wanna be involved with technology, they don’t wanna be online.

So, you know, if we’re talking to people about, different topics. We wanna make sure that one, they’re going to have something to say ’cause it’s something that they wanna talk about and that they can form their opinions about it. So, no, I don’t think we would send a survey out to our 38 million members to get their opinion on something.

I, we wanna, one the resources involved in that would be just like. You know, it’d be super expensive ’cause who’s got the money for that? And then, you know, just, yeah, larger size doesn’t necessarily mean that’s gonna be good research.

Keren Etkin: Absolutely. Some, Sometimes uh, in your reports, you break down the answers to the question according to like, more age segments than just a 50 plus. Sometimes you segment by gender. Sometimes it’s like whether someone lives in the city or in the country. How do you decide to, how to break down and how do you even decide? If you need to further segment uh, the respondents to specific questions.

Dr. Brittne Kakulla: Yeah, that’s a good question. It really depends. I think part of it is intuition. Like what, what is going to be interesting here? What is important to know where there are differences? So sometimes I. It doesn’t matter because you know, everyone feels the same way. And you know, you’ve got the, so like people who use technology to connect with friends and family, like we’ve consistently found that’s in the seventies range.

You know, regardless of how you cut that, people still see that connection there. They’re using it, there’s a value. But other things, you know, it really depends on where people are at in their life stage, their life journey, what their experience is. So that impacts, you know, deciding. It’s important to know this number by gender or not.

So, looking at some of the digital services, like I’m working on smaller cuts of the report because again, you know, there’s so much in the main report, can’t put everything in there. So I also do some topical spotlights that come out as well, which is again, like you’re saying, focusing on some of those cuts of specific demographics.

And, you know, gender is one of them. In the digital services, you know, the way that men and women use some digital services differs and that’s something that’s important to know. So, for example, women use it more for social connection. They’re using it more for communication for entertainment.

Men are using it for. You know, things you expect sports, but also things like music and news. So, you know, these are important differences to know, particularly if you are, you know, a brand or an industry that’s looking at ways to connect with consumers. Because you know, it’s important not to assume that all consumers are gonna be the same, like, you know, whatever group you’re talking to, don’t assume it’s like a homogenous group.

So there’s always these intersections of life journey and identity to consider. And that’s part of like why some of the data points are cut by different characteristics and, you know, particularly for age. There, there used to be, I would say it was a much sharper, like tech cliff, if you wanna call it.

Where at 65 you would just see like adoption just drop. And as time has gone on, that has softened. It’s more like a. Not like a cliff. Maybe it’s like a steep or like a, I don’t know, slope. So, you know, I think that’s important to look at tech by age because it’s not just that age is, you know, a driver and adoption.

And actually when we’ve looked at digital literacy and comfort with tech Age is not the main driver. It’s how people feel comfortable with technology if they trust the information that they get, and also how they learn about tech. So, people who are in the workforce, those who have younger ones, friends and family, they’re more comfortable with tech because they’re exposed to a lot of different things.

So. It’s not just that you know, someone’s an older adult and they’re not gonna get how to use their smartphone or, you know, they’re not interested in like a VR device. There’s a lot of variables there. So that’s part of deciding that.

Keren Etkin: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And that you like eventually would have to be using your researcher’s intuition.

Dr. Brittne Kakulla: Yeah.

Keren Etkin: like, make those decisions. I wonder what are some of the insights that you have or some of the intuitive things that you know are true, but don’t make it to the reports because there’s, they’re outta scope or they’re not statistically significant,

Dr. Brittne Kakulla: Well, that’s a good question. I think not so much what I, what I know is true, I think be because the tech trends is so large, like we can’t go deep. So there’s a lot of like, like the tech categories, you know, I was able to include you know, a couple of types of different tech, but not the spectrum.

You know, like in the CTA report that we worked on, we asked about 40 different types of home safety technology. So definitely there’s no space for that in. In the tech trends. So, one, you know, more types of tech I think would be interesting. Also, you know, the mobility tech. I feel like there’s such an opportunity there for older adults.

For adoption. I heard, the podcast recently that electric bikes were actually started for older adults, like the, this idea that they could still you know, ride around and they could participate, but it’s not as taxing on the body. But the ones who adopted it were the younger consumers. So then that’s kind of the way that the technology, that the field just like, you know, pivoted to younger consumers.

But, you know, I feel like there’s just such an opportunity. The mobility tech, and I, you know, I don’t have the bandwidth to go deep into that, into tech trends because the the interest is not quite there to make the case for giving it a lot of space. But, you know, there’s definitely. An opportunity there.

It’s like there’s way more beyond electric cars. And we, but that’s like all that you hear about when we’re talking about mobility tech. I was at CES and I saw some of those, like exoskeleton you know, the pants and the arms that, you know, people can use. So it could stop your hand from shaking when you’re lifting.

When you’re eating, you know, there’s like so much other stuff out there that. You know, I would like to look at, but you know, don’t have space for that in the research.

Keren Etkin: Fair enough. I wonder, we’re having, we’re conducting this interview in March, 2025. Um, And you said that you start planning for the next year in around April.

Dr. Brittne Kakulla: Yeah.

Keren Etkin: Do you

already have. Sense of what new modules we could see in the 2026 report.

Dr. Brittne Kakulla: Well, so the new modules, not quite, but you know, I’m thinking with this idea of a retrospect, so I want to do a 2016 to 2026 comparison. On some of the devices that we asked about back then. And you know, even just like in 10 years, how much things have TA changed? You know, I was looking back, it’s like 2016, what did Netflix have?

You know, they had 6,000 videos, that’s it for streaming. And now there’s like 20 platforms out there that you can stream content on. Like, just imagine how you know, fast the world has changed in 10 years. So I think that’ll be interesting to. To do a retrospect on where older adult adults were 10 years ago with technology and where they are now and then so that’s the first part.

Then from there, you know, I really think it depends on how much space do I have left for, additional new modules. I mean, definitely keeping the digital literacy piece in there because it’s interesting to to trend that. I wanna see if we’re gonna see changes in that. We also have a question in there that’s related to people, older adults, feeling like technology is designed with them in mind.

So this age-friendly design piece and like I said, at CES, I feel like we’re seeing more. Of this age tech focus. There’s more of, you know, industries that are waking up and they’re like, oh, you know what? There’s this huge older adult population and they’re gonna get older and they probably wanna use technology.

How could we make this like, useful for them? So there’s a lot there. So, that will be trended as well. I definitely wanna keep that in. Then the ai, so that was new last year. Added a couple of AI questions this year. I expanded it a little bit to include benefits. So last year was just like, have you used it?

What do you think about it? This year it was, have you used it? What do you think about it? Do you see the benefits in it? And you know, I was really. Happy to see that. Usage had doubled among the 50 plus. So it went from 9% to 18%, but was interesting. The people who had used it had much more significantly higher positive perspectives of ai.

So. Part of that is like, it’s, is it an exposure issue? You know, if people are just exposed to it more and they use it more, then they’ll start to see some of the benefits of it, the value in it. I think I. An issue with the ai adoption right now is the use cases are pretty much on the consumer to figure out.

So, you know, it’s not like, yes, here you can do this with ai. Here’s something that’ll really help you. It’s like, here’s this tool. Find a way to make it useful for you. And that typically like does not work particularly for older adults who see technology as a tool. So it’s like they want it to do something.

They have the. The goal in mind and the tech should should help that. It shouldn’t be like tech for tech’s sake, which is a difference between older and younger adults because younger adults are willing to just play with it. They see technology as part of their identity and you know, they’ll try to figure it out and they’ll get the new phone just because it’s new and they wanna see what they can do with it.

You know, we don’t necessarily see that type of perspective with older adults. So. So I think, yeah, we’ll, I think there’ll be some AI in there. The digital literacy the tenure retrospect on devices and attitudes. And the rest, I’m not sure, so.

Keren Etkin: Well, I would personally love to read about all of that. I’m super curious about the retrospective and and the AI part. ’cause I also feel like consumers using ai, the jury is still out on, on, like I. ROI.

Dr. Brittne Kakulla: Yeah.

Keren Etkin: So that’s why I love that all of the um, LLMs have like a free to try,

Dr. Brittne Kakulla: Yeah.

Keren Etkin: uh, option so people can play with it and not necessarily have to pay $20 a month.

’cause I would like,

Dr. Brittne Kakulla: Yeah.

Keren Etkin: a would probably not even pay that. But for work it is incredibly useful.

Dr. Brittne Kakulla: Yeah. And I think that’s part of the adoption. You know, the smart home tech is one of the categories that has the most adoption. You know, in the report, 62% are using some type of smart home technology, and I think that’s because the breadth of products that available, but also the price points.

So you can find a camera for $20 or you can find one for $200, but you can start really small to try some of this new technology that’s out there and some of the other tech options. I think I. You know, it’s it’s a steep learning curve in terms of like cost or you know, installation into the home or, you know, figuring out the use case.

So I think that as the the field becomes more robust and there are these like different ways to use AI and incorporate it, and you have these different price points, I think that we will see more adoption. And I’m actually working on an AI study now. So that will be. Coming probably in June-ish.

’cause the fielding is done. But that’s looking at AI from a jobs to be done perspective because it does seem like, you know, my my hypothesis is that, you know, the brands are making it too much of a use case for the consumer to figure out. But if we could think about it as like a job to be done, here’s what I need to.

Be done. Here’s where I’m struggling with. It would be really great if there was a solution for this, that the AI is positioned as a tool it’s, you know, like a hammer. Then I think we could see greater adoption there and I think we also might see less of those attitudes related to, you know, fear or not seeing the benefits of it or all the negativity.

Because I think when people see the usefulness of it, then that kind of abates some of the negativity. So, so that’s what I’m working on now. So that you’ll, you know, see that coming this year before the tech trends?

Keren Etkin: is a a scoop.

Dr. Brittne Kakulla: Yeah.

Keren Etkin: Thank you for sharing that. We don’t usually get scoops on this podcast uh, but can’t wait. I can’t wait to read this report. Um. uh, Definitely subscribe to our newsletter to receive a notification because we always make our subscribers know when you reports uh, from the AARP come

Dr. Brittne Kakulla: Oh, nice.