Older Adults and the Digital Divide in Romania: Implications for the Covid-19 Pandemic

Abstract

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Romania invoked the 15th Amendment of the European Convention of Human Rights for emergency situations and issued an Emergency State Presidential Decree (first put into effect on March 16 and extended until May 15, 2020). This amendment allowed for exemptions from broad categories of human rights (e.g., the right to privacy and intimacy). Older people became the main target of the Romanian government’s plans for isolation. Using data from the Romanian National Institute of Statistics and data gathered prior to the COVID-19 pandemic from a longitudinal study on communication technologies used by older people in Romania (Loos, Nimrod, & Fernández-Ardèvol, 2018; 2020), we examine the digital inequalities faced by Romanian elders.