Technology Readiness and Continued Use Intention for Digital Sports Platforms Among Older Adults in Korea

In the later chapters of life, the tools we use to stay active are changing. Where a walk in the park or a visit to a community gym once required only a phone call or a trip to a front desk, many of these activities now live on screens. Older adults in South Korea, like those in many other places, are increasingly turning to digital sports platforms to book a badminton court, track a run with a wearable device, or join a virtual exercise class. Yet, simply handing an older person a smartphone does not guarantee they will use it. The question researchers face is not just about access, but about the mind behind the screen. Why does one person find a new app helpful and easy to master, while another finds it confusing and overwhelming? To understand this, scientists look at two main ideas. First, they examine how useful and easy a person thinks a technology is. If a tool helps you reach your goals and feels simple to operate, you are more likely to keep using it. Second, they look at a person's general attitude toward technology. Some people naturally feel optimistic about what technology can do for them, while others feel uneasy or worried about making mistakes. These feelings shape how they judge the tools in their hands.

A recent study set out to explore these feelings among older adults in Korea who were already using digital sports services. The researchers wanted to know if these psychological patterns were the same for everyone in the older population, or if they changed depending on how old the person was. To find out, they surveyed 400 people who had used at least one digital sports service in the past year. They split these participants into two distinct groups: the "Baby Boomers," born between 1955 and 1964, and a group of adults aged 75 or older. By comparing these two groups, the team could see if the path to continued use looked different for a 60-year-old compared to an 80-year-old.

The study confirmed what many designers hope is true: if an older adult finds a digital sports platform useful and easy to use, they intend to keep using it. This held true for both age groups. When people felt the platform helped them manage their activities and that they could operate it without struggle, their desire to continue using the service grew stronger. However, the study revealed that the road to reaching that feeling of usefulness and ease is paved with different stones for different people. The researchers found that the two age groups did not react to technology in the same way.

For the younger group of older adults, the Baby Boomers, their feelings of discomfort played a major role. If a Baby Boomer felt overwhelmed by technology or felt they lacked control when using it, they were much less likely to see the platform as useful or easy to use. Their confidence in the tool was directly tied to how manageable it felt. In contrast, this feeling of discomfort did not significantly change the views of the oldest group, those aged 75 and older. For them, feeling overwhelmed did not seem to stop them from seeing the value in the platform, provided they had already decided to use it. This suggests that the barriers to entry shift as people age; what frustrates a 65-year-old might not be the same hurdle for an 80-year-old.

The study also looked at how a person's general excitement about new things influenced their experience. For both groups, being open to trying new technology made the platforms feel easier to use. But there was a key difference in how this openness translated to value. Among the 75-and-older group, those who were eager to try new things also saw the platforms as more useful. For the Baby Boomers, however, this eagerness did not automatically make the platform seem more useful. It seems that for the oldest group, the willingness to explore new functions is closely linked to seeing the practical benefits, whereas for the younger group, these two feelings remain separate.

Interestingly, the study found that one common assumption about technology was not supported. Many theories suggest that if something is easy to use, people will automatically think it is useful. In this study, that link did not hold up for either group. An older adult could find a sports app very easy to operate without believing it was particularly helpful for their life, or they could find it very useful even if it required some effort to learn. The two judgments were independent of each other. This means that making a platform simple is not enough; it must also be clearly valuable to the user.

Another surprising finding was that feelings of insecurity—worrying about whether the technology would fail or whether online services were safe—did not significantly predict how useful or easy people found the platforms in this specific group. Since all the participants were already using these services, they may have already overcome their initial fears, or perhaps their specific concerns about sports apps were different from general worries about technology.

The researchers were careful to note that their work looked at people who were already using these services, so the results apply to those who have already taken the first step. They also noted that the study measured what people said they intended to do, not their actual physical activity or how often they clicked buttons. Despite these boundaries, the findings offer a clear lesson for anyone designing or providing digital sports services for older adults. Older people are not a single, uniform group. A strategy that works for a 60-year-old might fail for an 80-year-old. To keep older adults engaged, providers need to recognize that feelings of control and comfort matter deeply for some, while the willingness to explore new value matters more for others. By understanding these subtle differences, we can build digital tools that truly serve the diverse needs of an aging population.