Here’s How COVID-19 & Gen X May Make Consumer Tech The New Toilet Paper In Retirement

Remember the initial run on toilet paper? It may seem long ago, but it happened only last month. As the stay-at-home orders rolled in, shoppers rolled out—and rolled the dice. Some emerged with months’ worth of toilet paper; others with nary a roll.

A wave of news reports, commentary, memes, and jokes soon formed in response to the three-ply level of excess, but at the same time, it wasn’t too hard to understand why people were hoarding the stuff. Although buying a warehouse’s worth of TP would prove unnecessary in terms of pure human physiology, the behavior still offered a degree of psychological comfort. In crisis, under high-stress conditions, people take the action they can understand and accomplish with the resources available. In those first crucial weeks of the crisis, few of us knew how long to prepare for—a week, a month, more? And even after that time, would the stores be restocked, or even open? The one certainty was that we would need toilet paper. And so if it was on the shelf, people took it. In bathroom tissue, at the very least, many of us found a measure of control. The perforated sheets became a lifeline.

In the ensuing media frenzy, however, we may have missed something important. Toilet paper was the most visible stress purchase of the early COVID era, but it wasn’t alone. There was another type of pandemic purchase many people made, seemingly from the same set of impulses: certain types of consumer technology.

My colleagues at the MIT AgeLab are conducting an ongoing study into how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting public attitudes and behaviors. The first set of findings, based on a national Qualtrics survey of 1,202 cases that fielded March 17-19 (that is, right in the thick of those uncertain early weeks) included a dive into new technology purchases. The results showed a variety of smart home technologies likely purchased, as with panic-bought toilet paper, as a salve for COVID-19-related worries.

How worried are you about COVID-19 in general?

In our survey, people who purchased technology in response to COVID-19 were significantly more worried about the outbreak than their counterparts who didn’t make such purchases. Across all generations, the most popular COVID-era tech purchases were entertainment and streaming services, followed by smart speakers—presumably acquired in anticipation of a long stretch of boredom at home. However, when we broke the results down by respondents’ age, we began to see a new set of trends. Gen X’ers—that is, respondents 40 to 55 years old—stood out.

Technology adoption by generation in response to COVID-19

Like the other generations surveyed, Gen X certainly reported buying entertainment and smart speakers, but they were more likely than the others to purchase security technologies, including keyless door entry devices, wireless door cameras, and home security systems. These middle-aged consumers turned to technology not only as a way of remaining entertained and connected, but also as a means to manage one of the most basic of human needs: safety.

Which makes sense: many Gen X’ers have a lot to protect, and little time or energy to spare protecting it. To such consumers, any smart-seeming tool that offers even a marginal boost in terms of safety and security is worth exploring. This generation is in its prime caregiving years, frequently responsible for the care not only of children but also aging parents. While caregiving is an act of love, it is also stressful. Balancing competing work, family, life, and care demands, as well as 24/7 concern for a loved one, can equate to a considerable baseline of stress. To add to it, older X’ers are beginning to focus on retirement planning, which becomes more pressing with every passing year.

With any consumer technology, for any generation, the question is always, “Is it worth it?” That is to say: Is it worth not just my money, but the energy involved in mastering a new piece of tech?

Today, at a historically stressful moment, Gen X’ers are disproportionately saying “yes”: new technologies are worth the investment. That’s a reasonable indication that they will continue to adopt useful technologies at critical moments in their lives moving forward. For technology developers and service providers targeting caregiving and independent living in retirement, this should come as a motivating sign. Gen X may serve as the leading edge of a wave of consumers that will age into retirement carrying a new value relationship with technology, eager to apply it to problems as they emerge.

If so, it may be time to slide the toilet paper over and make room in that shopping cart.

This article was written by Joseph Coughlin from Forbes and was legally licensed by AdvisorStream through the NewsCred publisher network.