The Effect of Ageism on Risky Behaviors of Young People Related to Social Distancing Rules: An Anonymous Online Program Proposal to Raise Bias Awareness

In the project, an intervention program was prepared and tested, aiming to increase the awareness of youth around the age of 18 about ageism bias, by seeing that different individuals in the society have similar needs and by approaching the pandemic phenomenon holistically. This testing was done through group work on a completely anonymous online platform, each of which was expected to develop a solution proposal. The findings show that our program, which does not include any direct information or application about ageism, has a significant effect on reducing the tendencies of "hostile ageism" and "implicit ageism". On the other hand, similar effects were observed in the focus group studies, which were conducted on an anonymous online platform and this time focused on the theme of developing proposals for the promotion of our country's cultural and geographical richness to the world. In this control condition, which aims to trigger the participants to classify themselves in the "Turkish citizen" category, decreases in the levels of hostile and implicit ageism were also detected. Although it was unexpected that these programs, which are planned to activate two different self-classifications, produce equivalent effects, it is a promising finding that they have a reducing effect on the wearing forms of aging. Another important finding is that the anonymous online platform can generate a very high level of "social presence" in both program types. Thus, it can be argued that the use of such anonymous platforms for young people to raise awareness about ageism and similar prejudices will produce benefits equivalent to face-to-face group work. It is thought that the online platform prototype developed in the project makes it possible for young people living in different regions of our country with different social identities to come together for a purpose, creating important opportunities both during the pandemic process and normalization periods. It has been observed that such a platform enables young people in secondary and higher education institutions to work together and exchange views online without getting bored, in line with common project goals, regardless of their identity concerns. It is thought that the program developed within the scope of the project, which we believe has value in raising awareness of prejudices against other groups (for example, the disabled, immigrants, refugees), will provide a useful content and framework for such intervention studies.