Have you been a laggard, innovator or both during the pandemic?

It's been over a year since the Covid-19 pandemic has taken the world by storm. While other countries have seemed to combat Covid-19 quickly, the United States has struggled to keep the case numbers going in a steadily downward direction. Covid-19 has forced us to change life as we knew it and change it into something completely different. The face I once could recognize out of a crowd of hundreds of people has somehow become masked and a distant memory of what once was. The pandemic has made communication with one another harder because majority of people are masked and distanced at all times. But does everyone follow the rules? Was everyone willing to change life as they knew it to help combat an unknown virus? This week in COM 6610 we discussed and explored Dr. Everette Roger's Diffusion of Innovation Theory. The Diffusion of Innovations Theory seeks to understand and help explain the way new ideas and technology advance. Has the Covid-19 pandemic caused you to become a laggard, innovator, or do you find yourself somewhere in between the two? If you can't answer that question now, don't worry, you will be able to at the end of this blog. 

 The Diffusion of Innovations Theory seeks to understand and help explain the way new ideas and technology advance. This theory categorizes adopters into five categories. The five categories are innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards.  

• Innovators are invested and willing to try new concepts, ideas and technology. Their advocates for change but only make up about 2.5% of the population. 
• Early adopters are individuals who provide their opinions and feedback on new innovations and they make up about 13.5% of the population. 
• The early majority are individuals who would be considered to social butterflies. They are willing to try new ideas and concepts but they want them to be proven effective and they make up 34% of the population. 
• The late majority are individuals who adopt and try new ideas later than someone. Normally the late majority don't adopt new ideas and concepts because they want to, but because they feel pressured too, they also make up about 34% of the population. 
• Lastly, laggards are older and more tradition oriented. Laggards aren't advocates for change and don't tend to adapt well to change. 

Now that that's out of the way let's compare it to the Covid-19 pandemic. During the pandemic there have been instances where we possibly could have fallen into each of these categories. When the pandemic first hit last march we didn't know what to expect. Millions of people were getting sick and others were dying at an extremely face pace. So many health professionals were telling us different things to do to stop the spread such as social distancing, wearing masks, washing our hands, not being in large groups and so much more. Our favorite restaurants were suddenly not allowing individuals inside, shopping became an all day affair, seeing grandma and grandpa became non existent, non essential services were closed and the world as we knew it changed in the blink of an eye. 

For some of us, it wasn't hard to adapt to this new normal because we believed that as long as we did what the health professionals told us to do, the pandemic wouldn't last long. For others it wasn't that simple and that's understandable. Making it mandatory for individuals to wear masks and social distance was hard to enforce on a lot of people. Some people don't believe the virus is real, others believe that wearing a mask won't help stop the spread. There are many people who were quick to try and adopt the new way of living. Others were hesitant and stuck in what they believe would work and what wouldn't. Those who adapted quickly to change during the pandemic would fall into the categories of innovators early adopters and early majority. Those who were skeptical about the pandemic ,masks and social distancing but eventually came around would fall into the category of the late majority. Those who didn't want to adopt this new idea of living would fall into the category of laggards. Even a year later some of these people only wear masks because their mandatory to get into certain places. We can also compare this theory to the Covid-19 vaccine. The nurses and doctors who willingly took the first doses of the vaccine would be considered to be innovators or the "guinea pigs" of this "experiment". Those who willingly took the vaccine as soon as they were offered would fall into the category of early adopters. Those who took the vaccine after it generated enough buzz. The late majority are individuals who took the vaccine once other people around them received it and they realized that they were okay. Lastly, laggards are those who refuse to take the vaccine because they don't believe that it's going to make them immune to the virus.

Sometimes I wonder how different the outcome of the pandemic would have been if we all adapted to change quickly. Do you have these same thoughts sometimes?  What category do you believe you fall into? Let me know in the comments! I believe that I fall into the category of the early adopters and early majority. 

See you all online next week, 

Makayla Cameron