This project proposes a radical digital gerontology which embraces the full diversity of older adults, values their experiences and perspectives, and investigates structural contributors to their marginalisation in digital society. To fully unpack the category of older adult stakeholders, we will view older adult inclusion through three lenses, examining their complex inter-relationships.
Interaction lens
There are continuing concerns regarding the accessibility of digital technologies for older adults. However, Human-Computer Interaction’s narrow focus on accessibility can harm older adults by perpetuating negative stereotypes of ageing as a process of decline. Failing to recognise objections to digital technologies as rooted in structural barriers and moral quandaries (rather than purely relating to usability issues) can result in designs that fail to address the needs and wants of older adults, thereby disincentivising digital uptake. This perpetuates the fallacy that older adults are resistant to digital technologies in principle, justifying reduced investment in developing tools for older users and contributing to their marginalisation within the digital economy.
Social Justice lens
This lens looks at the highly stratified way that knowledge, skills and resources are accumulated across the lifecourse, and how this cumulative dis/advantage may impact on older adults’ ability and desire to take up technologies later in life. Drawing on Crenshaw’s seminal work[1], we will take an intersectional lifecourse approach. This will involve examining not just how sociodemographic characteristics such as gender, ethnicity, and social class may individually shape the knowledge, skills, and resources available to older adults, but also how multiple axes of social marginalisation can interact to produce multiplicative disadvantage. Importantly, because older adults can reflect on decades of experiences, we will consider how this process may be compounded across the lifecourse (rather than taking a narrower cross-sectional snapshot of intersectional processes and dis/advantage).
Ageing lens
To account for the various factors that lead to diverse experiences of older adulthood, we will interrogate the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) dataset, a large population-based multidisciplinary observational cohort study which was established in 2002. More than 10,000 men and women aged 50 and older have been reassessed every two years since then, with the latest data collection in 2021. ELSA has been monitoring the use of digital technology and the internet since 2002 and this information can be linked with extensive data on socioeconomic position, economic circumstances, health, social factors and wellbeing.
[1] Crenshaw, K. (1990). Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. Stan. L. Rev., 43, 1241.