IN3's Care and Preparedness in the Network Society (CareNet) and Communication Networks & Social Change (CNSC) research groups are pleased to invite you to the presentation of the results of the European project "At Home and Connected: Digital Technologies and Old Age" (BCONNECT@HOME).
The project, funded through the Joint Programming Initiative More Years, Better Lives: "Ageing and place in a digitizing world", combines the work of researchers from universities in different countries, namely Utrecht University (Netherlands), the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm (Sweden), Trent University (Canada) and the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (Spain).
The Universitat Oberta de Catalunya is represented by researchers from the IN3 groups Care and Preparedness in the Network Society (CareNet) and Communication Networks & Social Change (CNSC).
Venue
Online
When
12/05/2021 12.00h
Organized by
Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, IN3's CareNet and CNSC research groups
Program
The findings will be presented in two independent webinars which will set out the results of the two subprojects developed by Care and Preparedness in the Network Society (CareNet) and Communication Networks & Social Change (CNSC).
This second webinar, which will be held on Wednesday 12 May from 12 noon to 2 p.m. (CEST), will discuss the results of the subproject "Smartphones, Social Life and Connectivity".
Speakers
Mireia Fernández-Ardèvol (director and researcher) and Andrea Rosales (researcher and Coordinator of the group's "Societies" research area) from the Communication Networks & Social Change (CNSC) research group.
Summary
Mobile phones, which are still primarily associated with youth culture, are part of daily life for people of all ages. The study of smartphones is therefore appropriate in that they are a relevant – often the most relevant – dimension of the digital life of elderly people.
Over a one-month period, we analysed the smartphone activity of 430 participants in four countries: Canada, Spain, the Netherlands, and Sweden. We studied people between the ages of 55 and 79, which allowed us to include the transition to retirement, although it did exclude the more senior population. We contextualized the collected data (1.3 million valid records for almost 3,800 different apps) with a survey (430 responses) and semi-structured interview (with 60 participants).
The combined sources reveal that social connectivity is not directly correlated with intensive smartphone use. In other words, a more intensive use does not result in greater quality of life, which raises questions about the techno-deterministic approaches commonplace in digital industry.
The results reinforce two ideas. Firstly, they underline the need for an analysis of the digital life of the older population that considers the diversity typical of this stage of life. And secondly, that digital life in old age is not only diverse but also has different characteristics to those of other age groups and, hence, requires further study. Lastly, we must consider the biases in digital studies affecting the tendency to render people aged 75 or older invisible. For instance, many online data collection companies consider them to be of little interest to their customers.