Unsustainable trajectories of domestic information technology use in Australia: Exploring diversity and the life course

Abstract

Current trajectories of the proliferation and use of information technology (IT) in households present an example of rapid socio‐technical change in an unsustainable direction. We document patterns in the proliferation, use and accumulation of IT in households in Australia, drawing on data from an online national survey (N = 1,475) and qualitative interviews conducted during 2015 and 2016 (N = 36, with participants from three cities and one regional town). We identified cohorts of IT users who shared specific use practices and found that age, life course and income were important for defining and understanding these cohorts. IT practices change with life course transitions, such as children moving through the education system. Practices may be linked with changes in residence and income, and provide opportunities for interventions at such times when both technology and its use are changing anyway. The most concerning development was the use of multiple devices simultaneously, particularly when this included live streaming of high‐resolution video and audio. This practice is increasing in households with teenagers and young adults, and is likely, if unchecked, to become a significant driver of energy demand. We conclude by reflecting on the implications of our findings for (1) influencing current unsustainable trajectories of IT use into the future and (2) conceptualising the agency of householders in socio‐technical change involving fast‐changing technologies. There is an increasing research focus on the multiplicity of transition pathways, but a focus on the life course can, we argue, bring a new and important dimension to this understanding.

Aging, Every-day Information and Technology Use

“…Older adults have also been observed to have different reasons for using technologies than younger ones (Birkland, 2019), and different ways of using them (e.g. Lane et al, 2018). Older persons have been found to use less technology for accessing information, use less internet and email, fewer devices (Lane et al, 2018), and in general, use technology less often than younger ones, even if technology use is increasing in all generations (Vogels, 2019).…”

“…When seeking their ways to live their lives, younger individuals are exposed to a relatively large extent to a broad variety of both technical and social technologies whereas older individuals tend to have settled their lives around a certain established technology base. Older people might own fewer devices (Lane et al, 2018), have trouble using them (Benselin & Ragsdell, 2016) and consider it unnecessary to start using new technologies because it would be more 'trouble than worth ' (Wandke et al, 2012) whereas the younger individuals who lack a similar infrastructure, are in an opposite situation. They might have more exposure to contemporary technologies gained while trying to find ways to live their lives, but at the same time, they have had in comparable terms less exposure to everyday-life related issues, might have more problems with information literacy (Benselin & Ragsdell, 2016), less life-experience (Cooper, 2002), information and knowledge to relate to (Sheldrick Ross, 1999) and to help to solve them in their life-context (Savolainen, 1995).…”

“…Age is often pointed out as a factor that affects both how people use information and information technologies (e.g. Blaschke et al, 2009;Nicholas et al, 2011;Lane et al, 2018;Agosto, 2020). Even if many of the observations on age-related differences can be explained by changes in cognitive and physical abilities, experience and life situations, the findings have been in many respects inconclusive.…”

‘Small stories of closing loops’: social circularity and the everyday circular economy

“…The internal components ('skeleton' and 'guts') are, by contrast, leased and need to be returned regularly by the participant to a convenient high street drop-off point for rapid recycling and upgrading. The rationale here is that-given the rapid growth in the purchase and disposal of consumer electronics (see Lane et al 2018)-this SPSS captures some of the precious resources inside mobile phones, often lost from value chains due to inadequate postuse disposal or long-term 'hibernation' (see Wilson et al 2017).…”

The Impact of Information Technology on Information System Effectiveness in Jordanian Telecommunication Companies

“…Databases: a container of all stored, structured, and registered data and files on the computers, these files are the raw material that is processed, updated and retrieved to obtain accurate information easily (Yang et al, 2018). Lane et al (2018) indicate the databases as the collection of logical elements and data linked to each other with mathematical relationships, which stored in the computer system to facilitate handling, searching, adding and modifying them. 5.…”