Who Actually Becomes a Silver Surfer? Prerequisites for Digital Inclusion

Abstract

The notion of silver surfers has been recurring in research for two decades. It often refers to elderly skilled and affluent users of digital media. Departing from domestication theory, and drawing on the concept of online repertoires, this article sets out to offer critical insights into what it actually takes, sociologically speaking, to become a silver surfer. The analysis starts from a set of interviews with 19 respondents (66-82 years) covering appropriation and incorporation of digital media and online repertoires. Based on insights from interview data, we turn to a quantitative analysis of a national postal survey (Swedish). In these data (N = 1,264), we first filter out the silver surfers and then perform a logistic regression analysis in order to investigate the factors that promote the status of being a silver surfer. Our analysis shows that only 19% of the sample could be categorised as silver surfers. It further reveals the important influence of factors such as age, income, interest and self-efficacy in particular. Silver surfers are a privileged group. However, contemporary ICT policy tends to assume that they are representative of senior users in general. Thus, there is a significant risk that current policy objectives will be misdirected. KEYWORDS silver surfer; ICTs; digital inclusion; domestication; online repertoires; mixed methods; ageing population This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Perspektiv på utsatthet och problem under åldrandet

“…Bland personer över 65 år är variationerna stora. Å ena sidan finns det så kallade silversurfare (Cody et al 1999): äldre individer vars användningspraktiker och apparatinnehav liknar yngres, och som nyttjar sina digitala medier frekvent och på ett kunnigt och allsidigt sätt (Olsson & Viscovi 2020). Å andra sidan finns sällananvändare, som med sina fåtaliga digitala medier endast utför enklare saker och bara använder dem någon gång i veckan (Hammarstedt & Viscovi 2019).…”

“…Det är främst resursstarka individer under 75 år, med både smarttelefon, surfplatta och PC, som är högfrekventa och allsidiga användare och som kan hantera alltifrån bank-och myndighetsärenden till sociala medier och parkeringsappar. Och omvänt: individer över 75, med mindre resurser och färre apparater, är vanligare bland sällananvändarna (Lüders et al 2017;Olsson & Viscovi 2020).…”

A Divided Old Age through Research on Digital Technologies

“…Most importantly, the use of digital technologies among older people is unequally distributed. Some groups of older people do not use digital technologies or use digital technologies significantly less or more poorly than others and are therefore excluded from a digital society (Eurostat, 2017;König, Seifert and Doh, 2018;Olsson, Samuelsson and Viscovi, 2017;Olsson and Viscovi, 2020;Pirhonen et al, 2020). Several studies investigated factors associated with non-use and low use of digital technologies among older people and described mechanisms which enable poor digital engagement by some groups of older people.…”

“…Older people are one of the main user groups of healthcare services (Robinson et al, 2015;Terraneo, 2015) and, thus, largely affected by a digital shift in healthcare. However, the use of digital technologies is unequally distributed among them (König, Seifert and Doh, 2018;OECD, 2017a;Olsson and Viscovi, 2020). This holds true even in notoriously more digitally advanced countries, according to the European Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI) (European Commission, 2020a;Olsson and Viscovi, 2020).…”

“…However, the use of digital technologies is unequally distributed among them (König, Seifert and Doh, 2018;OECD, 2017a;Olsson and Viscovi, 2020). This holds true even in notoriously more digitally advanced countries, according to the European Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI) (European Commission, 2020a;Olsson and Viscovi, 2020). Use and non-use are reported to be structured along the lines of social position.…”