ABSTRACT

The chapter reviews the literature on older people and new communication technologies, focusing particularly on their experiences with personal computers and the Internet. The review covers the scholarly literature published primarily between 1990 and 2010. We organize the review around a series of narratives identified as prominent in the literature. Three master narratives dominate the ways in which the relationships between older people and computers have been represented: the enabling machine and isolated elders, the potential divider and marginalized seniors, and the desirable commodity and grey consumers.