ABSTRACT
The goal of this chapter is to explore and understand how older adults cope with everyday life in a culture of connectivity. It departs from the idea that both cultural and structural forms of ageism are embedded in digital technologies and their ideological underpinnings. Older adults are often portrayed as digitally illiterate or technophobic. The empirical material consists of six focus group interviews (4–6 people each) conducted in Sweden with 30 older non- and seldom-users of ICT between the ages of 68 and 88. The study employs a discourse analytical approach where focus group interviews are considered a source of the normative, dominant discourses pertaining to digitalisation and technology (non-)use. The analysis shows that there are at least three discursive ways of navigating the digital reality of an (ageist) connectivity culture. First, it is by discursively employing self-ageism built on the notion that older adults and “new” technologies do not go hand in hand. Second, it is by discursively employing the “we/them” category based primarily on age, namely between “us” the older people and “them”, the youth. Third, navigating the culture of connectivity implies discursive distancing from, at least, some of the stereotypical representations of older adults and digital technologies, particularly those based on the assumptions that older adults are more prone to online scamming as compared with other social groups and categories. Consequently, for older people, ageing in the culture of connectivity implies the daily practice of navigating and negotiating the meaning of their relationship with digital technologies and the norms and values that come with it. Finally, the chapter suggests that ageing with this culture also implies living with digital ageism.
