This document discusses different types of senior citizens in terms of their use of technology: - Resisters have never learned to use IT and do not want to, citing personal attitudes and identity as barriers. - Excluded citizens would like to learn but feel excluded due to lack of suitable teaching and knowledge of disabilities. - Rejecters have learned but prefer human contact and have no need for email, instead seeing technology as just another tool like a typewriter. - Expelled citizens previously learned but no longer have access due to issues like illness or economy. The conclusion calls for tailored learning environments, government resources for telecenters, and further study on motivating resistors.

1. Users and Non-users: The Digital
Divide among Senior Citizens
Professor Birgit Jæger
Dep. of Society and Globalisation
Roskilde University

2. Learning Environment
• Pedagogic of understanding
• Taking point of departure in the old
participants
• Equality
• Helping teachers
• Repetition and speed
• Workshops
• Support

3. Non- and ex-users
Non-users
Voluntary
situation
Ex-users
Resisters
Rejecters
Forced situation Excluded
Expelled

4. Resisters
• Have never learned how to utilize IT –
and do not want to
• Barriers:
• Personal attitudes
• Identity
• Lack of education and knowledge skills

5. Yes – it doesn’t interest me in the
least… there is no way that I feel like
it… that’s just the way it is – and I
don’t have any use for it, so it would
just be for the sake of entertainment.
Interviewer: Well, you could easily
manage your daily routine without it
and…
- I have been able to do so all my life.

6. Excluded
• Would like to learn how to utilize IT but
feel excluded
• Barriers:
• Social structures
• Lack of suitable teaching
• Lack of knowledge about how to
compensate for disability

7. Rejecters
• Have learned how to utilize IT but do not
want to
• Barriers:
• Interpretation of technology
• Lack of rules
• Identity

8. Yes – I have tried it, and I was also easily able to
figure it out. But I must admit that I prefer human
contact. I just don’t feel like sitting there and
staring into a screen…
I don’t really have any use for e-mail – we don’t
know anyone … in Timbuktu. And so – I would
rather talk with the people I am communicating
with than sit there and write on a computer…
What I use it for – have just used it for – is that I
study history and have to make a presentation
about King Frederik VI. So I write on the
computer, but that is just like writing on a
typewriter. I mean – it isn’t really very computerlike.

9. Expelled
• Have learned how to utilize IT but have
no longer access
• Barriers:
• Illness
• Economy
• Space

10. Conclusion
• It is possible to overcome the digital divide based on
age
• However, it requires the establishment of some
learning environments where the training is tailored
to aging people
• This requires resources. Hence, the government has
to take responsibility and support with resources to
the establishment of telecentres across the country
• Finally, the question of how to motivate the people
who resist using ICT needs further investigation

11. Thank you
for your
attention!