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!