Older adults face significant barriers when accessing the Internet. What can be done to address these barriers? This article analyses existing strategies to tackle the age-related digital divide on three different levels: research, policy and practice. It analyses (1) scientific conceptualisations that are used when studying Internet use and non-use in later life, (2) policies that address older adults’ Internet (non-)use in Austria and (3) characteristics of older Austrian non-users of the Internet based on the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE, wave 6). Analysis shows that Austrian policy tends to emphasise the individual responsibility to learn digital technologies, while placing a lower priority on structural issues, such as investments in infrastructure. However, SHARE data shows that only a small percentage of older non-users of the Internet is in fact reached with such interventions. Thus, this article suggests that policy needs to base its strategies on more refined understandings of Internet use and non-use in later life as well as a more nuanced image of the older non-user. A perspective of critical-cultural gerontology, as laid out in this article, highlights that technology adoption is a domestication process that takes place in the everyday lives of older adults, and it is these processes that interventions that tackle the age-related digital divide should take as a starting point.

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Studies exploring digital technology in the context of leisure for older people tend to neglect their parallel use of traditional media. By simultaneous examination of both online and offline recreational media use, the present study explores media-based leisure repertoires and wellbeing among older Internet users. Data were collected via a survey of 10,527 Internet users aged 60 and up from seven countries (Austria, Canada, Denmark, Israel, the Netherlands, Romania, Spain). Analysis examined participants' media use and differences among people with disparate use patterns. The study identified four groups of Internet users according to the media-based leisure activities they engaged in: innovative traditionalists, entertainment seekers, selective content consumers, and eclectic media users. The groups differed in their activity repertoires, background characteristics, and leisure preferences. Being an eclectic media user (i.e., relatively less selective) was significantly associated with lower life satisfaction. Results indicate an advantage to selectivity in media use for leisure and confirm that participation in certain activities may compensate somewhat for distressing conditions in old age. They also suggest diminished boundaries between offline and online leisure among older Internet users and call for further development of the functional approach to Internet use in later life.

Digital technologies have gained vast relevance in postmodern societies and digital infrastructures are substantially integrated into the everyday lives of older people. This digitization is reframing the norms and practices of later life as well as the social construct of age itself. Despite the increasing amount of studies in the field of aging and technologies, it still lacks theorizing. This paper addresses this deficit, suggesting that the study of aging and technologies could profit from a comprehensive integration of theories from the sociology of aging, critical gerontology, and science-and-technology studies. We aim to make a theoretical contribution to this issue, asking: how is age being done in a digitized world? Applying a praxeological approach to aging and technologies, we firstly examine how theoretical and empirical work has constructed aging with technologies so far and identify its shortcomings. Some of this work so far lacks a proper consideration of social inequalities within these processes, whereas other studies lack a thorough consideration of materialities. Secondly, in an attempt to equally "praxeologize" and "materialize" the study of aging and technologies we develop a theoretical model that aims to overcome these shortcomings. In what we frame as a material praxeology of aging with technology, we are concerned with how age is being done through discursive formations, set into practice through social and material practices and involved in the (re)production of social inequalities. Enriching a Bordieuan terminology of social fields with notions of non-human agency, this praxeology is founded on three assumptions: (1) Social fields constitute the contexts in which age as a social phenomenon is being done with and through technologies (2) Human and non-human agents are equally involved in this process (3) The actions of the involved agents emerge from an agency distributed among them, and are structured through the power relations between them. Thirdly, we exemplify the application of this model by reference to a research project in the field of Active and Assistive Living.

BACKGROUNDHealth authorities and governments worldwide label older adults as a "risk group" for more serious and possibly fatal illness associated with SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) (1). Those older adults living in long-term care (LTC) are considered especially prone to more serious and fatal disease following a COVID-19 infection (2). Consequently, measures requiring LTC residents to shelter in place and maintain physical distancing from others have been enacted in many countries during the pandemic. However, these measures make this group particularly prone to isolation, especially because the measures have prevented family members from visiting nursing homes for several months. Researchers have posed concerns that these particularly strict measures are likely to enhance feelings of loneliness and isolation in LTC residents (3).The use of digital technologies by LTC residents has been painted as a hopeful alternative to face-to-face contact during the COVID-19 pandemic. Several digital solutions have been suggested to decrease the social isolation of older adults, such as Skype, FaceTime, or Zoom, which allow LTC residents and their families to interact virtually (3). Indeed, the use of information and communication technologies (ICT), such as the Internet, offers many benefits (4) for older adults living in nursing homes who wish to stay in contact with others while following COVID-19 social distancing measures. The Internet has particularly been shown to play an important role in distance-based social contact during the coronavirus pandemic (5).Although ICT use might help older adults maintain social interaction, LTC residents may also feel socially excluded because they lack the necessary skills and equipment to be included in the digital society (6, 7). Studies have shown that nursing home residents are less likely than community-dwelling older people to take advantage of the opportunities provided by modern ICT (8) for the following reasons: they might (a) opt not to use the Internet, (b) live in an environment where Internet access is not available, (c) not have sufficient support from inside or outside their nursing homes, and (d) have physical or cognitive limitations that limit or prevent ICT use without assistance (9, 10). Furthermore, when nursing homes isolate their residents from outside contact, they may prevent individuals from ICT support from outside the facilities. Thus, the tremendous barriers to ICT use in nursing homes are not likely to be handle everywhere during the pandemic, when LTC systems are under a considerable amount of general pressure with coping the current pandemic.This opinion article investigates and discusses the evidence for a "digital push" in LTC during the COVID-19 pandemic by referring to data regarding Internet use from 259 nursing home residents.