Abstract:

Nowadays, digital technologies, particularly health and wellbeing assistive devices and service solutions, are expected to permit ageing people to live independently in their homes longer (see e.g. Niehaves & Plattfaut 2014) and to increase essentially their quality of life by compression of morbidity, reducing social isolation and hospitalisations, and hence, to lower health and social care costs. Innovative digital technologies are also expected to bring new opportunities for improving quality of the municipality-based social welfare and health care services and creating socially supportive and age-friendly living environments that enable people to enjoy longer, healthier and more independent lives from an early age up to seniority and being included in the community. However, in order to achieve these positive expectations, it is necessary that ageing people are able to use digital technology properly. If there are shortcomings in digital technology usage capabilities, there is danger that these people will be unable to reach and to use several important social and healthcare services.

In this paper, we aim to identify potential learning barriers of ageing people in usage of digital technologies to support their everyday life, and furthermore, propose solutions to overcome these potential barriers. We have carried out an empirical study among ageing people in Finland with qualitative research methods. Our empirical data includes over 50 qualitative interviews of ageing people between 55 to 90 years old about their daily technology usage, learning methods of new technologies and their aspirations on digital technology.

Keywords:

Learning barriers, digital technology, ageing people, qualitative study.