EPALE - Electronic Platform for Adult Learning in Europe

In today’s World, there is not much things to the without technology and internet. When we think about the social life that many sectors from financial to health can be followed through digital platforms of governments. So, digital inclusion is a requirement for the citizens of the most of the countries. The people, who do not accept or cannot use this digital world (in other words, voluntarily or involuntarily  are out of this digital world) may probably suffer being outside the society. And unfortunately, one of the groups who has disadvantages on this issue is old people.

In 21^st century, old people  who were born before 1980s met the digital world in late of their lives. Results of this fact, they cannot adapt to use digital world easily. Martinez-Alcala et al. (2018) state “This population's digital skills are minimal, since they are not included in the new interaction environment that marks current technological breakthrough.”(p.2).

As a result of  Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), global communication and economic progression make governments to invest much more money for e-government services.  Chohan and Hu (2022) state that to be successful and reach the aim of these services, e-government programs should be designed to cultivate citizens with ICT skills. Betts, Hill, and Gardner’s (2019) interpretative phenomenological research study results also support the need of training programs in that most of the older people are interested in gaining more dijital skills through personalized one-to-one learning.

McCosker, Critchley, Walshe, Tucker, Jand Suchowerska’s two time-point survey study (2021) with 337 older people who attended digital inclusion programme showed that “Programme outcomes were far from uniform, reflecting diverse motivations, lifecourse experiences, needs and capabilities among older adults, countering much existing research that tends to elide those differences.” In other words, each older have different life experiences, needs and capabilities, so for effectiveness, the training programmes should center their needs.

In sum, as society, we should provide trainings for older people to include them our digital life since most of the services can be reached through e-services. Especially, in Covid-19 closure terms, they are really suffering to meet their needs because they cannot use digital technologies effectively. And, these programmes should really center their needs and capabilities instead of uniform content presentation.

References

Betts, L. R., Hill, R., & Gardner, S. E. (2019). “There’s not enough knowledge out there”: Examining older adults’ perceptions of digital technology use and digital inclusion classes. Journal of Applied Gerontology, 38(8), 1147-1166.

Chohan, S. R., & Hu, G. (2022). Strengthening digital inclusion through e-government: cohesive ICT training programs to intensify digital competency. Information Technology for Development, 28(1), 16-38.

McCosker, A., Critchley, C., Walshe, J., Tucker, J., & Suchowerska, R. (2021). Accounting for diversity in older adults’ digital inclusion and literacy: the impact of a national intervention. Ageing & Society, 1-21.

Martínez-Alcalá, C. I., Rosales-Lagarde, A., Alonso-Lavernia, M. D. L. Á., Ramírez-Salvador, J. Á., Jiménez-Rodríguez, B., Cepeda-Rebollar, R. M., ... & Agis-Juárez, R. A. (2018). Digital inclusion in older adults: A comparison between face-to-face and blended digital literacy workshops. Frontiers in ICT, 5(21). doi: 10.3389/fict.2018.00021