Paper short abstract:

The paper addresses the impacts of digitalization at later age. While technologies seem to provide cost-efficient services, it also creates gaps which are mended by solidarity of family and community networks thus becoming a crucial factor for bridging between technology and care.

Paper long abstract:

The paper explores Latvian older population living at the intersection of digital transformation of space and services and age-related needs. One of the consequences of COVID era was a rapid digitalization and centralization of public services, coupled with the EU-wide financial investment in digital transformation. Based on national policy review and participatory research in two locations, I argue that digitalization has influenced not only life opportunities for older generation but has contributed to the very perception of older age as digitally amendable and thus potentially productive period of life. Technologies and remote modes of access become the main means and tools for organizing public life and constructing policies, often disregarding real life experiences and needs of older people as well as likening ageing processes in people with those in technology, knowledge, and infrastructure. Data obtained with the help of our older co-researchers show how they and interlocutors adapt to the changing environment, using both mutual care networks and technologies to mend the gaps in availability of services and in their abilities to use the new digital technologies. Thus, the success of digital transformation paradoxically depends upon informal social solidarity and care networks in the community, while at the formal level efficiency of public services is achieved by the very replacement of formal social networks with digital technologies.