Paper short abstract:

This paper aims to analyse how the premature ageing of digital devices influences social conceptions and experiences of old age. Drawing on fieldwork conducted on Spanish coasts, we observe the mutual construction of oldness between British expatriate retirees and digital devices.

Paper long abstract:

This paper aims to analyse how the premature ageing of digital devices, understood as other-than-human actors that participate in the shaping of daily life, influences social conceptions and experiences of old age. The study will focus on the experiences of a group of British expatriate retirees living on Spanish coasts, specifically Costa Brava and Costa del Sol. These individuals, due to their situational, material, and sociocultural conditions, rely on digital devices to fulfil various needs related to their retirement and ageing project abroad; such as communicating with family, consuming content from their home country, seeking information about their host country, and communicating within their communities, among others. In the current epoch of capitalism, characterised by the productivity and consumerism of the digital era, devices are purposely "designed to break" (Bisschop, Hendlin, Jaspers: 2022). Planned obsolescence, as a corporate business policy, causes these devices to transition from being considered "new" – or “young” – to being seen as "old" in a very short period of time. Drawing on Bruno Latour's actor-network theory (2005), we will analyse how the premature ageing of these digital devices, understood as other-than-human actors in a network of social relations, contributes to the social construction of old age (Degnen: 2007 and 2012) and, consequently, to the intersubjective experiences of old age among British expatriate retirees.