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Paper short abstract

Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Shanghai, this paper examines how older adults use gamified money-earning apps to negotiate “good work,” financial autonomy, and moral value. It shows how small app-based earnings support financial independence while producing invisible data labor for platforms.

Paper long abstract

As platforms increasingly shape what counts as “good work,” this paper examines how older adults in urban China negotiate autonomy and moral value through their everyday use of gamified money-earning apps. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Shanghai, I analyze how activities such as watching videos, reading novels, walking, and completing daily “check-ins” allow older users to accumulate small monetary rewards that can be withdrawn through digital wallets like Alipay or WeChat wallet. Although limited in amount, these earnings carry symbolic and practical significance in a context where older adults are largely excluded from formal labor markets and often made economically invisible.

I show that platform participation is closely linked to experiences of financial autonomy and moral self-worth. For some participants, app-based earnings enable small everyday purchases without relying on money transfers from family members, allowing greater independence in economic decision-making. At the same time, these practices are rarely described as “work.” Instead, older adults take them as leisure, “killing time,” or “earning a little extra,” revealing how platform infrastructures reorganize productivity without producing stable labor identities. These dynamics are further shaped by discourses of “productive aging,” in which digital activity becomes a moral sign of vitality and usefulness.

I conceptualize these practices as situated data work. Older adults’ everyday activities contribute to platform value creation but remain weakly recognized as legitimate labor. This paper contributes to debates on “good work” by examining how autonomy, deservingness, and ethical value are negotiated through everyday encounters with digital infrastructures.