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Short abstract:

This paper explores how older (non)users of digital technologies remain the epitome of the “other” in Western digitized societies. We show how discourses and practices of digital inclusion in France reinforces the otherness of this public, who is both omnipresent and invisibilized.

Long abstract:

This paper proposes to study the relationships between aging and digital technologies, by showing how, despite the increasing Internet usage rates among older adults, they remain in discourse and in practices like the “others” par excellence of digitalized societies. Based on a study researching online violence experienced by older adults in France, we will explore the way in which the figure of elderly users is both invisiblized and omnipresent in the making of digital inclusion. Just like those of the youngest generations, digital uses of the oldest are thought of as needing to be supervised from a paternalistic prism, according to standards prescribed by the “non-others” - that is to say the middle-aged adults. While young people are an explicitly identified public whose digital education is carried out in a structured manner within school, older people are less often the subject of specific measures. The French digital inclusion policies implemented in recent years are aimed at all people concerned by the digital divide, but the majority of the users of these services are elderly people, and particularly isolated senior women. However, professionals are not always trained to cater to the specific needs of this public, which remains “unthought of”. These negative representations and practices of the digital uses of older people have performative effects: a poor self-image and a fear of tools can slow down the development of uses and reinforce exclusion, particularly in a context where elders, unlike other socially marginalized groups, are rarely mobilized politically on these issues.