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Short abstract

Smart technologies in care homes aim to support older residents, but ethnographic research shows many avoid or work around them. Some technologies even increase dependence on staff. The study highlights challenges of ageing, digital exclusion, and the work involved of bypassing unwanted tech.

Long abstract

In Norway, as in many parts of the world, society is increasingly becoming digitalized. This is also so in care homes for older people, where a number of smart technologies and appliances, such as automatic lighting, home/away buttons, temperature control and induction cook tops are integrated. The aim is for the technology to support the older citizens’ self-management and independence for as long as possible, and thus prevent or delay moving to institutional care, which is very expensive. Increasingly, over the past decades, different actors have invested much money in building care homes, with close proximity to homebased services, as a measure of meeting the needs of a growing ageing population.

This paper is based on empirical data from two research projects in two different care homes and is focused on the residents’ use of the integrated technologies. Ethnographic fieldwork and individual interviews are conducted at both settings.

The findings show that many residents don’t use the technologies installed and use a lot of (often creative) resources in working around the technologies in order to avoid having to deal with them. Also, the results show that some technologies make the residents more dependent upon assistance than before moving to the care homes.

The contribution of the paper is twofold: it contributes with nuanced knowledge to the growing field of ageing and digital exclusion, and also, to make visible the amount of work involved in avoiding technologies that is not mastered, and finding alternative pathways of solving everyday issues.