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Technologies for Promoting Social Participation in Later Life

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Ageing and Digital Technology

Abstract

Social participation is known to bring great benefits to the health and well-being of people as they age. From being in contact with others to engaging in group activities, keeping socially active can help slow down the effects of age-related declines and reduce risks of loneliness and social isolation and even mortality in old age. There are unfortunately a variety of barriers that make it difficult for older adults to engage in social activities on a regular basis. In this chapter, we give an overview of the challenges to social participation and discuss how technology can help overcome these barriers and promote participation in social activities. We examine two particular research threads and designs, exploring ways in which technology can support colocated and virtual participation: (i) an application that motivates the virtual participation in group training programs and (ii) a location-based game that supports colocated intergenerational ICT training classes. We discuss the effectiveness and limitations of various design choices in the two use cases and outline the lessons learned.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Notice that while loneliness and social isolation are often used interchangeably, they refer to different yet interrelated concepts: Loneliness is a subjective measure of the “unpleasant” response to the lack of social relationships (de Jong Gierveld, van Tilburg, & Dykstra, 2006) and social isolation an objective measure referring to the lack (absence or low number) of social relationships (de Jong Gierveld, van Tilburg, & Dykstra, 2006). A deeper discussion can be found in Chap. 5.

  2. 2.

    https://youtu.be/nclX8Y3lcVE.

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Acknowledgements

This work has received funding from the EU Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skodowska-Curie grant agreement No 690962.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Trento, Trento, Italy

    Marcos Baez & Fabio Casati

  2. Tomsk Polytechnic University, Tomsk, Russia

    Marcos Baez & Fabio Casati

  3. Polish-Japanese Academy of Information Technology, Warsaw, Poland

    Radoslaw Nielek & Adam Wierzbicki

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  1. Marcos Baez
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  2. Radoslaw Nielek
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Correspondence to Marcos Baez .

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  1. School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, Australia

    Barbara Barbosa Neves

  2. School of Engineering, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, Australia

    Frank Vetere

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Baez, M., Nielek, R., Casati, F., Wierzbicki, A. (2019). Technologies for Promoting Social Participation in Later Life. In: Neves, B., Vetere, F. (eds) Ageing and Digital Technology. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3693-5_17

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