Maintaining Connections: Octo- and Nonagenarians on Digital ‘Use and Non-use’

When we sat down to talk with the participants, we were surprised by what we encountered. Some of the interviewees were not current users of mobile phones, but had used them and therefore considered themselves users. Others said they were mobile phone users, when in fact, they relied exclusively on a cordless phone in their apartments. Some did not own phones, yet decided to talk to us because they had others in their family who did when they came to visit. Still, others wanted to talk about their histories with other media technologies and had opinions on the impact and influence of digital communication tools on the world around them that they wanted to share.

From our interviews, one can create a table that lays out the participants’ relationships to mobile phones and computers in three ways: as current users, ex-users, and never users. From this set, nine different combinations emerge (see Table 1). Use and non-use are commonly accepted categories, and we are interested in exploring the complexities of the everyday activities, contexts, and practices they refer to. They are not important by themselves but as heuristic tools to bring into light the heterogeneity of the ways (older) people relate to digital media and devices. We focus on computers and mobile phones to organise the analysis not only because of their salience in today’s knowledge society but also given their relevance and variability in the case study.

Six participants were mobile phone users, four had given up using it at some point, and twelve had never had one. Computers, conversely, were more popular: there were nine current users, four former users and nine participants who had never used a computer. All computer users had some – current or past – experience with online services, with e-mail being the service most often mentioned.

This is a simple graphic depiction of some aspects of the heterogeneity of what we understand to be digital media (non-)users. The complicated permutations of media use and non-use become visible when taking into account just two devices, in this case the computer and the mobile phone. As this table indicates, there is a wide spectrum of access (Lenhart & Horrigan 2003) and use. It changes over time, or, perhaps more accurately, there is a variable and wide constellation of ways that these users of mobile devices and computers shift their use practices through time. As we reviewed our interview data, we realised that while the table usefully reveals a plethora of permutations, it rendered invisible other variations. For example, some individuals stopped using the computer for a period of time and started using it again. There were also ‘indirect’ users who accessed services, like Skype, through close relatives, whom we classified as non-users of computers because they have never used one independently. To address these limitations and to better take into account nuances, differences, and variations we now turn to the stories that lie behind these numbers and this schematic classification.

In this section, we narrativise fundamental aspects of our conversations with the participants to highlight the media use decisions made by this particular group of octoand nonagenarians who, according to the social imaginary of the fourth age, are not expected to have agency and make choices. In all cases, but one, the landline phone continues to play a role in the whole media structure of their everyday lives even as they adopt or drop other media. What also becomes evident from the interview material and the techno-biographies are five ways that participants express their desire and need to engage with a particular media: 1) Media are for maintaining connections with people with whom they have a deep prior relationship. 2) Mobile phones are important for being able to reach someone – and to be reached quickly – in case of an emergency. 3) These seniors engage in filtering different media in and out of their lives, depending on what they want to manage and what they think is an appropriate use of a particular media form for a particular type of communication. 4) They circumscribe their use of media by defining what amount of time they devote to it, or because of the extent of the networks they want to maintain. 5) Finally, the octo and nonagenarians express forms of attachment to particular media, which influence their decisions about what is an appropriate communication device to use in particular circumstances. To expand on the nine initial permutations, we underscore the distinct ways that the participants discussed their engagements with mobile phones, computers and other types of media (such as television) or communications devices (such as the landline phone) and provide a few examples of these engagements.

Among current users of mobile phones, Margaret, 83, describes a long-term use. In 1994, she and her husband bought a mobile ‘car phone’ that ‘belonged to the car’. The phone made them feel safer to travel despite her husband’s illness. It is Margaret who had always taken care of the device. However, when her husband passed away, Margaret changed her approach: she now considers the mobile phone as something personal, not a device associated with car travel and emergency use. When the phone became hers alone, Margaret began to carry it with her at all times. While she continues to define it as an ‘emergency phone’, retaining this basic rationale from her previous experience, what constitutes an emergency shifts from one that was health-based to the need for contact with all members of ‘her close knit family’. For Margaret connectivity and reachability are synonymous and intertwined. It is important to her that her family members are permanently available, and always reachable, to each other. Margaret has a clear set of protocols for her mobile phone usage: she always answers her mobile immediately. Further, having the mobile with her at all times means that she does not have to stay in her room in the residence, ‘babysitting’ the landline, although as she says, if she receives a call on her mobile, she may switch to the landline if she is in her apartment. While she distinguishes her use of the mobile and her landline, Margaret’s words express her deep attachment to her mobile. ‘It is a part of me’, she declares.

The use practices of phone devices are often tied to the participant’s history as a member of a couple; they tend to stay the same as people age together as a couple, and to change when individuals age as widowers or widows. Shared or not within couples, the mobile phone is more often than not about the capacity to be reached at all times, and to reach out in case of emergencies. Use practices may also differ according to the functional capacities deemed intrinsic to the device or the form of communication they support: for one participant, familiar landline phones afford ‘deeper’ conversations whereas mobile phones allow more practical or goal-oriented ones. In these ways they filter what media they continue to maintain, and what media they forego.

When motivations for owning a particular technological device (like a mobile phone) disappear, individuals often stop using it. They become ex-users. There are, however, various reasons why some octo- and nonagenarians start using a particular device, such as the mobile phone, and after a while decide to give it up. For instance, May, 89, decided to purchase a mobile when the device became relatively inexpensive ‘because everybody had one’. While she candidly admits that her memory is not very good anymore, ‘I don’t think I used it much’, she says, having realised that she did not need it. Valerie, 94, bought her first mobile phone in the 1990s on the recommendation of her children. She gave up owning it when she stopped her regular 100 km driving for work reasons. Another participant in this category, Mary, 95, stopped using the mobile phone and the computer at some point but currently uses a desktop. Her techno-biography illustrates how perceptions of the usefulness of digital devices may change with ageing as everyday activities evolve: ‘Now (…) I’m not doing what I used to do. (…) I was out a lot, but not now.’ She used to have a mobile phone for ‘emergencies’ but it broke when she was already living in the residence, about three years before we met her. She never replaced it because it was not ‘really vital’ to her. She describes how she must limit her activities, due to her age, and this includes her use of the computer, which she uses circumspectly. She stopped using it a while ago but has started using the one that is available at the residence’s library to communicate with her granddaughter, who lives abroad: ‘I picked it up again, I don’t like jokes [...], but look how it’s coming handy [...] and wonderful. One of my grandchildren and her family is in Dubai [...]. I can email them and my granddaughter replies.’ An indirect user of Skype, she has a very positive opinion of the platform, which she has used once at her daughter’s home.

Beyond the heterogeneity of reasons why participants stopped using certain media, what becomes relevant is how they understand non-use – as a decision that they are entitled to make because of their age and life circumstances. As it is the case of one interviewee, age can free one from the need or felt obligation of having to be reachable at all times and to engage in constant communication.

Four of the octogenarians we spoke to had never used a mobile phone and also stopped using computers at some point in their lives. Lena, 87, however, refers to her cordless phone as her ‘mobile phone’ since it gives her mobility within the apartment. She would use a computer again if they provided new ones in the residence. She is articulate about her media and communication needs: she identifies the landline as crucial, and she wants to make sure she will be able to answer any incoming call. She has a negative opinion of mobile phones. She considers that not all seniors have the same attachment to technological devices, thanks in part to different life trajectories: ‘Certainly a sixty-seven-year-old [20 years younger than her] would have more of the technology available to them and interesting to them than to me’. She does not feel estranged from the world ‘out there’ and even though she currently does fewer things than she used to do, she feels strongly about being responsible for deciding what to do and what not to do.

For this group of octo- and nonagenarians who never used a mobile phone and who have given up computers, the landline phone is a vital lifeline to others. One participant cast the phone and the computer in critical terms because of the harm that they may cause. In two other cases, although not considered detrimental to society, the mobile phone is deemed inappropriate for them and therefore something that they decided not to let into their lives. The computer, on the other hand, has been filtered out of their lives for different reasons: too much trouble to maintain, too impersonal medium for communication, or too complicated to operate.

Clair, 87, is one of four octogenarians who never had a mobile phone and yet continue to use computers to maintain a wide network of social relations. She bought her first computer in 1998, when she was 63 years old and started working from home as a freelance journalist and advertising agent. The computer is important to her, and she upgraded it the moment she moved to the residency. While the landline is like her ‘breath’, she says, the computer is ‘almost like a limb, like part of my body’. She is strongly attached to these devices and understands what they bring to her – connection. She sees the computer as an integral part of her identity, one that gives her the ability to stay connected to others. From her perspective, she does not need a mobile phone. She lives a busy life in a world composed of friends and family who live both nearby and abroad, and with whom she maintains contact through the landline and the Internet. She has established routines that allow her fluid communication with her children and grandchildren in South Africa. She also uses the computer to read news and share stories with her friends. She turns to the computer to write and to play games. Being aware that communication is an embodied process, that staying in front of the computer for too long can create both isolation and physical pain, she tries to limit its use.

Two participants had never used a mobile phone or a computer, and relied on the land-line for connection and other media for information. Zeff, 98, is the oldest participant in the project. He has decided which technologies he wants in his life, informing us that he is affluent enough to purchase whatever device he wants. His world is growing smaller and smaller, he told us: except for his children, he has few friends left to whom he can talk on the phone. He often meets with family members face-to-face, using the landline phone as an instrument for coordinating these encounters. He keeps up with current events by watching television, his preference being news and sports programs. He has never felt any pressure to own a mobile phone or a computer and has had very little exposure to them during his working life. He retired in 1984 when he was 70 years old. As he explains, at that time a company’s senior manager was not expected to use computers: ‘We had them in the office for the bookkeeping and stuff, but I didn’t [use any].’ At the time of his retirement, the mobile phone had just been released but it was not yet an essential business tool. Never having used these technological devices is something that these participants can talk about and contextualise regarding their past experiences and current wishes, desires, and needs.

One’s communication goals (Ball-Rokeach 1985) can be met in a multiplicity of ways, using a variety of different media channels – at any age. The majority of octogenarians and nonagenarians in our study explain how they identify with the landline phone as a key way to keep in touch with family and friends, often discussing the use of the landline and face to face interactions in very similar terms: as genuine and authentic forms of communications. For most participants, television and radio continue to play a role in maintaining connection to world events. Yet, the octogenarians and nonagenarians we interviewed have developed very complex relationships to mobile phones and computers, including different rules and rationales to explain how and why they use different devices to maintain connection and in some cases to disconnect. They articulate the decisional processes used to make choices (filter) of what media to keep in their lives based on a variety of rationales (Tétard & Collan 2007, Collan & Tétard 2009), contingent life-situations and life trajectories. We now turn to the five actions that inform their modes of engagement with communication media and technologies.

All participants have found ways to stay connected to the world or their networks in different ways, through particular sets of communication devices, at different rhythms, more or less intensely. Voice calls, be they through mobile or landline phones, constitute the preferred mode of mediated communication. Mobile users add an extra layer of mediated communication as the general norm is to also have a landline in their apartment. This relates not only to the purchasing power of the residents but also to the long history of fixed telephony in Canadian society in general (Sawchuk & Crow 2010Sawchuk & Crow 2011). As the techno-biographies show, more participants continue to use computers and the Internet than mobile phones, carrying their knowledge and sense of familiarity with these technologies with them from their homes to the residence. To connect to the world beyond their personal networks, participants rely mainly on mass media (television and radio, mostly), although they in some cases turn to the Internet for news and information.

Many of our participants discuss how they filter particular types of media technologies from their homes and lives, or give them specific and limited uses, depending on what they understand and value in communications. For some participants, hand-writing a letter is an act of love while composing a letter on the computer is too impersonal. For others, the landline phone is equivalent to face to face communication and therefore wholly appropriate for maintaining connection to family and friends. For yet another, being reachable anywhere anytime is valued as a sign of intimacy and therefore used to maintain connection and ties. Filtering is related to deciding what digital devices one wants to own and care for. While all participants filtered what media they used, this is not because they have stopped living – instead, they are deciding what they prefer, need and can manage in their current context.

The octo- and nonagenarians in our study also engaged in circumscribing, or limiting, their activities to cope with changes – mental and physical capacities, personal interests, life circumstances, and health conditions, to name some of the ones that interviewees considered especially meaningful. While people may circumscribe their activities throughout their life course, this dimension might be more prominent, or more evident, in the specific context of our case study, which gives us better opportunity to discuss the dynamics it generates. Circumscription, as a form of maintaining a sense of agency, is a particular process of adaptation that involves delineating spaces, times, networks, etc., hence modifying one’s environment as one ages.

Participants manage reachability in different ways. They can, or cannot, rely on a mobile phone but are connected to their personal network and their world, having chosen how they want to be reached, and decided what media they would rely on to do so. Being reachable and being able to reach significant ones is an important motivation for having a mobile phone. Some participants describe micro-coordination (Ling & Yttri 2002) as the main incentive for having a mobile phone, while others see it as an emergency tool. Even though it constitutes a lifeline (Oksman & Turtiainen 2004, Ling, 2004: 34), seniors use it in everyday life communications that not only respond to emergencies (Castells et al. 2006: 97).

Attachment to the media varies among users, even for those who describe the mobile phone as an emergency tool. In some cases it is a utilitarian device that allows a couple to be mobile and get the services they need. In others, it became integral to everyday life – one participant carried it everywhere she went. To her, the mobile phone is about connectivity to her loved significant ones and a sign that she is always reachable, always available, to her children.