[News] How 'compassionate ageism' made its way into design of new technology

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Older adults' use of digital devices is growing — but the development of new technologies, from smartphones to AI, still often leaves out the needs of these users.

Nearly 90 per cent of Canadians 65 and older use the internet every day — and the pandemic spurred many to experiment with digital tech, according to a 2020 poll by AGE-WELL. 

"Older adults can sometimes be seen as not being technologically literate, technologically savvy," Charlene Chu, an assistant professor in nursing at the University of Toronto, told Spark host Nora Young.

"Compassionate ageism" is often used to describe the paternalistic belief that aging people are in need of special policies to assist them. Ideas of later life being a time of dependency, frailty and general decline are encoded and amplified through the design and marketing of various technologies made for the general public, and specifically for older adults.

"The assumptions that we have and the stereotypes we have about older adults as being technophobic, resistant to integrating new technologies into their everyday life stem from broader social and cultural age-based stereotypes and ageist perceptions that we have about older adults in general," Nicole Dalmer, an assistant professor of health, aging and society at McMaster University, told Young.

In focus groups Dalmer ran a few years ago with older adults, she saw how some had internalized those assumptions about their digital literacy, even though they showed extensive knowledge about various technologies.

"There was this thread of participants characterizing themselves in technophobic terms, calling themselves dinosaurs," she said.

"They're not grouped in the tech savvy or the digital native group, in the news or in policy documents, for example, even though I would argue so many of these older adults have actually grown up with so many variations of technologies, thinking about programming or working the DOS system, for example."

Digital ageism is sustained by what Chu calls "cycles of injustice."

"The technological, individual and social biases all interact, and they end up producing and basically mutually reinforcing each other in order to perpetuate ageism," she sai