Digital Literacy, Technology Education and Lifelong Learning for Elderly: Towards Policies for a Digital Social Innovation Welfare

Information and communication technologies (ICTs or TIC) represent not only an extension of humans but pervasive environments in which all individuals move. However, even today, there is a gap between users in relation to age: the over-65s in Europe and Italy, for example, present difficulties in the use of digital tools and therefore strong disparities in relation to access to Internet and related resources and opportunities. This means that the elderlies are in serious risk to social exclusion and marginalization in the knowledge society, in which technological artifacts are instead crucial for social inclusion. Therefore, the essay aims to reflect on these issues through a sociological lens, with references to digital literacy and media education as possible alternatives, and social-relational interventions to reduce digital disengagement and the consequent digital divide. Thus, the paper proposes the intergenerational digital social innovation perspective that, by activating bottom-up digital-oriented welfare policies, promotes learning in old age. In fact, this is a determining factor in the design of educational spaces co-constructed together with the older people.