Technology and Aging: Inhibiting and Facilitating Factors in ICT Use

Extending a literature review, the paper gives an overview of inhibiting and facilitating factors associated with the use of information and communications technology (ICT) of older adults. The paper takes the position that there is no prototypical “elderly user” but that there is a wide heterogeneity of personal characteristics such as cognitive and motivational states and experiences in old age. Dependent upon various characteristics of the elderly user as well as the context of application, development and implementation of ICT should follow the desideratum of a differential technology implementation taking an integrative approach by reconciling individual and social as well as socio-political approaches.