Reluctant selfies: older people, social media sharing and digital inclusion

This paper explores how older people's reluctance to engage in social media's more vernacular practices, such as selfie-taking and sharing, can be attributed to specific social barriers to online inclusion and participation. Drawing on empirical research conducted during social media-oriented digital literacy workshops with older people, we explore how 'reluctant' participation was linked to perceptions of social media cultures that did not match older peoples' values, interests or needs. Despite their desire to make better use of digital communication tools, platform demands for visual self-presentation were difficult because participants (a) lacked social context to negotiate the modes of intimacy and self-expression common to social media use, and therefore (b) felt they lacked the cultural competency to manage or integrate the more complex social boundaries associated with social media interaction. These observations, we argue, illustrate that digital inclusion and participation are not just about access, use or even skills, but are also entangled with structural modes of exclusion associated with social and generational norms.