Elderly 2.0

Abstract

The increase in life expectancy and the general improvement in the health conditions that have characterized the elderly population in recent years have widened opportunities that did not exist in the past. Furthermore, the general improvement in living conditions has contributed to reconfigure habits and behaviours with a strong impact on quality of life of the elderly population. Becoming elder today is more and more a condition that is not simply linked to age, but also to factors such as health conditions and autonomy, projects, presence of a social role and significant social relations.
Among population aged 65 and over, greater participation in many forms of cultural practices or leisure time activities is observed over time. Especially making amateur photos and videos, going to museums, exhibitions and places of art, cinema and reading books increases.
The regular use of new technologies among the elderly population, as well as its use for the different forms of cultural participation, begins to fairly spread especially among the ‘youngest old’ who are today between 65 and 74 years old. In 2015, less than a fifth of the population over 64 uses the Internet regularly (16.2 percent). However, a strong expansion of the phenomenon is observed compared to 2000 (1.2 percent) and 2006 (2.6 percent). Cultural consumption and leisure activities have been gradually contaminated by the spread of the Internet with the consequence of changing also the access to more traditional mass media such as TV or radio. Overall around 20 percent of people aged 65 years and over, have used at least one cultural consumption or leisure time in their spare time relates to the network (use of TV or radio via the Internet, participation in discussion groups, blogs, forums concerning television or radio programs, etc.).