3rd Age and New Technologies in Greece

Over the last years, demographic ageing has been mentioned quite often. The impact of population ageing, especially in the European Union, will pose a critical issue in the decades to come. Alongside, there has been a quite rapid increase of the new technologies. Technology aims to create new products that cover the needs of people. According to that, information and communication technology could assist people of the 3rd age in improving the quality of their lives, in having better health and in living autonomously for a longer period of time. Despite that fact, elderly appear to have low participation in the Information Society and some of them lead to a total exclusion of it (digital divide). What is attempted in this book is a qualitative exploration of the benefits and the obstacles that people of the 3rd age are encountered with while trying to use mobile phones, automated teller machines (żżżs), credit cards, ticket vending machines, computers and the internet, as well as the existence of variation in usage according to gender and its causes. This book is addressed to all social scientists and those involved with the elderly.