How can you thrive in the digital world? This single question motivates much of our research, and particularly this book on technology users aged sixty and over. If you believe many popular accounts, most older internet or computer technology users are not thriving. They are slow to adopt new technologies that could help them. They are easily scammed. They spread misinformation. They cannot compete with younger colleagues who are “born digital,” with supposedly inherent abilities to adopt and wield technology.

If you are sixty or over, these popular accounts might not match your reality. You might not only adopt new technologies quickly but also teach family and friends how to use them. You might show great prowess in identifying online scams and fake news. You might work in tech, developing new tools while you watch younger colleagues struggle.

In the pages that follow, we bust the myths about clueless and hapless older adults’ relationship to digital technologies. You will read many reasons to doubt the stereotypes about older technology users. If this book— and the research that informs it— shows one thing, it is diversity. The harmful stereotypes about older users’ inability to use technology only adds to the problem, preventing steps that would help us all benefit from older technology users’ contributions.

We offer clear advice about how older adults— defined by both the United Nations and the World Health Organization as people sixty and over— can benefit from using new technologies while avoiding their pitfalls. We hope our findings are useful for all readers: older adults themselves, those who care about and for them, and policymakers, who help make essential resources— including technologies— available to all members of society.

We agree with other writers and researchers— and many of our interviewees— that the years after sixty are often deeply fulfilling, fun, and meaningful on multiple dimensions. We strive through this work to help readers and their loved ones age successfully. What do we mean by aging successfully? We explain in the pages that follow.

As you browse your library, bookstore, or online bookseller, you may find many books on younger internet users, but few on older adults. Many early studies of internet use focused on younger demographics, as younger people were more likely to be online in the late 1990s and early 2000s. What quickly became clear, however, was that youth and young adults varied considerably in their online skills and activities, challenging the notion of a universally savvy “born digital” generation almost as soon as the term was established. Instead of age, different educational, social, and economic resources led to a digital divide in society; the more privileged were more likely to start using the internet than their less privileged counterparts. We will see some of these same trends among internet users sixty and over, or “over- sixties.”

The research on younger users also soon made clear that even after their adoption of digital technologies, differences remained in their uses and skills. So, for example, simply ensuring that everyone had access to an internet connection would not be enough: if people lacked the skills to make the most of technologies, then they would continue to trail those who embraced technologies for increasing parts of their everyday lives. In sum: people vary in their access, skills, and uses, which in turn all influence the potential benefits they can reap from new technologies.

The study of older adults and technology is an especially unsettled area of research. There are more gaps in our knowledge than there are settled questions. There are contradictions in the data, blind spots we have not yet discovered, questions we have not yet asked, geographies and cultures that have escaped researchers’ gaze.

But, as you will see, there has also been progress. In writing this book, our principal job is to introduce the ideas we think are “least wrong”— where the best scientific evidence can inform a practice with a reasonable degree of certainty. It is not our intention to denigrate the terrific researchers on whose good work we draw, nor do we wallow in false modesty about our own study of this topic. But the science about technology and older adults is uncertain. Why make recommendations on topics continually changing without conclusive results? The alternative would be never giving advice at all, which would be a shame as scholarship has certainly made strides with useful takeaways that we translate for everyday cases on these pages.

We have another reason to write this book. Older adults often feel ignored and invisible, despite their making up an increasing portion of the world’s population. Research documents this phenomenon across a range of countries, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. And it is not a misguided perception. Research also shows that many younger people indeed have negative preconceptions about older adults. In this book, we acknowledge the importance of this population segment to a healthy and inclusive society.

More and more older adults around the world are using new technologies. This growth coincides with a few related major trends: the rapid demographic shift in the number and proportion of older persons, the rapid dissemination of information and communication technologies, and the growing importance of these technologies across many sectors of life.

Despite the fact that adults aged sixty and over represent the fastest- growing demographic segment worldwide, research to understand this population has not kept up. What studies do show consistently is that many older adults are more digitally connected than ever and that connectivity can have meaningful implications for their well- being. The exact nature of this relationship between technology use and health and well-being is complex and nuanced. But the pages that follow share the conclusions we can confidently draw based on the research to date.