The divide within: Older active ICT users position themselves against different 'Others'

Although research into older people's internet usage patterns is rapidly growing, their understandings of digital technologies, particularly in relation to how these are informed by their understandings of aging and old age, remain unexplored. This is the case because research on older active ICT users tends to regard old age as an empirically interesting part of the life-course as opposed to a theoretically profuse source of information about why and how older people engage with digital technologies. This article explores - through focus group interviews with 30 older adults (aged 66-89) - the ways in which the social position of old age is used by older active ICT users in order to make sense of how and why they engage with these technologies. In this article, positioning theory is used to shed light on how the older people interviewed positioned themselves as 'active older users' in the interviews. The analysis brings to the fore the divide that older people themselves create as they discursively position themselves against different types of ICT users and non-users (young and old) when describing how and why they engage with digital technologies.