Exploring data ageism: What good data can(’t) tell us about the digital practices of older people?

Abstract

Considering that data are no stranger to politics and power, we argue that it may well be a site of age-based discrimination. We discuss how older people are described and, at times, disregarded in the analysis of digitisation and how those partial descriptions bring about challenges in the study of digital practices throughout life. We propose the notion of data ageism to conceptualise the production and reproduction of the disadvantaged status of old age caused by decisions concerning how to collect and deliver whose data. We exemplify this concept by examining data produced by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, which offers high-quality statistics on digitisation, but no data on individuals aged 75 years and over.