A Qualitative Study and Analysis on the Use,
Utility, and Emotions of Technology
by the Elderly in Spain
Juan Luis Cabanillas García
(B )
, Rocío Martín-Sevillano
(B )
,
Mª Cruz Sánchez-Gómez
(B )
, Mª Victoria Martín-Cilleros
(B )
,
Sonia Verdugo-Castro , Juanjo Mena , Ana María Pinto-Llorente ,
and Vanessa Izquierdo Álvarez
Department of Didactics, Organization and Research Methods, University of Salamanca,
37008 Salamanca, Spain
{jluiscabanillas,rociomartins6,mcsago,viquimc,soniavercas,
juanjo_mena,ampintoll,vizquierdo}@usal.es
Abstract. Living Labs are spaces and laboratories created in natural areas aimed
at social innovation. The basic principle of these labs is improving people’s qual-
ity of life and the improvement of regions, the functioning of companies, etc.
One of the areas in which Living Labs interventions are applied is the elderly.
Seniorlabs are initiatives aimed at improving the quality of life of older people.
Actions include improving physical health, mental health, the home, and tech-
nologies for these purposes. The qualitative study presented in this document has
been carried out to determine the relationship between the elderly and digital tech-
nology, in other words, what use the elderly make of it. It also aims to answer the
research question: do people over 65 use technology in their daily lives? Using a
phenomenological perspective, semi-structured interviews were conducted with
people over 65 years of age in Spain to carry out the study. From the study, it can be
concluded that various initiatives are optimistically being carried out in different
European countries and that impact research on these actions is being published.
Finally, it can also be concluded that older people use fewer technologies in their
daily lives than those that exist to make their lives easier. The main reasons for this
are that they do not know how to use them or are afraid to use them and damage
the device.
Keywords: Techno-social environments · Gerontechnological innovation · Use
of technology · Older people · Qualitative research
1 Introduction
Within the framework of the project <<Subjective adaptability in technological environ-
ments and life-based gerontechnological innovation (Seniorlab-LBD)>> of the 2019
call for R+D+i projects of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (PID2019-
107826GB-I00), a qualitative study has been carried out from a phenomenological per-
spective on the use that people over 65 years of age make of technologies, as well as on
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022
A. P. Costa et al. (Eds.): WCQR 2022, LNNS 466, pp. 248–263, 2022.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04680-3_16