Dissertation: Older people adapt, digital services do not – on whose terms is the digital society being built?

What did you study?

I study how access to public digital services is constructed in older people’s lives in highly digitalised Finland. I interviewed stakeholders working on digitalisation in the public and third sectors, as well as older volunteer peer tutors who guide their peers in using digital devices and services.

What were your main results?

Access is not only a matter of technical functionality or digital skills. According to the stakeholders, public digital services are designed on a “one size fits most” principle that assumes an ideal user who transacts online with ease. The diverse needs of older people are left unaddressed.

Older people therefore have to work at becoming “technology-friendly” users at a point when the technology itself is not user-friendly. The issue is not that they lack the skills, but that the service has not been designed from their starting points.

According to the peer tutors, older people recognise the benefits of digital services, such as being able to deal with matters from home at any hour, but still want support and the option of doing things face to face. The peer tutors are an important bridge between the digital society and older people’s everyday lives.

How can the results be applied? What new knowledge did the study provide?

Access to public digital services is not a state achieved once and for all but a process that shifts with new systems and new requirements as digitalisation advances. The question is not only whether older people can use digital services, but how much adaptation is demanded of them, and on whose terms.

As the digital society is developed, it is worth asking more often: what does “most” actually mean, and whose everyday life falls outside it?

Public defence

Laura Pajula’s doctoral dissertation in social and public policy, “Does one size fit most? Rethinking access to digital public services in later life,” will be examined at the University of Jyväskylä, Main Building, Auditorium C4, on 26 September 2026 at 12 noon. Opponent is associate professor Manuela Farinosi (University of Udine) and custos is professor Sakari Taipale.

The defence can also be followed remotely.

The study is available in the JYX archive.

Contact details

Laura Pajula, laura.a.pajula@jyu.fi, Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy, University of Jyväskylä.