Towards Rethinking the Digital Divide:Recognizing Shades of Grey in Older Adults’ Digital Inclusion

The ‘digital divide’ is one of the key concepts related to IT’s role in social inclusion. However, and despite its prominence, the IS literature related to the concept currently provides a rather diverse set of definitions. This results in a fragmented nomological network, which leads to conceptual ambiguity and complicates the integration of respective research results. In this paper, we share our exploration of the digital divide concept in the context of research on age-related digital inclusion. While we find that the concept can inform important research in this domain – from age-related health and care to the employability of silver workers – its conceptual ambiguity leads to a set of research challenges. Problematizing these challenges, we outline a research program to rethink the digital divide concept and integrate and expand its conceptualization. This will help to inform research on IT-related social inclusion and exclusion in a digitally transformed society