From Information Sharing To Family Decision-Making Participation: Familial Context For Elderly Migrants’ Smartphone Empowerment

The digital divide theory pays great attention to digital equality.Most studies of older adults within this framework focus on the elderly’s disadvantages in technology adoption,ignoring the differences among them.In China,more and more elderly people have successfully achieved digital inclusion.Compared with most elderly people,elderly migrants who leave their hometown to take care of their offspring in unfamiliar cities face the dilemma of "dual dis-embeddedness" of social relationships,and they have a stronger need and willingness to adopt digital technology to reconstruct their interpersonal networks.Previous studies lay much emphasis on the impact of digital inclusion upon elderly migrants’ social relations,little was taken into consideration about those among family members.This qualitative study aims to explore the effects of elderly migrants’ smartphone use on family decision-making.In-depth interviews with 20 elderly migrants and 10 adult children indicate that the elderly can acquire both information and tools to interact with their families by using smartphones.As for information sharing,elderly migrants generally have a strong willingness to share information,and the type of information they often share is focused on health-related issues.The empowerment process of smartphone use is embedded in the existing family roles and is affected by the professionalism of elderly migrants on specific issues.Adult children’s feedback will also influence the effectiveness of information interaction to a certain extent.For those elderly migrants who are not equipped with professionalism,their willingness to share information and participate in family decision-making largely depends on the feedback from their adult children.On the premise that family communication is actively managed,the reconstructed family power relations will further facilitate the willingness and actions of elderly migrants for participating family decision-making and help them regain some power that has been lost due to their dependency on their adult children,thus further achieving family integration at the micro-level.Owing to the bottom-up technology transmission process,elderly migrants can continue to participate in family decision-making through effective interactions within families,while also improving their own information literacy.In this sense,we can see how smartphone empowerment is demonstrated.Elderly migrants can achieve"empowerment" and "ability enhancement" with the help of smartphones.The improvement of power and ability enables them to regain a sense of control over themselves and their family life,which helps them to better adapt to living with their children.A good mental state can encourage individuals to participate more actively in community organizations and activities.In other words,integration at the micro-level is likely to have a positive impact on the social interaction and community participation of elderly migrants in immigrant areas.This shows that in order to solve the problem of social integration of elderly migrants,starting with improving family relations is a low-cost and effective way.