Involution Labs

Category: Culture & Society

  • The Children We Were, The People They Are

    A few years have passed since I wrote my first 500 words of wisdom, and one thing has not changed: I still stand with children.

    Perhaps that is because I remember being one.

    Adults often tell children to enjoy their freedom before work begins, but childhood is not always free. Children spend most of their days in school, followed by homework, expectations and activities arranged by adults. Their time is managed, their behaviour assessed and their distress frequently dismissed as a phase.

    Growing up can be magical. It can also be exhausting.

    My children helped me recognise parts of my own childhood that I had learned to overlook. Their teenage struggles were not inconveniences to manage. They were experiences to understand. Parenting, for me, became less about shaping children into successful adults and more about protecting the space in which they could discover who they already were becoming.

    A parent leaves a mark, whether they intend to or not.

    My children are not my legacy, because they do not belong to my story. They have stories of their own. But being their mother has changed me more profoundly than anything else I have done. They have brought me more joy than any story I have written—and I have written quite a few.

    I still consider myself a beginner. Not because I have achieved nothing, but because I am still curious. Expertise can become another identity to defend. Curiosity leaves the door open.

    As I entered what I once called my second rebellion, I began coming out in more ways than one. Menopause was not an ending. It was a refusal: of shame, silence and the idea that a woman becomes less valuable as she ages.

    Grey hair, wrinkles and a changing body are not evidence that life has gone wrong. They are evidence that life has happened.

    My identity has changed too. I once wondered whether I had lost my Swedishness. I had not. It had travelled with me, becoming entangled with my Karelian roots and my Irish life. We do not have to choose one place from which to belong. Sometimes belonging is what grows between places.

    I have also spent much of my life thinking about death. My children used to think it strange that I practised dying each night and returning each morning. But death gave shape to life. Having survived times when I did not want to be here, I no longer see my continued existence as something ordinary.

    It is not always easy to make peace with living.

    I once wanted to disappear completely. Perhaps I wanted freedom from being remembered. I understand that differently now. We do not control what remains of us. We live in other people’s memories, in stories, in digital traces and in consequences we may never see.

    What we can do is live honestly while we are here.

    Tell your children your stories, including the ones that make you uncomfortable. Let them see that adults make mistakes, change their minds and continue becoming. Listen when their version of events differs from yours.

    Allow them to be gloriously themselves, especially when they challenge who you thought they would be.

    Perhaps that is what authentic parenting asks of us: not to create children in our own image, but to meet them as they emerge.

  • Change Is Freedom, and Freedom Is Change

    If you are here, you have a right to be here.

    You do not have to earn your existence through achievement, obedience or usefulness. Worth is not a prize awarded to those who perform life correctly. It begins with being alive.

    Children arrive as people, not unfinished adults. They deserve love, safety and guidance, but also respect. Their wisdom is often ignored because it does not arrive in the language of authority. We ask children to listen, but how often do we listen to them?

    Parenting can change the world because it is one of the first places where power is learned. A child discovers whether love is conditional, whether their body belongs to them, whether questions are welcome and whether disagreement is dangerous. Families can take many forms. What matters is not how closely they resemble tradition, but whether the people within them are free to grow.

    Love is not control.

    Education should expand a child’s relationship with the world, not reduce it to obedience. Yet many schools reward compliance more easily than curiosity. They teach children to compete before they understand what they are competing for. By the time formal education ends, many people have learned how to meet expectations but forgotten how to recognise their own interests.

    This does not mean learning has failed. Learning continues wherever curiosity survives.

    Question what you inherit. Not because everything old is wrong, but because nothing becomes true simply by being repeated. Systems are created by people, and people can change them. What feels permanent may only be familiar.

    Choice is a human right, but no choice exists entirely outside circumstance. Freedom is not simply doing whatever we want. It is understanding what shapes us well enough to decide what we wish to carry forward.

    Being yourself is not a final achievement. The self is not something hidden inside us, waiting to be uncovered once and for all. We are always becoming—through experience, relationships, mistakes, loss and change. Differentness does not need to be corrected. Belonging should not require disappearance.

    Make friends across the imaginary borders we are taught to defend, but also learn to be present with yourself. Self-knowledge is not self-indulgence. It helps us recognise when we are living from desire and when we are living from fear.

    Do not turn pain into a moral failure. People reach for substances, distractions and escape for many reasons. Judgment rarely heals what understanding has not yet reached. Sometimes we save ourselves. Sometimes another person helps us remember that we are worth saving. Most often, healing is something we do together.

    Talk about death, because death gives shape to life. We do not need to pretend certainty about what comes next. It is enough to recognise that endings are part of being alive—and that awareness can make the present more vivid.

    Look after your body, your mind, your sexuality and your capacity for joy. Pleasure is not the enemy of wisdom. Laughter is not a distraction from seriousness. Gratitude, empathy and forgiveness are forms of wealth, but even these should not become obligations used to silence anger or avoid truth.

    Find the language that connects you to something larger, whether you call it God, nature, humanity, mystery or cosmic love.

    Change is not the loss of freedom.

    Change is how freedom remains alive.

  • Can Menopause Trigger Suicide?

    Yes, it can.

    Not because menopause itself causes suicide, but because the hormonal changes of perimenopause and menopause can trigger severe depression in some women. That depression is unlike anything many women have experienced before, yet it remains poorly understood and far too often dismissed.

    Menopause and suicide are uncomfortable subjects, but they belong in the same conversation. For too many women around the world, this stage of life pushes them into a darkness they never imagined possible.

    Menopause Is More Than One Day

    There are three stages of menopause: perimenopause, menopause and postmenopause. The entire transition can last around ten years.

    Technically, menopause is just one day—the point at which a woman has gone twelve months without a period. The years leading up to it, known as perimenopause, are when hormones fluctuate the most. This is when many women experience their most severe symptoms.

    As oestrogen and progesterone decline, the brain is affected too. Hormonal changes influence neurotransmitters such as serotonin, which helps regulate mood and emotional wellbeing. For some women, these fluctuations can trigger anxiety, panic attacks, depression, feelings of hopelessness and, in some cases, suicidal thoughts.

    Women who have experienced depression, severe PMS or postnatal depression may be particularly vulnerable. Others are caught completely off guard, having never struggled with their mental health before.

    Induced Menopause

    For women who enter menopause suddenly through hysterectomy or other medical treatment, the transition can be even more devastating. Instead of hormones declining gradually, they fall abruptly, leaving many women to cope with overwhelming physical and emotional changes almost overnight.

    Menopause-induced depression is not simply about feeling low. Many women describe it as unlike any depression they have known before. It can feel as though the mind has turned against the body, making everyday life frightening and unrecognisable.

    Yet menopause continues to be brushed away as little more than hot flushes and mood swings. Women deserve better than that.

    The Silence Is Costing Women

    We prepare girls for puberty. We educate women about pregnancy and childbirth. Yet millions enter menopause with little understanding of what hormonal change can do to their mental health.

    That has to change.

    Menopause education should begin in schools as part of sex education, but it cannot stop there. Women already in their late thirties and forties also need information through healthcare services, public awareness campaigns and targeted screening.

    Knowing what is happening to your body and brain can be the difference between seeking help and suffering in silence.

    We Must Link Menopause and Mental Health

    We routinely screen women for cervical cancer and breast cancer because early intervention saves lives. Why are we not taking the same approach to menopause?

    A menopause check, particularly for women entering their forties, could identify those at greater risk and connect them with support before they reach crisis point.

    We cannot continue separating menopause from mental health. The hormonal changes are real, the depression is real and, for some women, the suicidal thoughts are real too.

    Simply diagnosing depression without recognising the role of hormonal change is not always enough. Women deserve healthcare that recognises the whole picture.

    There Is Help

    Every woman experiences menopause differently. Some move through it with relatively few symptoms. Others find it completely overwhelming.

    There is no single solution. Hormone therapy helps many women. Others benefit from counselling, medication or a combination of treatments. Lifestyle changes, social support and simply being believed can make an enormous difference.

    The important thing is recognising that menopause-induced depression is real and treatable. No woman should be made to feel she simply has to endure it.

    It’s Time We Started Talking

    For decades, menopause has been reduced to jokes about hot flushes. Meanwhile, countless women have been battling panic attacks, despair, brain fog, loss of confidence and thoughts they never believed they could have.

    We know far more about the physical symptoms than we do about the psychological ones. That imbalance has left too many women feeling isolated, ashamed and misunderstood.

    It is time we stopped treating menopause as an inconvenience and started recognising it as one of the most significant hormonal transitions in a woman’s life.

    We must also start talking openly about menopause and suicide. Not to frighten women, but to save them.

    The more we understand the connection between hormonal change and mental health, the more women will recognise the warning signs, seek help sooner and realise they are not alone.

    Menopause is a natural stage of life, but there is nothing trivial about it. Women should not have to suffer in silence, and they certainly should not lose their lives because we were too uncomfortable to have this conversation.

  • Old Age Doesn’t Have to Be a Sexless Destination

    When we talk about ageing, we talk about health, pensions, housing, and care.

    We rarely talk about sex.

    The silence is revealing.

    Older adults are still portrayed as vulnerable, dependent, and increasingly disconnected from desire. Popular culture celebrates young bodies while treating older sexuality as embarrassing, amusing, or invisible.

    Yet the evidence tells a different story.

    Many older adults continue to experience attraction, intimacy, desire, pleasure, and love throughout their lives. The desire for connection does not disappear simply because someone turns sixty, seventy, or eighty.

    The problem is not ageing.

    The problem is ageism.

    Ageism teaches us that growing older means becoming less relevant, less attractive, and less fully human. It encourages younger people to fear ageing and older people to internalise limitations that may never have existed in the first place.

    The pandemic exposed this clearly. Older adults were often spoken about as though they were a single vulnerable population rather than individuals capable of making decisions about their own lives. Protection frequently slipped into paternalism.

    The same dynamic exists around sexuality.

    Older adults are offered care but denied desire.

    Love but not lust.

    Companionship but not eroticism.

    Yet intimacy remains important throughout life—not only because sex can be pleasurable, but because touch, affection, connection, and desire contribute to wellbeing, identity, and quality of life.

    Growing older should not require giving up an essential part of being human.

    Old age is not a waiting room for death.

    It is still life.

    And life deserves pleasure.

  • The Labelling Paradox: How Society Creates Deviance

    What makes someone deviant?

    The obvious answer is behaviour. People break rules, violate norms, and challenge expectations. Yet sociology suggests something more unsettling: behaviour alone is not enough. A person only becomes deviant when others decide they are.

    A child skips school. A teenager experiments with drugs. An employee questions authority. An immigrant struggles to fit in. Whether these actions are seen as mistakes, phases, acts of independence, or signs of deviance depends largely on who is doing the judging.

    Deviance is not simply discovered. It is assigned.

    This is the central insight of labelling theory. Society does not merely respond to deviance; it helps create it. Once a person is labelled delinquent, difficult, unstable, disruptive, or dangerous, the label often becomes more influential than the behaviour itself.

    The label follows them.

    Teachers become cautious. Employers become hesitant. Neighbours become suspicious. Opportunities narrow. Over time, people may begin to see themselves through the eyes of those judging them.

    The act becomes the identity.

    Labelling and Power

    Labelling is never neutral.

    Those with greater social power are usually the ones who decide what is normal and what is deviant. Adults label children. Professionals label clients. Majorities label minorities. Institutions label individuals.

    The ability to define reality is a form of power.

    This does not mean all labels are wrong. Some behaviours are genuinely harmful and societies need ways of responding to them. The question is not whether labels exist, but who gets to apply them and whose interests they serve.

    The same behaviour can be interpreted very differently depending on who performs it.

    A wealthy teenager’s rebellion may be dismissed as youthful experimentation. The same behaviour in a poorer neighbourhood may be treated as evidence of criminality.

    The act remains the same. The reaction changes.

    When Difference Becomes Disorder

    One of the most powerful forms of modern labelling occurs through the language of illness.

    In many cases, this has reduced suffering. Behaviours once treated as moral failings are now understood with greater compassion. Yet labels can also become limiting.

    When every difference is interpreted as a disorder, people risk becoming identified by a diagnosis rather than understood as individuals.

    A label intended to explain can sometimes become a cage.

    The challenge is to distinguish between genuine suffering and simple human variation.

    Not every difference is a disease.

    Why Deviance Matters

    Durkheim argued that deviance serves an important social function. It clarifies boundaries, challenges assumptions, and sometimes drives social change.

    Without people willing to question accepted norms, societies stagnate.

    Many ideas we now celebrate were once considered deviant.

    The danger is not deviance itself. The danger lies in confusing conformity with virtue.

    A healthy society needs people willing to ask difficult questions, challenge dominant narratives, and test established boundaries.

    Not because they are always right.

    But because the freedom to dissent protects everyone.

    The Real Question

    Perhaps the most important question is not:

    Why are some people deviant?

    But:

    Why are we so eager to label them?

    Because every label reveals something about the person receiving it.

    And something about the society applying it.

  • If You Want to Understand Russian Culture, Start with the Food

    When we think about Russia, food is rarely the first thing that comes to mind.

    More often, it’s politics, history, stereotypes—vodka, potatoes, cold winters. But if you really want to understand a culture, food is one of the most honest places to start.

    Russian food is not just “Russian.”

    It has been shaped by many cultures—French, German, Scandinavian, Caucasian. It borrows, adapts, absorbs. What ends up on the table is a mixture of influences that, over time, becomes something distinct.

    And yet, because Western culture dominates how we define “good food,” Russian cuisine is often overlooked or misunderstood.

    We recognise dishes like borshch or beef Stroganoff, but beyond that, many dismiss it without really engaging with it. And when we dismiss the food, we are often dismissing the culture with it.

    Food is never just food.

    It carries memory, history, survival.

    Russia has experienced periods of abundance, but also repeated famine and scarcity. That leaves a mark. Food becomes more than nourishment—it becomes something to hold onto, something to protect, something to share.

    That’s why hospitality matters so much.

    Tables are full. Guests are fed generously. Bread and salt are offered as a sign of welcome and respect. Even strangers can be invited to eat.

    There is a sense that food is not just for the body, but for connection.

    There is also something deeply seasonal and grounded about it.

    Russians eat what is available—grains, root vegetables, cabbage, mushrooms, berries. Food is preserved, pickled, dried, stored for winter. Foraging is still part of life for many, a quiet activity that feels almost meditative.

    It’s a way of being connected to the land.

    At the same time, Russian food is rich, colourful, and layered.

    Tables filled with small dishes—zakuski—served before the main meal. Soups, fish, meat, breads. Sour cream in everything. Sweet pastries, pancakes, cakes.

    It’s abundant, even when it comes from a history of scarcity.

    And that’s where something interesting happens.

    Because food reflects how people have lived.

    If you look at Russian cuisine closely, you see:

    • survival and celebration
    • hardship and generosity
    • borrowing and belonging

    We often approach other cultures through our own lens.

    We compare.
    We judge.
    We say “I like this” or “I don’t like that.”

    But food asks something different of us.

    It asks us to sit at the table.

    To taste without immediately deciding.

    To be open to something that doesn’t come from our own experience.

    There are no language barriers when eating.

    You don’t need to speak Russian to understand something about Russian life when you share a meal.

    Russia is vast, complex, and often misunderstood.

    But if you want to understand even a small part of it, don’t start with explanations.

    Start with the food.

    Sit down.

    Taste it.

    And pay attention to what it tells you.

  • When Help Doesn’t Feel Like Help

    What happens when someone asks for help and leaves feeling worse?

    It’s not always obvious. No raised voices. No clear mistake. And yet something shifts. The person who came to be heard walks away feeling misunderstood, reduced, or dismissed. This happens more often than we like to admit. Systems of care are built with good intentions. Mental health professionals are trained to support, diagnose, and guide. People enter these spaces expecting help.

    But sometimes the experience doesn’t match the intention.

    There is often a quiet pressure in these systems to know.

    To identify the issue.
    To name it.
    To move towards a solution.

    Uncertainty is uncomfortable. It slows things down. So instead of sitting with not knowing, we move quickly toward interpretation.

    The person becomes something to be understood from the outside.

    Authority plays a role too.

    The professional holds knowledge and structure. The person seeking help, especially a young person, comes in vulnerable, often unsure of how to express what they’re feeling.

    This imbalance shapes everything.

    What gets said.
    What gets heard.
    What gets taken seriously.

    Sometimes the problem isn’t what is said, but how quickly we move past it.

    Advice comes before understanding. Reassurance replaces curiosity. Language is used to contain something that hasn’t yet been fully expressed.

    Nothing intentionally harmful. And yet the result can be the same: The person doesn’t feel heard.

    Many people have had the experience of leaving a session feeling worse than when they went in.

    Not because no one cared. But because something didn’t land. Because the response didn’t match the experience.

    This is about recognising a pattern, not blaming professionals.

    Systems that prioritise efficiency, outcomes, and clarity can unintentionally make deep listening harder. Even the most well-meaning professional is working within constraints. And those constraints shape how care is delivered. For young people, this matters even more.

    If the first attempt to speak is met with misunderstanding or judgement, the next attempt becomes harder. Trust weakens. Silence feels safer.  Not because there is nothing to say.
    But because it feels like it won’t be heard.

    So, the question is simple, but not easy:

    What would it mean to truly listen? Not to fix. Not to interpret too quickly. Not to guide the conversation toward a known outcome. But to stay with the person long enough for something real to emerge.

    Sometimes help doesn’t feel like help. Noticing that is a starting point, not failure.

  • We Are What We Surf

    We often hear the saying “we are what we eat.” Others say we become what we think. But in the digital age, another question arises: do we also become what we surf?

    The internet has become the most addictive tool in modern life. We use it daily for information, communication, entertainment and work. Its benefits are obvious, but its long-term effects on how we think and behave are still unclear.

    The internet has changed our relationship with knowledge and communication.

    We read less in the traditional sense, yet we write more than ever before. Millions of people produce texts every day through messages, posts and comments.

    We connect with more people across the world, yet those connections can sometimes be more superficial than the relationships we form offline.

    Online we construct versions of ourselves—digital personas that may not always align with who we are in real life.

    At the same time, the internet allows unprecedented collaboration. People exchange ideas across cultures and disciplines, build communities and challenge traditional sources of authority.

    In many ways we have become our own publishers, researchers and commentators. When we seek expertise, we no longer rely solely on traditional institutions; we search for it ourselves.

    Just as food shapes the body and thoughts shape the mind, the information environments we inhabit may also shape who we become.

    Perhaps in the digital age we are not only what we eat or what we think.

    Perhaps we are also what we surf.

  • Education and the Fear of Thinking

    Education is often described as the foundation of a healthy society. Politicians praise it, parents worry about it, and schools are expected to shape the next generation into capable adults. Yet the question we rarely ask is a simple one:

    Does our education system actually encourage thinking?

    In many ways, modern schooling rewards the opposite.

    Education as a system of obedience

    In Ireland, the Leaving Certificate and the CAO system determine much of a student’s future. A single set of exams decides which university course a student can enter and often what career path becomes possible. The result is predictable: students learn how to play the exam game.

    Instead of exploring ideas, questioning assumptions, or making intellectual mistakes, students become experts at recognising patterns in past papers and reproducing expected answers. Success is measured not by curiosity or creativity, but by how well someone can memorise and perform under pressure.

    The system produces excellent test-takers. It does not necessarily produce independent thinkers.

    Other countries have taken a different approach. Finland, for example, emphasises creativity, collaboration, and flexible educational pathways. Students are encouraged to experiment, question, and even fail. In such systems, mistakes are treated as part of learning rather than evidence of failure.

    The contrast reveals something deeper than educational policy. It reveals different attitudes toward risk and authority.

    Fear as a motivational tool

    Schools often rely on fear to maintain discipline and motivate students. Children are told that if they do not work hard enough, they will fail in life. Sometimes the warnings are even more dramatic: that they will end up unemployed, addicted to drugs or living under a bridge.

    Many teachers believe they are motivating students. But fear is a dangerous tool. Some children respond with compliance, but others respond with anxiety, perfectionism or despair.

    A child who is constantly worried about failure does not learn freely. Instead, they learn to avoid mistakes at all costs.

    When fear becomes the underlying emotional atmosphere of education, curiosity slowly disappears.

    The forgotten students: those who feel deeply

    Schools are designed around averages. They assume that children learn in similar ways, at similar speeds, and respond to pressure in similar ways.

    But children are not a homogeneous group.

    Some children are particularly sensitive to their surroundings. They process information deeply, ask difficult questions, and respond strongly to injustice or hypocrisy. These children are often curious and imaginative, but they can also struggle in rigid environments where conformity is rewarded.

    In such systems, sensitivity is often treated as weakness. A child who feels deeply may be told not to be so emotional, not to overthink, not to ask too many questions.

    Over time, many of these children learn a painful lesson: school is a place where they do not fit.

    The myth of “teaching critical thinking”

    Educators frequently claim that schools teach students to think critically. Yet critical thinking cannot simply be taught as a technical skill.

    True criticism requires something deeper: a critical spirit. It requires teachers and students who are willing to question assumptions, debate ideas openly, and tolerate uncertainty.

    In many classrooms, however, students are encouraged to repeat approved perspectives rather than challenge them. Discussions that appear critical sometimes function more like intellectual exercises in conformity.

    When questioning becomes selective, education begins to resemble indoctrination rather than inquiry.

    Education and the courage to think

    A healthy education system should cultivate something far more valuable than exam scores: intellectual courage.

    Students should be encouraged to explore ideas, challenge authorities, and pursue their own interests. They should learn that knowledge is not a set of fixed answers but a continuous process of discovery.

    Most importantly, they should feel safe enough to think freely.

    Education should not train students to memorise the correct answers. It should prepare them to ask better questions.

    Because in a rapidly changing world, the ability to question, adapt, and think independently will always matter more than the ability to pass a test.

  • Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants: Rethinking Age and Technology

    I wrote this piece six years ago, but reading it now, the core questions about digital inclusion and ageing still feel unresolved.

    Ageing in a Digital Society: Bridging the Digital Generational Divide

    Who is the first person you think of when you hear the term digital native?
    Most people imagine a young person who grew up in the digital age, someone for whom technology is a natural part of everyday life. Rarely do we picture an older adult who grew up in a world shaped by analogue media rather than digital information networks.

    Older adults are often described as digital immigrants, but is a simple age comparison enough to tell us anything meaningful about their relationship with technology? Not really. Age offers only a superficial explanation and often leads to the assumption that older adults resist technological change.

    The reality is more complex. Experience with technology and how it is used tell us far more about the digital divide than age alone. Older people are not necessarily resisting change. They are navigating a rapidly evolving technological landscape and making sense of it in their own way. Digital natives should invite digital immigrants into this world rather than assuming they will learn everything by themselves. Helping older adults participate in digital life benefits everyone.

    Surveys about technology use frequently group everyone over the age of 55 into a single category. This approach overlooks the diversity within older populations and reduces complex experiences to a single number.

    Finland and Ireland

    Ireland is often described as a young country in demographic terms, with around 13.4% of the population aged 65 and over. Finland, by contrast, is one of the oldest populations in Europe, with the fastest-growing age group being those aged 85 and over.

    Interestingly, Finland is also a leading country in the implementation of digital technologies in public services. Ireland, despite its younger population, has historically been less digitally integrated in many areas of public life.

    This suggests that digital inclusion is not simply about age, but about how societies approach technology. When older adults are treated as outsiders to technological change, they are more likely to be excluded from the systems being built around them. Too often, support takes the form of doing things for people rather than with them, which can reduce independence.

    Older adults who cannot use digital technologies may feel alienated from the society they helped build.

    In Finland, around 80% of senior citizens use the internet daily, while in Ireland the figure has been significantly lower. As more social and administrative activities move online, people who rarely use the internet risk becoming increasingly excluded from everyday life.

    Digitalisation and the Ageing Process

    Digitalisation has the potential to make ageing easier, not harder. Online services can simplify tasks such as banking, communication, healthcare access, and everyday administration. Yet older adults are often treated as an afterthought in the design of these systems.

    Older adults have different expectations and needs, but they still want to live independently and participate fully in society. Many are willing to learn new technologies, yet the devices and interfaces they encounter are rarely designed with their experiences in mind.

    Younger users often type quickly using both hands on small touchscreens. For older adults, small text, sensitive touchscreens, and complex menus can make even simple tasks frustrating. Constantly correcting errors or navigating unclear interfaces can quickly discourage use.

    Digitalisation has transformed almost every aspect of modern life, yet the ageing process is rarely considered during technology development. In the tech industry, people sometimes joke that you are considered “old” at forty. It is not surprising that the needs of older adults are often overlooked in design.

    Understanding the Digital World

    For many older adults, learning to use technology is not just about operating a device. They want to understand the broader changes happening around them.

    Keeping up with every development can be difficult, but building a basic understanding helps people feel more confident. What older adults often want is clear explanation without condescension.

    No one enjoys being treated as though they are back in school.

    Older adults want to accomplish tasks independently. They want to understand concepts such as the difference between computer memory and cloud storage in straightforward language. Technology should simplify life, not make it more confusing.

    Designing a More Inclusive Digital Society

    Digital services must be designed so that everyone can use them. This means access to support, opportunities to develop digital skills, and systems that take diverse needs into account.

    Digital inclusion is not just about access to devices. It also involves affordability, design, training, and support.

    Older adults often express concerns about privacy and sharing personal information online. While these concerns are understandable, fear-based messaging can discourage participation. Balanced education about digital safety is more helpful than alarmist warnings.

    Access also has a financial dimension. Many older people cannot afford the devices or internet connections required to participate fully in digital life. Without careful policy design, digitalisation risks widening inequalities.

    When designing digital systems, several factors should be considered:

    • training and support that help older adults maintain independence
    • affordable access to devices and internet services
    • recognition of diversity within older populations
    • age-friendly design, including readable text and accessible interfaces
    • clear instructions written in simple language
    • intuitive software that reduces unnecessary complexity
    • transition periods that allow time to adapt

    Older adults’ physical, social, and cognitive abilities must be taken into account when designing technology and the services built around it.

    A Society for All Ages

    The global population is ageing, and technology has the potential to support people in staying connected, active, and engaged throughout their lives. Digital tools can help people remain independent, access healthcare more easily, and continue working longer if they wish.

    However, digitalisation must be implemented carefully. If systems are designed without considering older adults, technology risks reinforcing ageism and inequality rather than reducing them.

    Inclusive design benefits everyone. When digital systems are built with a wide range of users in mind, they become easier and more effective for all.

    A truly digital society should not leave anyone behind.