Forms of social capital that foster mature adults’ online activity

Abstract

New literacies are an integral part of everyday activities in current societies. In Mexico there have been important initiatives to reduce the digital divide among the young by providing infrastructure and didactic resources through public schools. However, such efforts are not necessarily sufficient to guarantee successful experiences with new literacies, because infrastructure may reduce the digital divide but not the participation divide. We argue that in this country there is a considerable number of older adults who are not able to participate in new literacies and who would benefit from a collaborative learning approach for developing these skills. With this in mind, in this article we analyze the literacy practices of four adults who successfully learned to engage in new literacies later in life. Through a focused ethnography, we discuss the resources (material, technological and social) that enabled these adults to participate in different online activities that were relevant for their jobs, thereby increasing their potential to be financially independent. An important finding was the role of their social capital for acquiring these new skills, particularly the help provided by their younger, more technical savvy social connections. The support provided by the participants’ social connections was pivotal in achieving their goals. In particular, intergenerational collaboration between these adults and technologically-literate younger people from their environment proved to be an invaluable asset for their learning and acquiring the ethos of new literacies.