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The use of the Internet by the elderly in France
Blin MPC, Phippen AD
Advances in Network & Communication Engineering 3, pp48-56, 2006
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Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is more and more present in the daily life because a lot of services and products are being offered electronically. Some people, mainly the disabled and the elderly, are often excluded from these new technologies and a digital divide is established between the generations. This digital divide can be greater if people live in rural areas. Of course, the government takes some initiatives to try to decrease this gap. They develop Internet Public Access Points (IPAPs) which welcome everybody who wants to attend initiations to learn to use a computer. The work presented here aims to define if the elderly using the Internet are numerous and to identify what are the main factors that enable some elderly people to use the Internet. This paper includes two main parts. The first is about the use of computers and the Internet by people who are over 50 years old and living a rural area. The second is on the actions taken by the governments to decrease the digital divide.

Blin MPC, Phippen AD