Digital Access and Remote anti-parenting: How it’s Possible to Alleviate the Digital Divide for Older People Left Behind in Rural Areas—–The case of Z village in Anhui Province

Abstract

In the era of digitalisation and informatisation, artificial intelligence influences and changes the cognitive and behavioural life of individuals, and the elderly are gradually becoming “digital refugees”and “digitally trapped people” in the era of artificial intelligence.Compared with the urban elderly, the rural left-behind elderly have a deeper degree of digital isolation, and exploring the logic of the formation of the digital divide among the rural left-behind elderly as well as the path to alleviate it has become the focus of this paper.The author takes the left-behind elderly in Z village in Anhui Province as the object of ethnographic observation, and interviews 10 left-behind elderly in depth.The study found that the formation of the digital divide among the rural left-behind elderly is closely related to the lack of digital equipment, closed digital thinking, and difficulties in digital feedback.It is necessary to alleviate the problem from two aspects of digital access and remote feeding,on the one hand, to promote access to digital infrastructure and access to the digital spirit of the elderly left behind;on the other hand, to strengthen the children and grandchildren of the elderly left behind to reverse remote digital parenting, with the help of information and communication technology to implement the reverse upbringing, and to promote the elderly left behind to take the initiative to access the digital equipment.This paper aims to truly intervene in the digital life of the rural left-behind elderly, based on interview communication, to accelerate digital spiritual access and intergenerational digital care for the rural left-behind elderly