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Digital Social Participation: Cases from Milan

By Shireen Walton, on 9 September 2019

Photo (CY BY) Shireen Walton

Social participation is among the most significant factors linked to health and wellbeing later in life. As a variety of studies have shown, loneliness (both social and emotional [i]) is one of the most pressing issues of ageing. Individuals, of all ages and backgrounds seek roles, a sense of belonging and purpose, but these needs becomes particularly pertinent following retirement, in ‘empty nest’ contexts of family members having moved away, or in conditions of limited physical mobility

One question we have been exploring in the ASSA project is what might be the significance of digital social participation, or rather, social participation that is facilitated by smartphones and digital practices. My ethnographic research in one inner-city neighbourhood in Milan reveals how smartphone practices play a significant role in facilitating social participation amongst a range of individuals and groups, helping to combat issues associated with loneliness and physical/social isolation, via on– and offline practices.

To illustrate with a couple of examples.

Ugo, 75 is a retired engineer lives with his wife, Anna, 70, a retired schoolteacher, on the 5thfloor of an apartment building where they have lived for the last 30 years. Due to a severe spinal condition that affected the use of his legs, Ugo hardly ever leaves the house. A combination of technologies, the Internet, historical fiction books, and daily interactions with his wife make up his social world where he spends the days in a wheelchair at home. From the moment he wakes up in the morning until he goes to bed, Ugo is connected to the Internet via the house WiFi. Ugo uses his smartphone primarily for communication with the wider social world – he wears his smartphone round his neck in a well-worn, knitted phone case that Anna had knitted for him a few Christmasses ago. Through WhatsApp, Ugo enjoys receiving photographs from family and friends. At one point, Ugo was added to a WhatsApp group of the apartment building that was set up by one of his neighbours, a Peruvian woman called Angela, as a communication porthole for residents of the building. Before long the group transformed ‘from below’ into a forum of sharing, posting, commenting, celebrating, via emojis, memes, screenshots, even poems. While Ugo is not active overly himself on the group, the messages he receives on his phone, in addition to wider notifications such as the news, bring him a certain pleasure throughout the day, making him feel connected to a certain buzz of being-in-the-world where his physical conditions had otherwise gradually removed him from.

Ugo also uses WhatsApp to communicate with his (family) doctor.  In one instance, Ugo had a rash that had developed on one of his legs. The first thing he thought of to do was to take a photograph of it on his smartphone and send the image to his doctor on WhatsApp. This led to a kind of informal digital consultation between the two. “We are close”, Ugo explained. “He (the doctor)is like a son or nephew to me. With WhatsApp we are like family – I know he is never far away if I need anything, which comforts me. From time to time he will ask if he can pop round to see me on his way home.”

In a different example, Rosalba, 69, originally from the region of Abruzzo in central Italy is a retired secondary school teacher. She lives with her husband (75), a retired electrician, and their dog. Rosalba found the adjustment to full-time retirement a difficult transition, and missed the sociality of her professional role and buzz of school life. She soon sank into daily routines within the home; household chores, shopping, cooking for her and her husband, a few outings. But without real purpose, Rosalba found herself drifting through the days and weeks. Before long, her home space became a kind of benign ‘prison’, and she found herself feeling suffocated by emotional isolation and loneliness. One of Rosalba’s former colleagues from her school who she sees regularly at the supermarket recommended that she should come along to a women’s choir that meets once a week in the neighbourhood. Rosalba found aspects of the choir refreshing and stimulating; the multi-cultural and cross-generational aspect resembled what she had experienced at work at the school. The choir’s WhatsApp group, in particular, was extremely active. The women share photos, videos, song lyrics, emojis full of hearts, flowers, shooting stars, laughs, cries, thumbs up and down, amid a broad repertoire of digital-visual expressions of emotion. After a year, Rosalba found that she had discovered a new lease of life through the choir and its associated fora of sociality, including the WhatsApp group. The stream of messages that flows between the women and the immersive, ‘affective community’ it forms, comforts Rosalba in her day-to-day life, and she became to feel less alone throughout the days. Retirement now feels like something Rosalba can participate in and even shape, as she begins to carve out spaces for herself and her need for collectivity. She has developed her singing voice in expressing powerful and politically and emotionally-loaded lyrics of defiance, human solidarity, sisterhood, in a range of languages and dialects, and this empowerment appears to have seeped into other aspects of her life, including how she participates more actively in her social relationships, and in trying out new hobbies such as walking groups. Ageing and retiring with smartphones has been a gradual but creative and rejuvenating experience for Rosalba, and digital communications have facilitated and boosted her social participation.

For others in the neighbourhood, digital social participation can be an important way of participating in community life for other reasons. Angela (45) is from Lima, Peru. She lives with her husband and their 12-year old son in the same apartment block as Ugo mentioned above, working as a part-time teaching assistant in one of the local public schools. Angela describes her life with her family as ‘quiet and closed’. She is not particularly sociable or confident in public settings, and some of this she attributes to a difficult background and upbringing in the low-income neighbourhood her family lived in in Lima. She is particularly concerned about street crime and violence and the safety of her son growing up in Milan. Although she is reasonably active during the day between her job, the food shopping, and taking care of the family at home, Angela avoids going out at night. Through digital forms of engagement however, Angela has enhanced her social participation in the community in a manner she feels comfortable with – from the comfort and safety of her home. She participates enthusiastically on the apartment block WhatsApp group she set-up for neighbours in the building – sharing friendly messages and greetings on festive days – and is a member of various groups tied to her son’s school such as parents’ groups on WhatsApp and Facebook, which keeps her both informed and feeling involved. When one of her Peruvian friends recommended a weekly women’s sewing group, Angela joined and became an active participant on the WhatsApp group. The social worlds contained within Angela’s smartphone constitute some of the main sources of Angela’s present social life. Her social participation is both offline and online, but is most frequently played out via the smartphone.

Engaging socially in digital forms can be important in a variety of contexts and at any age. Although the politics and practices of inclusion/exclusion via digital practices are far from simple matters, requiring delicate critical and contextual attention, my research in Milan highlights how smartphone-facilitated sociality can modulate experiences of loneliness, isolation and/or social exclusion amongst a range of people, including older adults and migrants in the city, forming an overall central part of how socialities are crafted in this context.

References:

[i]  De Jong Gierveld, J. & Van Tilburg, T. (2006). A 6-item scale for overall, emotional and social loneliness: Confirmatory tests on survey data. Research on Aging, Vol. 28 (5): 582-598.

 

Smartphones,’addictions’ and connections in Italy

By Shireen Walton, on 14 May 2019

Photo (CC BY) Shireen Walton

Last week during one of the women’s group activities at the Multicultural Centre I have been regularly attending in Milan I was asked if I could take a photo for one of the Italian women, Maria, in her early 70s, who volunteers at the Centre three days per week. Maria had just been found on Facebook by an old school friend and wanted to instantly send her a nice photo of herself ‘here and now’ on Facebook messenger to acknowledge and build the connection. Maria spent some minutes deciding where to pose, and how to fix her appearance, to the extent that it cut short in an abrupt manner the end of the meeting. Maria’s desire to connect across time/space there and then was so strong that the barries between the smartphone’s buzzing social universes and the physical social setting of the Centre had crossed over, with mixed responses by others present.

Centro Multiculturale, Milan. Photo (CC BY) Shireen Walton

Such examples of smartphone ‘intrusions’ into a social scene are not uncommon, and go hand in hand with a range of attitudes and judgements – that are often expressed and shared, ironically in smartphone-circulated memes, cartoons and photos. During my time in Italy a range of popular mantras reflect the alleged intrusion that digital connectivity feel poses to life: ‘we are all addicted!’ ‘just look at people on the metro – all face down, scrolling away, ignoring everyone and everything around them’, ‘at a party, no-one speaks to each other anymore, it’s crazy!’ and so on..

As an anthropologist, I find the worries and anxieties that some people have about smartphones – their over-reliance, seeming addiction or just about their general usage, part of the curiosity in exploring what the smartphone is, and how people describe it in relation to their everyday practices.  Peeling back the layers of these discourses, one sees the spectrum of practices that smartphones are implicated in in individuals’ lives, from connection with family, friends and community, to tools for navigating bureaucracy, citizenship, and health. All the while, the digital infrastructures that form and shape the basis for these interactions and practices (wifi, roaming data, connection speed…) form a part of people’s contextual and sited experience with their smartphone in daily life.

The notion of the ‘switched-on-self’, the boundaries between digital and non-digital lives has been a more general theme in my research and participant observation in my fieldwork with Italians and migrant groups in Milan. The correlation between being on/off in the person’s mind/body recalls and in some sense plays into wider global social trends like the flourishing of mindfulness and yoga that are posited by many people I speak with here as opportunities for peace – ‘places’ and practices to go to and do to ourselves and our bodies to ‘switch off’ from our busy, including constantly connected, digital lives.

Outdoor yoga in the park in the Milan fieldsite; moments for digital detoxing. Photo (CC BY) Shireen Walton

Throughout my research I have noticed how the issues of technology addiction and connection have been defined along age lines. At AUSER, a nation-wide NGO association for active ageing in Italy with a headquarters in my fieldsite, and Milan-based organisation Grey Panthers that is concerned with ageing and technology, what I have deduced is that while facilitating digital connectedness is a core policy concern aimed at older people (senior/anziani) [1], while policies and initiatives being designed to tackle digital addiction have been identified an issue prominent amongst the young (giovani) [2]. The ASSA project’s interest in middle-age has helped nuance these discourses about young and older populations by looking at how people live their lives with smartphones – including between ‘old’ and ‘young’ categories of age.

To take some examples. Alberto is 60, by policy standards he is neither old nor young. He still works full-time as a history school teacher at the local public school, and is an active volunteer in local community events. Reflecting upon his relationship with his smartphone Alberto describes how he does not consider himself particularly technologically savvy, nor up-to-date with regards to apps. However, from the moment he wakes up (first his alarm, followed by checking WhatsApp, Facebook and then email notifications from bed) he is attaccato (‘attached’) to his phone. He says he is mindful of his pupils’ usage, particularly in the classroom, but confesses to regularly checking his phone during school hours himself. He is in touch with his daughter in her 20s who is searching for work, as well as with the left-wing community organisations he co-runs with friends, monitoring Facebook pages dedicated to spreading awareness of local history and resistance to Fascism, particularly in light of the current policies of the present Interior Minister Matteo Salvini’s far-right anti-migrant stance. Alberto’s smartphone is a reflection of his social universe, and this visibly engagements and investments with this smartphone.

Photo (CC BY Shireen Walton)

Meanwhile Davide, 64, is retired, on a state pension. He volunteers running one of the community allotments in the neighbourhood several days a week. Davide uses his smartphone regularly. It is central to the way he runs the allotments, communicates with the community, and maintains his social life as a single, retired, socially-active man in his mid-60s. Davide also does not consider himself a tech-savvy person. Speaking about apps and app usage he, like many other people I find, explains: “I don’t have any apps really… I rarely use any…” We then discover together, by observation with the phone, that he does have a number of apps, and in fact uses a number of these frequently – many of the social media apps, an app for his gym, an app for the weather, apps that identify what certain plants are… He is not ‘addicted’, but he is reliant, reasonably heavily, on his phone.

Milan neighbourhood community allotment. Photo (CC BY) Shireen Walton

Smartphone practices for some like Alberto and Davide are involved in reflecting and shaping individual lives, social identities and wider offline practices. However, digital infrastructure and connecting to the Internet also plays a significant part in explaining smartphone reliance, and people’s conceptualisation of their phone. In some cases, loss of Internet connection (due to low reception or running out of credit) can be annoying, humiliating, and harmful.

Adla from Tanzana is in her mid 30s, and has a 1-year old daughter. She has been in Milan for a year and a half. Her daughter was born in the city, but has been told by authorities that her daughter is not yet old enough to attend nursery. Adla explains how she does not feel entitled to take part in certain social / support groups since her daughter is too young to go to school and she is uncomfortable attending the mothers groups in here area that are a big source of community life here but which are dominated by Arabic-speaking Egyptian women, which makes Adla feel like the ‘wrong kind of foreigner’ with the ‘wrong kind of languages’, being Tanzanian, speaking Swahili and some English, but limited Italian. Adla relies on her smartphone to navigate the geography of the city, including finding relevant administrative offices, using Google Translate to communicate in basic Italian, and maintain connection with her family – her sister in Sweden, her husband is working in another country in Africa, and the rest of her family are back in Tanzania. Adla does not have Wi-Fi in the one-bedroom apartment where she lives, so uses data roaming through her basic monthly social services allowance to access her familiar social universe. This connection to her smartphone as a physical thing holds intense meaning for her and her ability to navigate her way through each day. Even when the data has run out and it is not connected it is of comfort to Adla in the absence of physical, familiar, offline social life. Unlike Alberto or Davide, whose smartphones reflect their wider activity and presence in the neighbourhood, Adla’s smartphone life takes on heightened significance where her offline life is marred by insecurity and limited physical participation.

In a final example, an Egyptian family in the neighbourhood have been applying for a visa to visit their immediate family in the US who they have not seen for several years. The couple, in their mid-40s, work full-time in Milan as a baker and cleaner respectively, and their teenage children attend local public schools. Every year they apply for entry to the US via a lengthy application system. The family do not have WiFi at home and have limited data roaming on their phones. Upon receiving a letter in the post saying that they need to check the status of their visa application on the US state department website within a specific time period, the couple try to do this in the hours when they are not working, and due to their long working hours that leaves little time to stay for long periods of time in Internet cafes. The site keeps crashing and needs refreshing, and entering the application details in English, a language neither of them speak, is time-consuming. They repeat the process over and over again on their basic smartphones, at times in public free WiFi zones in the city, or at home with their limited data, to no avail. Upon learning about their experience with this process I become involved – the couple ask me to assist with internet access and English translation. Eventually, we discover that their application has been refused, to the couple’s stoic acceptance. It is but a small anecdote in this family’s larger experience of social stress, living on the margins of society in Milan as a close-knit ‘stranieri’ (foreign) family making do in their current set-up, where smartphones, Internet connections, are all part and parcel of broader lived realities; practices, experiences and desires.

In sum, the relationship between the smartphone, and what is often viewed as addiction or social rudeness – particularly amongst youth – are important themes to nuance further, along broader demographic lines. Understanding how and how much different people, of different ages and socio-cultural backgrounds, use and shape their lives around in a given context in relation to smartphones may well point to technological addiction, ill-health, and too much screen time, but it also highlights how central the phone is as a thing itself – for many, an object of attachment, including and beyond its switched on capacity for digital connection. A wide range of factors stemming from broader social contexts thus situate the smartphone holistically as an object of everyday life.

Notes and references:

[1] Auser’s mission statement is aimed at ‘promoting the active ageing of the elderly and enhancing their role in society’, which includes technological education and encouraged usage for wellbeing and for a positive impact on lifestyle. In the University of the Third Age for over 60s that Auser runs through a network of volunteers, ‘technological awareness’, as well as lectures on the dangers of data and privacy issues form a part of a broader curriculum on a wide variety of topics from horticulturalism to cooking to tourism and so on.

[2] De Pasquale, C., Sciacca, F., Hichy, Z. (2017). ‘Italian Validation of Smartphone Addiction Scale Short Version for Adolescent and Young Adults’ in Psychology 08(10): 1513-1518.