Older Danish Men: Digital Practices of Care

Older people constitute the fastest growing segment of Internet users, as well as users of social media and smartphones (Eurostat, 2019). This chapter depart from the argument that digitalization of the Danish public sector in combination with the “active ageing” approach combine to constitute a biopolitical governance of old bodies. In this framework, I argue, ageing actively not only encompasses keeping mentally, bodily and socially fit, but also entails citizen participation through the use of digital technologies. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 23 Danish men three narrative vignettes are developed in order to explore the ways in which some old Danish men embody active ageing through practices of care and selfcare in relation to digital technologies. I show how the human-technology assemblage affords moments of attuning to self which can be understood as part of repertoires of what Nissen calls “caring masculinity” (2017). The chapter seeks to critically explore how age, masculinity and digital technologies assemble with the emergence of caring masculinities as a result. Inspired by feminist new materialism the chapter calls for relational and more-than-human explorations of and approaches to care, age and masculinity.