ICT Access and Use Among Older Adults and Caregivers in Qatar

In a region where the family has long been the primary safety net for the elderly, a new study from Qatar reveals that smartphones, WhatsApp groups, and Quran-reading apps are quietly reshaping how older Arabs connect with the world—and that ageism, both from society and from within, remains one of the most stubborn barriers keeping many seniors on the wrong side of the digital divide.

The research, published in Ageing International by a multidisciplinary team led by Dena Al-Thani of Hamad bin Khalifa University in Doha, is among the first to systematically examine how older adults in the Arab world access and use information and communication technologies (ICT). Through forty in-depth, semi-structured interviews conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, the researchers captured the experiences of twenty older adults aged 65 and above—half Qatari nationals, half non-Qatari Arabs—and twenty family caregivers drawn from the same communities. All interviews were conducted in Arabic over the phone and analyzed using a hybrid deductive-inductive thematic approach supported by NVivo software, with thematic saturation reached well before the final interviews were completed.

The technical picture that emerged is striking in its clarity: the smartphone is the undisputed gateway device. Eighteen of the twenty older participants reported using smartphones daily, followed by television at fourteen mentions, while only six discussed using a personal computer or laptop. WhatsApp text messaging was the dominant application, cited by eighteen participants not only for calls and messages but for group activities that reveal how deeply technology is woven into cultural and religious life. Several female participants described coordinated Quran-reading sessions organized through WhatsApp group chats, with one participant explaining, “Every Sunday, we read Surah Al-Baqarah with my Quran teacher in the WhatsApp group.” Another described a daily ritual anchored in her device: “I wake up in the morning, pray Fajr and read the morning Athkar, then rest a little, and then listen to the Quranic program and read the daily readings from the Quran on my phone.”

Beyond communication and worship, participants reported using government e-services, social media, video platforms, search engines, banking apps, and mobile games. Assistive technologies—canes, powered wheelchairs, hearing aids, fall detectors, GPS locators, and smart home systems—appeared as well, though less frequently, a pattern the researchers attribute less to availability and more to awareness: many older adults and caregivers simply frame “technology” as smartphones and communication tools, while viewing assistive devices as medicalized equipment reserved for severe dependency.

The methodological design of the study reflects the sensitivity required for research in Qatar’s culturally conservative environment. Participants were recruited through the Ehsan Centre, a national institution for the empowerment and care of older adults, using combined purposeful, convenience, and snowball sampling across four balanced subgroups: Qatari and non-Qatari older adults, and Qatari and non-Qatari caregivers. Ethical protocols were unusually careful. Consent was obtained verbally in plain language, sometimes read aloud to accommodate varying literacy levels, and researchers attempted to conduct consent discussions privately to guard against the generational deference that might lead older participants to defer to family members. All audio recordings were accessible only to the principal investigator and destroyed promptly after transcription.

What the interviews uncovered is a digital divide defined not by infrastructure but by human factors. The team organized its findings into three categories of influence: personal, environmental, and technological. On the personal side, attitude toward technology emerged forcefully. Six older adults and five caregivers reported outright refusal to adopt technology, often grounded in the belief that it was simply “not for their age.” One caregiver recalled her grandmother saying, “I don’t need this evolution in technology and all this advancement. How would I learn at this age?” Another older participant captured a poignant sense of being left behind: “We are interested to learn and curious to use the phone or send messages, but we don’t have the energy to learn! We missed the train.”

Physical and cognitive aging compounds these attitudes. Caregivers described fathers whose hand tremors made phones unusable, grandmothers whose eyes strained at screens, and a grandfather with Alzheimer’s who required his grandchildren’s help with basic tasks. But the study also surfaced a subtler psychological mechanism: self-ageism, the internalization of negative stereotypes about aging, which leads older adults to doubt their own competence and view technology as the province of the young. The researchers argue that this internalized bias can be as limiting as any technical barrier, eroding confidence even among older people who possess devices, family support, and functional skills.

Environmental factors proved equally consequential. Education emerged as a powerful enabler, with twenty caregivers and seven older adults highlighting its role—and illiteracy as a corresponding barrier. Notably, six of the older female participants had no formal schooling, a legacy of Qatar’s educational history, where modern schooling did not regularly include girls until the early 1960s. One caregiver described an inventive workaround born of necessity: her illiterate mother “uses WhatsApp and knows how to copy-paste. She sends voice messages or records things for us.”

Perhaps the study’s most nuanced finding concerns the double-edged role of family. In Qatari and wider Arab society, where multigenerational households and filial obligation remain central, family members—especially children and grandchildren—serve as the primary conduit to the digital world. But this support can shade into dependency. Caregivers frequently performed entire tasks on behalf of older relatives, sending messages or navigating government apps for them, effectively acting as “digital brokers” or even gatekeepers who decided when, how, and whether technology would be used. The researchers caution that such well-intentioned mediation, often driven by protective instincts or caregivers’ own ageist assumptions, can inadvertently prevent older adults from developing confidence and skills of their own. The caregiving burden itself also fell overwhelmingly on women—all ten Qatari caregivers in the sample were female—echoing global evidence that this informal digital labor is strongly feminized.

On the technological side, usability and accessibility dominated concerns. Ten participants described struggles navigating complex interfaces, particularly government and banking applications, with users compelled to call customer service for guidance. Privacy and security also weighed heavily: one caregiver installed surveillance cameras in her father’s room to monitor his medication, while an older male participant used smart home tools to control door locks remotely. Cost, interestingly, was not a significant barrier, with caregivers noting that smartphones and assistive technologies were affordable in Qatar’s economy.

The study’s implications reach beyond Qatar. The Arab region is aging rapidly—the United Nations projects that the global population over 60 will double by 2050, and nine Arab countries face imminent demographic transitions—yet research on digital inclusion for older adults in the region has been sparse. Qatar offers a uniquely instructive case: one of the fastest-aging populations in the Gulf, combined with an ambitious national digital transformation agenda, a National Health Strategy with healthy aging as a pillar, and pioneering e-accessibility legislation dating back to early ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The coexistence of strong policy investment with deeply rooted collectivist and religious values makes the Qatari experience a critical counterweight to Western-centric technology adoption models.

The researchers also push back against a core assumption of the digital divide literature: that non-use is always a deficit. Several participants deliberately limited their technology engagement, citing privacy concerns, satisfaction with existing routines, or religious and cultural commitments. Treating all non-use as a problem to be solved, the authors warn, risks a subtle form of digital coercion. Instead, they argue, genuine digital inclusion should mean supporting older adults’ informed, culturally grounded choices—including the right to disengage.

Their recommendations are concrete: training should be practical, device-specific, and anchored in the applications older adults actually use, with small-group sessions on smartphone basics, WhatsApp, religious apps, and government e-services ideally attended jointly by older adults and their caregivers so that families can learn age-supportive strategies rather than task-taking. Frontline professionals need training on ageism and family-mediated technology use, while designers require instruction in age-inclusive, Arabic-language interface development. Above all, the study concludes, combating self-ageism must be central to any strategy, because digital confidence in later life is not simply an individual trait but a relational, culturally situated capacity—one that flourishes when younger generations respond with patience rather than impatience, and when society stops telling its elders that the digital world is not meant for them.