“It's Great to have Fun While Earning Small Money”: Gamified Apps in the Everyday Lives of Older Adults in Shanghai

While older adults are often overlooked as active participants in economic life, their ways of earning and earmarking money demonstrate their agency, creativity, and efforts to maintain social relations and financial autonomy. This paper draws on participant observation and interview data collected from five communities in Shanghai to explore why older adults (aged 60 or above) are highly attracted to money-earning apps. These apps offer monetary rewards or free goods through gamified and social activities such as mini games, video consumption, friend referrals, and physical exercise. The paper argues that gamified money-earning apps fulfill multiple aims of older adults by combining their desires for passing the time, entertainment, financial reward, and social interaction. Gamified money-earning apps are deeply embedded in the social lives of older adults in Shanghai. Through daily use of apps, they redefine and categorize their existing intimate relationships, build connections with new social networks, and shape their social practices.