Vulnerable people’s digital good in four life domains: Insights and future recommendations

This article explores vulnerable people’s experiences of the digital and its potential for ‘good’ across four life domains and four digital inclusion levels. Conceptually, it is framed around the notions of the digital good, vulnerability and intersectionality. Methodologically, the study was conducted in 2024 using a social lab framework and the idea of a ‘social lab’ space, in which 19 older people with intersecting vulnerabilities creatively shared insights into their experiences of good aspects of the digital. By combining manual and NVivo-assisted thematic and discourse analysis with visual analysis, we found that the digital good coexists with challenges in the digital domain, and that participants emphasised challenges more than positive experiences in all life domains except education and training. Regarding interventions, they recommended practical assistance, skills training and other support from those with lay knowledge or professional expertise, while discursively placing responsibility for support-seeking on themselves as individual users.