Wired Wisdom: How to Age Better Online

Book talk and joint exploration by Professor Eszter Hargittai, University of Zurich.

People 60 and over are the internet’s fastest growing demographic. Many myths surround older adults’ online behavior such as lacking in skills and being constantly duped. Yet research shows that many in this age group are savvy and are in fact less likely to fall for online scams than younger adults.

In this talk, Eszter Hargittai shares some key insights from her book Wired Wisdom with John Palfrey about how older adults are incorporating digital media into their lives and what they, their support networks, policy makers, and companies can do to make these experiences more beneficial.

Wall Street Journal has selected the book as one of The Best Books of 2025 on Healthy Aging.

Empirical social science – a joint exploration with Eszter Hargittai

What are our prospects for a contemporary science of knowing the social and the individual? Are there new opportunities, or do we mainly see threats? Nearly twenty years ago Savage and Burrows (2007) warned of the coming crisis of empirical sociology: The sample survey and the qualitative interview had been outpaced by “knowing capitalism”. As Law, Ruppert and Savage (2011) noted, the sample survey had been the pre-eminent tool in an era of quantification, and social science stood to lose its privileged standing in society as the premier institution responsible for knowing the social. Savage has since argued that one response would be to engage sociology in the act of description “to open up vistas of wonder, concern, empathy and horror which are vital for renewing the sociological imagination” (2024). So where are we now… has the crisis come and gone, has it intensified or changed form? What kinds of descriptive vistas - of wonder, concern, empathy, horror – are now possible, and for what purposes should we pursue them?

Eszter Hargittai will provide an initial reflection in response to these questions, after which we facilitate an open discussion on the role of descriptive empirical research in media and communication research.

Eszter Harfittai Bio

Eszter Hargittai is a professor and holds the Chair in Internet Use & Society in the Department of Communication and Media Research at the University of Zurich. She is the author or editor of six books, most recently, Wired Wisdom: How to Age Better Online (University of Chicago Press, 2025) co-authored with John Palfrey. Hargittai’s research focuses on the social and policy implications of digital media with a particular interest in digital inequality, how differences in people’s digital skills influence what they do online, and how these may translate into changes in life chances. Her work has received awards from numerous professional associations. She is an elected fellow of the International Communication Association where she is currently Fellows Chair, and an external member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Her research has been supported by the US National Science Foundation, the MacArthur, Sloan, Markle, Dan David, and Russell Sage Foundations, Microsoft Research, Google, Facebook, Merck, and Nokia, among others. Hargittai holds a B.A. in Sociology from Smith College and a Ph.D. in Sociology from Princeton University.

Programme

References

Law, J., Ruppert, E., & Savage, M. (2011). The double social life of methods.

Savage, M. (2024). In defence of sociological description: A ‘world-making’ perspective. The British Journal of Sociology, 75(3), 360–365. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-4446.13083

Savage, M., & Burrows, R. (2007). The Coming Crisis of Empirical Sociology. Sociology, 41(5), 885–899. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038507080443