Playing to Be Heard: Rethinking Participation in Digital Ageing Through Governance-oriented Gamification

Abstract

As health and social care becomes increasingly digital-first, “participation” for older adults is often treated as a simple question: did they sign up, can they use it, and do they follow the rules? This paper argues that such a view misses what happens in everyday life. Many older people are not simply “non-compliant” or “low literacy”; they are trying to make sense of confusing systems, relying on family or community support to get things done, and sometimes stepping back when digital services feel risky, unfair, or hard to trust. If these experiences matter, then methods are needed that do more than measure uptake or performance. Older adults need ways to explain frustration, dependency, workaround, and refusal as part of living with digital-first systems. To address this gap, the paper proposes gamification not as a behaviour-change tool, but as a structured, low-pressure participatory format for sense-making and collective reflection around digital governance. Used in this way, gamification may help make visible where people get stuck, how support networks shape access, and what kinds of responsibility and control digital systems silently place on them. The paper develops this as a conceptual and methodological proposition, outlining a preliminary workflow, key design principles, and potential application scenarios rather than reporting a tested intervention or prototype. In doing so, it argues that digital participation should be understood not only as use, but as a lived and negotiated relationship with digital ageing governance.