“Pushing the wrong key:” marginalized older adults navigating scam encounters as critical data literacies

Purpose This paper examines how older adults from a low-income urban community who participated in a basic digital literacy course experienced online scams. The study aims to show how older adults interpret, navigate, and interrogate scam encounters in an educational context. It argues that scams are not the result of isolated bad actors but connected to the larger system of datafication. Further, teaching about online scams is an important aspect of critical data literacies. Design/methodology/approach This qualitative study draws from data collected over 18 months, including observation of the digital literacy course and 15 interviews. Using agential realism as a framework, data analysis focused on how the older adults made sense of scams as socio-material phenomena. Findings Findings explore three themes: “pushing the wrong key:” scams as emerging through the datafied body; “doing bad things,” scams as the manipulation of identities intensified through generative AI, and “no more than three minutes:” scams creating a need for never-ending vigilance and bureaucratic labor. Research limitations/implications Due to the relatively small sample size of this qualitative, community-based study, research results lack generalizability. Practical implications Implications provide specific examples of how older adults’ sense-making about scams, as emerging critical data literacies, can be further developed in community-based settings like libraries to help avoid internet fraud and misinformation. Originality/value This paper meets a gap in the literature on how low-income older adults make sense of and navigate scams from an equity focused asset-based approach.