Digital Divide As Social Inequality Among Older Americans and Its Impacts on Health and Well-Being

Background and Purpose: With multiple health and psycho-social benefits, and a means of accessing a wide range of social goods and services, the Internet has become an important part of American older adults. Studies on Internet use commonly found that typically older, less educated, and economically disadvantaged individuals are likely to experience limited or even no access to digital life. In this vein, digital inequality among older population deserves a place alongside with traditional inequality issues in social justice discussions. While majority of studies on digital divide among older Americans focuses on materialistic hardships, little have paid attention to potential impacts of socially constructed stereotypes toward aging on digital divide across various older adult groups. Using advantages from longitudinal data from nationally representative sample of older Americans, current study aims to examine combined effects of psychological factors and socioeconomic status on older adults’ Internet access. Then, this project expands its scope to examine how such inequality in Internet access could bring health disparities to disadvantaged older adult groups.

Methods: The current project relies on data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), a biennial longitudinal study using nationally representative sample of older Americans age 50 and older. Each of two parts in this project will employ data sets from different HRS waves between year of 2002 and 2014 in consideration of natures of research questions and methods. For first part of the presentation, current study examines determinants of Internet use (1=Yes, 0=No), employing logistic regression model with the HRS 2014 cross-sectional data. In second part, the study examines difference of median year of having mild cognitive impairment employing two different survival analysis methods and level of depression between Internet users and non-users with structural equation modeling, both using 2002-2014 longitudinal data from the HRS.

Results: For determinants of Internet use among older adults, the study found that older adult groups with the lowest socioeconomic (SES) index score (vs. the highest SES, <.001), Hispanic ethnicity (vs. White, <.001) groups have showed significantly lower probability to have Internet access. Negative perception toward aging was an independent predictor of no Internet use (<.001) while controlling for other excoriates. For Internet use groups, it is estimated that about half of them will have mild cognitive impairment (MCI) at age of 87, while non-users’ median age for having MCI was 83 (<.001). Use of social networking services via Internet negatively associates with depression among older adults (<.05).

Implication: The study adds a new finding that stereotypes on ageing might have an impact on older Americans’ digital divide, in addition to the known materialistic disadvantages. Furthermore, we may not overlook the impact of digital divide since it could bring health disparities to the older adults who are not able to have Internet access. Policy options to provide affordable Internet to socially disadvantaged older population needs to be implemented. Moreover, such policy needs to carefully consider how various psychological and cultural factors could hinder older adults from sharing benefits from digital life.