The Association between Social Capital and Digital Competency in Older Adults: Focusing on the Moderating Role of Gender

Background: With the 4th Industrial Revolution, one’s ability to utilize digital programs and find relevant online information—digital competency—has gained greater importance. However, among older adults with limited digital experiences, rapid digitization can substantially challenge their lives and threaten their independence. Social capital can improve the digital competency of older adults by enabling them the acquisition of information and strengthening social bonds through their networks (Putnam, 2000). In addition, differences in life experiences and utilization of social capital across gender in South Korea suggest that female older adults may not benefit from social capital as much as male older adults do. However, very few studies have examined the influence of social capital on digital competency among older adults, and no studies have examined gender differences in this association. Guided by Putnam's social capital theory and status construction theory (Ridgeway, 1997), this study examines 1) the association between older adult's social capital and their digital competency and 2) the moderating role of gender in this association.

Methods: Data comes from South Korea’s “2022 Report on the Digital Gap Survey: The Elderly, representative data of the Korean older population, including a sample of 2,300 individuals aged 55 or over. A final sample includes 1,170 individuals aged 65 and above with no missing data on the focal measures. Social capital was measured with ten questions from an abbreviated version of the Internet Social Capital Scale (Williams, 2006). Five questions assess bridging social capital (e.g., interacting with people online/offline makes me feel like part of a larger community) and the other five questions capture bonding social capital (e.g., there is someone online/offline I can turn to for advice about making very important decisions). Digital competency was assessed using 12 items about one’s ability to set up digital environments using personal computers or mobile devices, to search for reliable information online, and to purchase items using an online simple payment system. Multivariate regression models are used to examine the relationship between two types of social capital and digital competency, and the moderating effect of gender was tested using model 1 of Hayes(2013) Process macro 4.2.

Results: We found that bridging social capital was positively associated with digital competency among older adults while bonding social capital was not. We also found that gender moderated the association between bridging social capital and digital competency among older adults; the positive association between bridging social capital and digital competency was significantly stronger for male older adults than female older adults.

Conclusions: Our finding validates Putnam's theory of social capital, which suggests that bridging social capital plays a useful role in the diffusion of information. The finding of gender differences supports status construction theory that suggests that interactions structured differently by gender confer advantages to men. This finding also reflects the vulnerable position of older women who have lived under South Korea's patriarchal system. We discuss policy implications to develop programs to strengthen bridging social capital for older adults and particularly promote older women's digital competency.