ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Aging and Public Health
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1590684
This article is part of the Research TopicAging: Challenges and Opportunities for Inclusion and Active ParticipationView all 8 articles
The Impact of Internet Use on the Subjective Age of Older Adults: Evidence and Mechanisms
Provisionally accepted
- School of Government, Nanjing University, Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China
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Background: In the context of digitalization and population aging, leveraging Internet technology to reduce the subjective age of older adults helps to promote active aging and healthy aging, thereby contributing to the realization of the development of high-quality national undertakings for the aged.Methods: Data from the Chinese Longitudinal Aging Social Survey (CLASS) in 2020 were analyzed. Regression analyses and instrumental variable methods were employed to examine the main effects, heterogeneous effects, and mechanisms of Internet use on the subjective age of older adults. Latent class models and multinomial treatment effect models were used to explore the impact of Internet use patterns on the subjective age of older adults.Results: Internet use has a significant negative effect on the subjective age of older adults. This conclusion still holds after ruling out endogeneity using instrumental variables methods and conducting various robustness tests. The mechanism test shows that Internet use lowers subjective age by improving health status, self-efficacy, and social capital. Heterogeneity analysis demonstrates that the impact of Internet use on reducing subjective age is more significant among young-old individuals, those with non-agricultural hukou, and those in better economic conditions. Further analysis suggests that different Internet use patterns have varying effects on the subjective age of older adults.This research suggests that Internet use reduces subjective age among older adults. This effect is primarily realized through improvements in health, self-efficacy, and social capital and varies by age, hukou, economic conditions, and Internet use patterns. These findings contribute to the theoretical understanding of how Internet use can delay subjective aging and offer policy implications for enhancing the digital dividend for older adults.
Keywords: Subjective age, older adults, Internet use, Health Status, self-efficacy, social capital, Active aging, healthy aging
Received: 10 Mar 2025; Accepted: 26 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Kong and Zhu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Anqin Zhu, School of Government, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210023, Jiangsu Province, China
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