Digital exclusion and cognitive impairment in older people: findings from five longitudinal studies

Yuge Wang · Zhigang Wu · Lanzhi Duan · Sijia Liu · Ruzhao Chen · Tao Sun +4 more

55 citations0/0 files storedBMC Geriatrics

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Technology Use by Older Adults Dementia and Cognitive Impairment Research Health disparities and outcomes

Abstract

OBJECTIVES: Older people are more likely to have digital exclusion, which is associated with poor health. This study investigated the relationship between digital exclusion and cognitive impairment in older adults from 23 countries across five longitudinal surveys. DESIGN AND MEASUREMENTS: Digital exclusion is defined as self-reported non-use of the Internet. We assessed cognitive impairment on three dimensions: orientation, memory, and executive function. We used generalized estimation equations fitting binary logistic regression with exchangeable correlations to study the relationship between digital exclusion and cognitive impairment, and apply the minimum sufficiently adjusted set of causally directed acyclic graphs as the adjusted variable. SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS: We pooled a nationally representative sample of older adults from five longitudinal studies, including the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal study (CHARLS), the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA), the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), the Mexican Health and Ageing Study (MHAS) and the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in European (SHARE). RESULTS: We included 62,413 participants from five longitudinal studies. Digital exclusion varied by country, ranging from 21.69% (SHARE) in Denmark to 97.15% (CHARLS) in China. In the original model, digital exclusion was significantly associated with cognitive impairment in all five studies. In the adjusted model, these associations remained statistically significant: CHARLS (Odds ratio [OR] = 2.81, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.84-4.28, ELSA (1.92 [1.70-2.18]), HRS(2.48[2.28-2.71), MHAS (1.92 [1.74-2.12]), and SHARE (2.60 [2.34-2.88]). CONCLUSION: Our research shows that a significant proportion of older people suffer from digital exclusion, especially in China. Digital exclusion was positively correlated with cognitive impairment. These findings suggest that digital inclusion could be an important strategy to improve cognitive function and reduce the risk of cognitive impairment in older adults.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 55 citations exist upstream.

References

2014Cohort Profile: the Health and Retirement Study (HRS)2022Digital exclusion and functional dependence in older people: Findings from five longitudinal cohort studies 2020Use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Devices Among the Oldest-Old: Loneliness, Anomie, and Autonomy 2018Digital Exclusion Among Mental Health Service Users: Qualitative Investigation 2017The Pathophysiology of Perceived Social Isolation: Effects on Health and Mortality 2016How older adults with mild cognitive impairment relate to technology as part of present and future everyday life: a qualitative study 2019A research tool for measuring non-participation of older people in research on digital health 2021Internet Use and Cognitive Functioning in Later Life: Focus on Asymmetric Effects and Contextual Factors

Cited by

2024Positive association between Internet use and mental health among adults aged ≥50 years in 23 countries 2025Ten-year trends of the digital divides and its effect on healthy aging among older adults in China from 2011 to 2020 2025Determinants of depressive symptoms in multinational middle-aged and older adults 2024Digital Exclusion and Depressive Symptoms among Older People: Findings from Five Aging Cohort Studies across 24 Countries

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.