Does Smartphone Use Make Older Adults Feel Younger? A Cross-Sectional Online Survey during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Tomoko Ikeuchi (), Sakiko Itoh, Hiroyasu Miwa, Kentaro Watanabe and Tomoko Wakui
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Tomoko Ikeuchi: Human Care Research Team, Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Gerontology, Tokyo 173-0015, Japan
Sakiko Itoh: Department of Genome Informatics, Graduate School of Medicine, Osaka University, Osaka 565-0871, Japan
Hiroyasu Miwa: Service Value Augmentation Research Team, Human Augmentation Research Center, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Chiba 277-0882, Japan
Kentaro Watanabe: Service Value Augmentation Research Team, Human Augmentation Research Center, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Chiba 277-0882, Japan
Tomoko Wakui: Human Care Research Team, Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Gerontology, Tokyo 173-0015, Japan

IJERPH, 2023, vol. 20, issue 3, 1-9

Abstract: Subjective age (i.e., how old one feels) has been found to be a biopsychosocial marker of aging. This study examined the associations between subjective age and the frequency of information and communication technology (ICT) usage by older adults. Data were collected via an online survey conducted in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study analyzed responses from participants aged 65 to 89 ( M = 71.9, SD = 3.9) who resided in Japan ( N = 1631, 52.8% female). Subjective age was indexed by asking participants to specify in years how old they felt. Proportional discrepancy scores (PDS) were calculated to indicate younger or older subjective age and were used as an independent variable. Participants were asked about the frequency of computer, smartphone, flip phone, tablet, and social networking service (SNS) use. Two-thirds of the participants (63.6%) reported feeling younger than their actual age. Nearly 90% reported using computers for more than 2–3 days a week, while 64.3% reported smartphone use, 22.9% reported flip phone use, and 36.6% reported SNS use. Logistic regression analyses revealed that a lower PDS (i.e., feeling younger) was associated with a significantly higher frequency of smartphone use (OR: 0.77; 95% CI: 0.60, 0.98) after adjusting for potential confounders. No such association was found for computer, flip phone, tablet, or SNS use. Our study found that feeling younger was associated with a higher frequency of smartphone use. The daily use of smartphones may have helped older adults stay in touch with family and friends and obtain the information that they needed, which may have contributed to better psychological well-being outcomes, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Keywords: subjective age; ICT use; psychological well-being; older adults (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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