Cohort Differences in Internet Use Amongst Older Adults : Evidence from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA)

Knowles, Bran and Steptoe, Andrew and Fledderjohann, Jasmine and Singh, Aneesha and Swarbrick, Caroline and Rogers, Yvonne and Harper, R.H.R. (2026) Cohort Differences in Internet Use Amongst Older Adults : Evidence from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA). In: CHI '26: Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems :. ACM, ESP, pp. 1-18. ISBN 9798400722783

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Abstract

While much has been written on the age-based digital divide, more understanding of the relative importance of factors affecting use of the internet is needed. This paper analyses nationally representative data from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) to understand older adults’ frequency of using the internet and reasons for not using it more. We examine the extent to which health, lifestyle, and sociodemographic correlate with the pronounced age gradient in not using the internet. We find that the reasons why people in the 80+ cohort did not use the internet more are not qualitatively different from the reasons people aged 50–64 or 65–79 did not use it more, but do differ between rare and regular users. We also find that of the myriad factors that are potentially relevant, only cognitive ability, educational attainment, and employment status were robustly associated with the age gradient in internet use.