Effects of mobile Internet use on loneliness among older adults: Health status as a possible moderator?

Objective Mobile Internet use has profoundly affected people's traditional ways of living in the modern era. The elderly are a particular group of individuals. Although older people are less able to learn to use new things, the simplicity of mobile Internet use has lowered the “threshold” of mobile Internet use for older people. As a result, more older people are using mobile Internet and changing their lifestyles, which may impact mental health. Methods This study used the 2018 China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) data. In this study, 7110 older adults aged 60 and above were analyzed. We investigated whether mobile Internet use affects older people's loneliness using generalized linear regression models. Propensity score matching was used to prove the robustness of the findings, which dealt with the endogeneity of sample selection. A moderating effect was used to analyze whether health status could modify the relationship between mobile Internet use on loneliness in older adults. Heterogeneity analysis of mobile Internet use on loneliness among older adults was also conducted. Results The study found that 20.45% of older people felt lonely 1–2 days per week. In addition, 6.8% felt lonely 3–4 days per week, and 4.94% were lonely 5–7 days per week. A total of 848 elderly individuals used mobile Internet, representing 11.93% of the overall population. The results of generalized linear regression indicated that mobile Internet use negatively influenced loneliness among older people by −0.064. Analysis of the moderating mechanism showed that the coefficient of the moderating relationship between health status on mobile Internet use and loneliness was −0.150. Conclusion It has been found that mobile Internet use shows some potentials for loneliness reduction among older adults. Health status positively moderated the relationship between mobile Internet use and older adults' loneliness, with mobile Internet use further reducing their loneliness when they were in poor health or better health.