The irreversible trend of the aging phenomenon has made the call for active aging increase, which has raised concerns about promoting older adults’ adaptation to the digital wave. However, previous research has paid scant attention to examining Internet use (IU) in older populations. To fill this chasm, this exploratory study used a nationally representative sample of 1,607 older adults from the 2021 Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) to examine the relationship between IU and related variables among older adults. Descriptive statistics displayed that the frequency of IU among older adults in China is not optimistic. Moreover, the multiple regression analysis, supplemented by dominance analysis (DA) revealed that personal education level (β = .244, d education level = .1065, p < .001), family use of the Internet (β = −.234, d family members’ internet usage = .0810, p < .001), age (β = .227, d age = .0667, p < .001), learning frequency, (β = .158, d frequency of learning = .0570, p < .001) and household registration (β = .137, d household registration = .0517, p < .001) are the significant predictive variables affecting older adults’ IU (the above variable order was ranked as per relative importance derived from DA in descending order). On this basis, the author put forward relevant suggestions for older adults and proposed future research directions.
Liangjie Fan (2025) studied this question.