Using data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study, this research investigates how post-retirement employment influences older people’s expenditure in urban China. By broadening the understanding of post-retirement employment behaviour from a consumer welfare perspective, this study expands the literature on retirement consumption and provides theoretical explanations, empirical insights and policy recommendations. The findings reveal that post-retirement employment behaviour reduces urban retirees’ household expenditure and has a more significant effect on men than on women, but this effect diminishes as consumption levels rise. Increasing income, promoting social participation and improving subjective health outcomes are all potential channels through which post-retirement employment can affect consumption. Further analysis shows two main reasons why post-retirement employment reduces older people’s expenditure: first, the increase in subjective health levels resulting from post-retirement employment reduces healthcare expenditure; second, post-retirement employment does not promote social participation and self-rated health for all consumption levels and all genders of retirees – it also decreases expenditure. Preliminary evidence suggests that internet use positively moderates the negative impact of post-retirement employment on older people’s expenditure. These findings provide policy implications for retirement policies and the promotion of the silver economy.

As Western society becomes increasingly digitally dependent and many older adults actively engage in the online world, understanding the experiences of those who largely do not use digital technology in their daily lives is crucial. Individual interviews were conducted (pre-pandemic) with 23 older adults who, based on self-identification, did not regularly use digital technology, exploring how their experiences as limited digital technology users may have impacted their daily lives. An iterative collaborative qualitative analysis demonstrated three main themes: internet concerns, frustrations with digital technology, and conflicting motivators to use digital technology. Findings suggest that addressing digital concerns and providing effective digital skill learning opportunities may encourage some older adults to become more digitally engaged. However, as people, including older adults, can be uninterested in using these technologies, organizations and institutions should work to offer ways to support people of all ages who are not engaged online.

People tend to spend more time in front of their screens, which can have repercussions on their social life, physical and mental health. This topic has mainly been studied in adolescents. Therefore, our study tested associations between the use of video games, social media and online dating leading to sexual relations (ODLSR), and symptoms of anxiety and/or depression among adults aged 25 and over. Data from the 2018 TEMPO cohort study were analyzed (n = 853, 65.0% women, aged 25–44, with an average of 37.4 ± 3.7 years). The exposure variables were as follows: (a) the frequency of video game use, (b) time spent on social media and (c) ODLSR. Data were analyzed using multivariate logistic regression models, adjusted for participants’ sociodemographic characteristics as well as history of mental health problems. Among the participants, 8.6% presented symptoms of anxiety and/or depression. An association between ODLSR and symptoms of anxiety and/or depression was found, especially among women. The results of this study will facilitate the improvement of support and care for adults, especially those with symptoms of anxiety and/or depression using dating applications. Future studies should investigate the determinants of using online meeting websites and their relationship with the occurrence of psychological difficulties in longitudinal studies to establish causality.

Heterogeneity in the course of posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) following a major life trauma such as childhood sexual abuse (CSA) can be attributed to numerous contextual factors, psychosocial risk, and family/peer support. The present study investigates a comprehensive set of baseline psychosocial risk and protective factors including online behaviors predicting empirically derived PTSS trajectories over time. Females aged 12–16 years (N = 440); 156 with substantiated CSA; 284 matched comparisons with various self-reported potentially traumatic events (PTEs) were assessed at baseline and then annually for 2 subsequent years. Latent growth mixture modeling (LGMM) was used to derive PTSS trajectories, and least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) logistic regression was used to investigate psychosocial predictors including online behaviors of trajectories. LGMM revealed four PTSS trajectories: resilient (52.1%), emerging (9.3%), recovering (19.3%), and chronic (19.4%). Of the 23 predictors considered, nine were retained in the LASSO model discriminating resilient versus chronic trajectories including the absence of CSA and other PTEs, low incidences of exposure to sexual content online, minority ethnicity status, and the presence of additional psychosocial protective factors. Results provide insights into possible intervention targets to promote resilience in adolescence following PTEs.

This article discusses how three Finnish regional newspapers represented older people's digital competences and internet use in their daily coverage. The study explored media representations from the perspective of social representations and sought to answer the following questions: In what kind of internet user roles do the articles portray older people? How and with what kind of images do the articles portray older people's digital competences in various internet user roles? How are older people positioned at a societal level in the articles? The analysis revealed that older people were portrayed as incompetent outcasts of a digitalised society. However, there was a clear difference according to whether older people were portrayed as recipients of public services or as consumers of private services. As targets of public services, older people were predominantly portrayed as happy targets, who welcomed the services provided for them. This result can be interpreted as part of the promotion of government digitalisation policies.

The Internet has played important roles in driving political changes around the world. Why does it help to topple political regimes in some places but improve the quality of governance in others? We found Internet usage in general leads to citizens’ distrust in political institutions. Different political environments, however, can condition such trust-eroding impacts of the Internet in significantly different ways. A democracy enables citizens to connect their online behaviors and offline expression and organization, releasing political discontent while facilitating state–society communication. On the contrary, by restricting various forms of off-line expression, authoritarian regimes drive Internet-active citizens' discontent and distrust to higher levels. We use the World Values Survey data to establish these different mechanisms across democracies and authoritarian systems. Entropy balancing shows our findings to be highly robust.

The ability to use the internet frequently is likely to provide a useful means of engaging with society and using services in later life, yet older people are the most likely to suffer digital exclusion, with those of the oldest ages at the greatest risk. Using six waves (2002–2012) of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, we model cohort-specific patterns of frequent internet use for people aged 50 and over. Multi-level growth models are used to observe trajectories of internet use over the ten-year period. Firstly, analyses are stratified by gender and wealth, and secondly we additionally test for health effects. The study finds cohort-specific differences in patterns of internet use. Rates of internet use increase faster among younger cohorts yet, despite initially increasing, begin to decline among older cohorts. Poor health is shown to be a key factor in shaping the trajectory of internet use over time. Rates of internet use are consistently lower for women than men and for those in poorer financial circumstances, independently of age cohort. The findings demonstrate the importance of ensuring older people can remain digitally included throughout later life, including after the onset of poorer health, especially as some of these individuals might benefit the most from some of the services the internet can provide.

This article re-examines the popular concept of Internet addiction, discusses the key problems associated with it, and proposes possible alternatives. The concept of Internet addiction is inadequate for several reasons. Addiction may be a correct designation only for the minority of individuals who meet the general criteria for addiction, and it needs to be better demarcated from various patterns of excessive or abnormal use. Addiction to the Internet as a medium does not exist, although the Internet as a medium may play an important role in making some behaviors addictive. The Internet can no longer be separated from other potentially overused media, such as text messaging and gaming platforms. Internet addiction is conceptually too heterogeneous because it pertains to a variety of very different behaviors. Internet addiction should be replaced by terms that refer to the specific behaviors (eg, gaming, gambling, or sexual activity), regardless of whether these are performed online or offline.

Excessive internet use has been linked to psychopathology. Therefore, understanding the genetic and environmental risks underpinning internet use and their relation to psychopathology is important. This study aims to explore the genetic and environmental etiology of internet use measures and their associations with internalizing disorders and substance use disorders. The sample included 2,059 monozygotic (MZ) and dizygotic (DZ) young adult twins from the Brisbane Longitudinal Twin Study (BLTS). Younger participants reported more frequent internet use, while women were more likely to use the internet for interpersonal communication. Familial aggregation in ‘frequency of internet use’ was entirely explained by additive genetic factors accounting for 41% of the variance. Familial aggregation in ‘frequency of use after 11 pm’, ‘using the internet to contact peers’, and ‘using the internet primarily to access social networking sites’ was attributable to varying combinations of additive genetic and shared environmental factors. In terms of psychopathology, there were no significant associations between internet use measures and major depression (MD), but there were positive significant associations between ‘frequency of internet use’ and ‘frequency of use after 11 pm’ with social phobia (SP). ‘Using the internet to contact peers’ was positively associated with alcohol abuse, whereas ‘using the internet to contact peers’ and ‘using the internet primarily to access social networking sites’ were negatively associated with cannabis use disorders and nicotine symptoms. Individual differences in internet use can be attributable to varying degrees of genetic and environmental risks. Despite some significant associations of small effect, variation in internet use appears mostly unrelated to psychopathology.

The percentages of adolescent Internet use in general terms have been measured for nearly two decades now; however, it might be thought that not every teenager behaves online in the same way. This study aims to identify the different types or profiles of adolescents and to characterize them from an attitudinal, behavioral and socio-demographic viewpoint. A questionnaire was applied to a representative sample of 2,339 Compulsory Secondary School students (M = 13.77 years old) from Galicia (a North-Western region of Spain) for this purpose. A two-stage cluster analysis, based on the response pattern in relation to their attitudes toward Internet, was carried out. Four different segments with specific characteristics were identified: the first steppers, the trainees, the sensible users, and the heavy users. Besides the relevance of descriptive data, these results are of particular interest at an applied level, because they could lead to a better fit of programs to prevent risky behaviors and problematic Internet use in adolescents.

Facebook has become a very popular social networking platform today, particularly among adolescents and young adults, profoundly changing the way they communicate and interact. However, some reports have indicated that excessive Facebook use might have detrimental effects on mental health and be associated with certain psychological problems. Because previous findings on the relationship between Facebook addiction and depression were not unambiguous, further investigation was required. The main objective of our study was to examine the potential associations between Internet use, depression, and Facebook intrusion. A total of 672 Facebook users took part in the cross-sectional study. The Facebook Intrusion Questionnaire and the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale were used. For collecting the data, the snowball sampling procedure was used. We showed that depression can be a predictor of Facebook intrusion. Our results provides additional evidence that daily Internet use time in minutes, gender, and age are also predictors of Facebook intrusion: that Facebook intrusion can be predicted by being male, young age, and an extensive number of minutes spent online. On the basis of this study, it is possible to conclude that there are certain demographic – variables, such as age, gender, or time spent online – that may help in outlining the profile of a user who may be in danger of becoming addicted to Facebook. This piece of knowledge may serve for prevention purposes.