Paper short abstract:

The purpose of this study is to explore the digital divide within Japanese elderly people and factors affecting their digital media use. An interview was conducted with people aged over 65 using the Internet or smartphones. I found that environmental and individual factors affected their media use.

Paper long abstract:

The current understanding is that elderly people less frequently use digital media and have less knowledge about them than younger people, which is called the digital divide between young and elderly people. However, along with the development of the ICT, elderly people are using technologies more actively than before, and current studies have emphasized that older people are not necessarily inferior to younger people in access to digital media, or rather that the digital divide exists within elderly people. However, it has yet to be shown how Japanese elderly people use digital media and what factors affect their media use behaviors. To better understand about this digital divide, digital media use repertories of elderly people and factors that influence their behaviors were studied. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with people aged over sixty-five using smartphones or the Internet. It was found that both environmental factors and individual factors affect digital media use behaviors of elderly people. Environmental factors included (1) social networks and (2) home infrastructure. Most of them received supports from someone such as families, friends, schools and cellphone companies. The more they could get help, the more they could use such technology. Moreover, whether friends and families had smartphones or not affected their use of smartphones as communication tools. People who had home wi-fi connections at home used smartphones more actively. On the other hand, individual factors, such as (1) demographics, and (2) self-efficacy, also affected their digital media use. Young females used more functions. People who have high self-efficacy were enjoying their smartphone lives. These findings demonstrate that providing more social supports and ingenious attempts to improve their self-efficacy can help diminish the digital divide within them. These results provide new insight into our understanding into the development of measures to reduce negative influences by the digital divide.