A new study has found that differences in how often older people use the internet are not due to age, but to socio-economic factors such as cognitive ability, education and employment status.
The study, led by computing academics at Lancaster University and in collaboration with researchers from University College London, looked at how often adults over 50 use the internet, and why some people use it less than others.
The study’s authors looked at nationally representative data from the UK Longitudinal Study of Aging (ELSA), which included responses from more than 6,000 people, and also uncovered how aging itself influences how often people access the online world.
Their analysis revealed that most older people in the UK use the internet frequently. ELSA data shows that more than 90% of people over 50 are regular (daily or monthly) internet users, indicating that internet usage is higher than commonly thought.
Despite high rates of internet use, analysis shows that there is an age-related ‘digital divide’ among older people, with their use of the internet still strong and their use decreasing with age. Data shows that 97.7% of people between the ages of 50 and 64 engage in digital activity on a regular basis. The rate was 91.1% for those aged 65-79 and 65.7% for those aged 80 and over.
In looking for reasons to explain how age affects internet use, researchers considered a variety of factors, including gender, marital status, mobility and physical disability, long-term health, wealth, education, employment status, and cognitive ability.
The researchers found that education, employment status, and cognitive ability appear to play a central role in how often older adults use the Internet across age groups.
Other demographic and social factors, as well as health and mobility issues, are associated with Internet use, but do not seem to explain the decline in Internet use with age.
Our study empirically refutes the common assumption that functional decline is the main reason why older adults do not use technology. We found that cognitive ability, employment status, and education were more influential factors. ”
Bran Knowles, Professor, School of Computing and Communication, Lancaster University
These factors are reflected in older adults citing lack of skills as the main reason for not using the internet more, in contrast to lack of internet access, which is rarely cited. The findings point to the importance of ‘lifelong’ skills training, rather than provision of access, to closing the age-based digital divide.
However, the study also found that when older adults were asked why they don’t use the internet more, the most common reason overall was that they saw no reason to use the internet any more.
Researchers say the findings show that we need to further discuss the age-based digital divide, provide support to those who feel they don’t have the skills to use the internet, and allow older people more agency in deciding when they want to step away from technology in the future.
“Older people of all ages use the internet frequently, and their reasons for not using the internet are similar to those of other people, as they are generally satisfied with the frequency of logging on,” Professor Knowles said.
“The data may indicate that people tend to voluntarily disengage from technology later in life, perhaps reprioritizing how they spend their time,” she added.
“Given that the vast majority of older adults use the Internet on a moderately regular basis, and that their infrequent use of the Internet is a matter of choice for most people rather than due to other barriers, should we really be discussing the age-based digital divide simply in terms of exclusion, or should we also be discussing whether we need to step away from the Internet and do other things in order to age well?”
The researchers are also calling on technology designers and service providers to consider new ways to support older adults’ choices to reduce their internet use.
Professor Knowles said: “While it is important to provide support to individuals who face barriers to using the internet and want to use it more, this does not seem to be the case for the majority of older people. Our findings show that in most cases non-use in older people is an expression of personal preference, and in this case designers need to consider how technology design can support this choice.”
“It’s encouraging to see that internet use is becoming more common among people in their 80s and 90s,” said Andrew Steptoe, professor at University College London’s School of Behavioral Sciences and Health and director of ELSA.
This is becoming increasingly important as access to government and local services and health care moves online, while many goods and services become cheaper on the Internet. ”
The research was carried out as part of the DigiAge project, funded by UKRI’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), and is outlined in the paper ‘Cohort differences in internet use among older people’.
These new findings will be presented this week (April 15) at the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Barcelona.
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Reference magazines:
Knowles, B. others. (2026). Cohort differences in internet use among older people: Evidence from the English Longitudinal Study of Aging (ELSA). Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. DOI: 10.1145/3772318.3790274. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3772318.3790274.
