Early Adoption of Digital Devices and Change in Loneliness Over 10 Years Among Late Middle-Aged and Older Adults:...

Loneliness is recognized as a global health threat. Older adults are vulnerable to loneliness due to life changes common in old age. While individual risk factors for loneliness in old age are well-documented, contextual factors are scarcely explored, such as digitalization. Rapid digitalization underscores the need to explore the long-term association between the use of digital devices and loneliness.

This study aimed to explore whether and how the use of digital devices is associated with changes in loneliness in a population-based sample of middle-aged and older adults in a context where digital technology and digital environments were introduced and rapidly evolving.

Data were obtained from the longitudinal cohort study, the Swedish Adoption/Twin Study of Aging (SATSA; N=771; mean age 69.64 years, SD 11.00). Daily digital use and loneliness were assessed across 5 waves between 2004 and 2014. Age, sex, education, living situation, self-rated health, and the personality traits openness and extraversion were assessed at baseline. Growth mixture modeling was used to identify latent trajectories of loneliness, and multinomial logistic regression was used to predict class membership based on baseline daily digital use and covariates.

Three latent loneliness classes were identified: class 1 (10.5%; high intercept and significant increases in loneliness), class 2 (33.2%; intermediate stable loneliness), and class 3 (56.3%; low stable loneliness). Daily digital use at baseline is significantly associated with lower odds of belonging to the high-increasing loneliness group (class 1) compared to the low-stable group (class 3; odds ratio 0.27, 95% CI 0.08-0.90; P=.03). Differences between classes were not explained by the personality traits.

Daily use of digital devices is associated with lower and more stable levels of loneliness over time, compared to not using digital devices daily, which is associated with higher and increasing levels of loneliness. These findings, based on data from early adopters of digital technology, lend further support to the idea that digital use is associated with lower levels of loneliness and less increase in loneliness. Hence, these findings suggest that use of digital devices may represent a noninvasive approach to addressing loneliness in older adults.