Understanding the feeling of being overwhelmed by the internet: The role of digital literacy among older adults

Abstract

Purpose The digital transformation creates new opportunities for older adults to improve their wellbeing. In particular, this includes the opportunity to stay in the home environment for longer, e.g. through ambient assisted living, as well as digital health applications and telemedicine for better health management. In order to be able to use these services successfully, digital literacy is required. It is a multifactorial concept that integrates various areas of competence. However, older adults have lower digital literacy compared to society as a whole (Stürz et al., 2022). Digital technologies can also cause a feeling of being overwhelmed. This results above all from the wealth of information on the internet, which is perceived as challenging when it comes to health issues, for example, and became particularly apparent during the Covid-19 pandemic (Ware et al., 2017). But the user can also be overwhelmed during the learning process itself due to the wide range of possible applications (Borghouts et al., 2022). As a consequence, this can lead to knowledge of digital technologies not being expanded (Finkelstein et al., 2023). This feeling of being overwhelmed is not only experienced by people without digital literacy, but also by those who have used certain tools in the past and are now confronted with new tasks that require advanced digital literacy (Jokisch & Göbl, 2022). Previous studies have barely addressed the association between digital literacy and the feeling of being overwhelmed. This study therefore examines which specific areas of digital competence are required in order to avoid feeling overwhelmed by the internet. Method A representative cross-sectional survey of 3,782 German adults aged 65 and over (average age = 74.18±6.10; 56.2% female) was conducted between August and September 2021. Results and discussion Using a logistic regression model adjusted for age, gender, education and income, we found that the dependent variable feeling overwhelmed was significantly positively associated with the competence areas of information and data literacy (OR=1.20, CI 1.06-1.35), safety (OR=1.36, CI 1.18-1.56) and problem solving (OR=1.70, CI 1.50-1.94). Older adults with higher education were more likely to feel overwhelmed (OR=0.64, CI 0.40-0.85). There was no significant association between this feeling and the ability to communicate, to collaborate and to produce creative content on their own. The results suggest that there are specific areas of digital competence that are linked to the absent feeling of being overwhelmed when using the Internet. Educational programs relating to digital technologies should therefore focus on these competences in order to counteract the feeling of being overwhelmed and to enable and motivate people to acquire in-depth knowledge of digital services. Similarly, developers of digital technologies are called upon to integrate intuitive and comprehensible options into their products that make them safer and empowers older adults to solve problems independently. This allows older adults to participate in and benefit from the digital transformation.

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Keywords: digital literacy, overwhelming, education

Affiliation: Institute for Applied Research, Catholic University Freiburg, Germany

Corresponding Author Email: linda.goebl@kh-freiburg.de Authors’ ORCID iDs: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1832-8560