Mobile digital divide and older people’s access to ‘Internet plus social work’: implications from the COVID-19 help-seeking cases

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need for ‘Internet plus social work’ service delivery for older people. We analysed the China Family Panel Studies and the Resident Help-seeking Data and interviewed eight older people. We found that a growing age-based mobile digital divide of China in the last decade. In the pandemic, older people encountered difficulties when using mobile phones to access the internet to seek help, which highlighted the problem of the mobile digital divide. We propose that Interactive TV could be a way of enabling older people to access internet-based remote social work services.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• digital divide
• gerontological social work
• older people
• Internet plus

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this paper can be accessed on the here.

Acknowledgments

The work was supported by the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation under Grant No.2019M663339 awarded to the first author. We thank the editors, the reviewers and Prof Bingqin Li (UNSW Sydney) for their insightful comments.

Data availability statement

1. RHSD is developed by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. For details, see http://csqr.cass.cn/DataExplore/.

2. CPFS is administered by Peking University. For details, see http://www.isss.pku.edu.cn/cfps/en/index.htm.

Disclosure statement

All authors declare no conflict of interests.

Ethics

The project underwent rigorous review and obtained approval from the Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC) at the School of Government, Sun Yat-Sen University.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation under Grant No.2019M663339 awarded to the first author.

Notes on contributors

Jie Wang

Jie Wang is a postdoctoral research associate in Guangzhou Center for Social Welfare Research, School of Government, Sun Yat-Sen University. His research areas include the effects of technological development on social welfare and child and young people’s development, filial piety and intergenerational care and support, and social inequality.

Ilan Katz

Ilan Katz is a Professor in the Social Policy Research Centre at the University of New South Wales, Sydney Australia. He researches on a wide range of social policy issues including Chinese Social Policy and ageing.

Jiajun Li

Jiajun Li is a postgraduate student in the Department of Sociology, Sun Yat-sen University. He researches on computational sociology, social quantitative research method and social inequality.

Qiang Wu

Qiang Wu is a postgraduate student in the School of Public Administration and Policy, Renmin University of China. He researches on issues related to public policy analysis (including health and education policy), as well as social governance.

Chunqing Dai

Chunqing Dai is a lecturer in The Academy of Governance of Huangpu District (Guangzhou). Her research area is communication and social policy.