Older adults’ digital intergenerational contact during COVID-19: Patterns, predictors, and associations with subjective well-being across Europe

Abstract

Contact with family is key to sustaining individuals’ subjective well-being, and such contact is becoming increasingly digitalised. In today’s ‘polymedia’ environment, people are afforded diverse modes of digital contact, ranging from phone calls and text messaging (including via email and chat applications) to video calls. Distinct modes of digital contact create differential levels of sociality, which may have varying implications for subjective well-being. As older adults’ in-person contact was severely curtailed during the pandemic, digital contact played a particularly important role in their subjective well-being. Analysing data from the 2020 European Social Survey, this study provides new evidence of older adults’ digital contact with their non-residential children across Europe during the COVID-19 pandemic. First, it identifies four profiles of older Europeans’ digital contact across the modes of phone calls, text messaging, and video calls: low contact (across all modes); phone-only contact; non-visual contact (phone calls and text messaging); and high contact (across all modes). Next, it examines how older adults’ in-person contact, internet access, and digital literacy, the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic, and country-level internet coverage relate to the four identified profiles of digital contact and shape the associations between these profiles and older adults’ subjective well-being. The findings provide new insights into the digitalisation of older Europeans’ intergenerational contact, as well as the micro and macro social conditions configuring the link between their digital contact and subjective well-being.