Abstract
Internet use provides cognitive stimulation and thereby may contribute to the accumulation of cognitive reserve that is proposed to be instrumental for maintaining cognitive health in ageing. As the first study so far, we examined possible gender differences in the relationship between Internet use and subsequent cognitive decline over six years assessed through changes in Trail Making Test (TMT) accomplishment time in 897 older adults. Latent change score modelling (taking into account baseline cognitive level, chronic diseases, age, and central contributions to cognitive reserve through education, profession, and leisure engagement) revealed a significant interaction of frequency of Internet use and gender. More frequent Internet use in the first wave of data collection significantly predicted a smaller subsequent augmentation in TMT accomplishment time (i.e., a smaller subsequent cognitive decline) only in men, but not in women. In conclusion, frequent Internet use may contribute to the accumulation of cognitive reserve. The gender difference noted highlights an advantage for males. While this finding could be interpreted as gender-specific, it may be that the Internet activities males engage in differ from those of females, calling for a fine-grained investigation of Internet-based activities in future studies.
Highlights
– 0.51*** – 0.09** 0.08* – 0.01 ns −0.06 ns −0.15*** – −0.08* 0.01 ns −0.33*** 0.15*** – 0.19*** −0.03 ns 0.00 ns 0.06 ns −0.06 ns populations that frequency of technology use, the type of technology devices used, and the context and behaviour of use differ by gender[31,32,33]
The present longitudinal study examined the relationship between frequency of Internet use and subsequent cognitive decline over six years assessed through changes in Trail Making Test (TMT) accomplishment time
Latent change score modelling taking into account baseline cognitive level, chronic diseases, age, and central contributions to cognitive reserve through education, profession, and leisure engagement showed that more frequent Internet use in the first wave of data collection predicted a smaller subsequent augmentation in TMT accomplishment time
Summary
– 0.51*** – 0.09** 0.08* – 0.01 ns −0.06 ns −0.15*** – −0.08* 0.01 ns −0.33*** 0.15*** – 0.19*** −0.03 ns 0.00 ns 0.06 ns −0.06 ns populations that frequency of technology use (including the Internet), the type of technology devices used, and the context and behaviour of use differ by gender[31,32,33]. In the aging and technology literature, the specific consequences for aging outcomes of gender differences in technology use remain quite mixed[36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43] In their recent review, Hunsaker and Hargittai[30] stress the urgent need of studies better representing the diversity of older populations, especially taking up a nuanced perspective on the relationship between gender and Internet use among older adults. We examined the relationship between frequency of Internet use in the first wave of data collection and subsequent cognitive decline over six years assessed through changes in Trail Making Test (TMT) accomplishment time We investigated whether this longitudinal relationship differed between women and men, taking into account baseline cognitive level, chronic diseases, age, and central contributions to cognitive reserve through education, profession, and leisure engagement
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