JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Rapid digitalization of Swedish public and health services has made active participation contingent on both access to and confidence with digital tools. Older adults’ attitudes toward technology, captured by the construct of technophilia, are a key dimension of digital inclusion that complements, but is not reducible to, observed access or use. Longitudinal within-person evidence on how these attitudes evolve, and on which correlates shape them, has been limited.

Objective:

To estimate within-person change in technophilia among community-dwelling older adults in southern Sweden between 2019 and 2023, and to quantify the relative contribution of sociodemographic, health, wellbeing, and digital-engagement factors to the variance in technophilia

Methods:

We analyzed three waves (2019, 2021, 2023) of the SNAC-IT data collection from the Swedish National Study on Aging and Care, Blekinge. The analytic sample comprised 1,398 person-waves from 618 individuals aged 60 years and older with observed TechPH scores. Covariate missingness was handled with multiple imputation. Associations were estimated using a linear mixed-effects model with a random intercept for participant, with survey wave as the time indicator and five pre-specified covariate domains entered sequentially.

Results:

Within-person TechPH declined modestly between 2019 and 2023 (P < .001), corresponding to approximately 11% lower scores by 2023, even though population-level means remained essentially flat (2.83 → 2.81). Four of five covariate domains contributed significant incremental variance; three dominated: Internet Use and Digital Activity (ΔR² = 0.14), Sociodemographic (ΔR² = 0.12), and Digital Health Service Use (ΔR² = 0.09; all P < .001). The Wellbeing and Life Events domain also reached significance (ΔR² = 0.03, P < .001), while Health and Functioning contributed negligibly (ΔR² = 0.01, P = .14). The model explained 40% of the variance (R² = 0.40); an ICC of 0.44 indicated that nearly half of residual variance reflected stable individual differences in technophilia.

Conclusions:

In an ageing Swedish cohort, within-person technophilia declined modestly across five years even as population-level digital uptake rose. The strongest correlates of technophilia were concrete digital behaviors, not demographic categories or clinical health, suggesting that policies and evaluations aimed at digital inclusion should track attitudinal measures in addition to access and use statistics Clinical Trial: N/A