Older adults’ digital intergenerational contact: Patterns, predictors, and associations with subjective well-being across 29 countries

Contact with family is key to sustaining individuals’ well-being, and such contact is increasingly digitalised. In today’s ‘polymedia’ environment, people are afforded diverse digital technologies, ranging from phone calls and text messaging (e.g., email and chat applications) to video calls. Distinct modes of digital communication create differential levels of sociality, which may have varying implications for subjective well-being. As older adults’ in-person contact was severely curtailed during COVID-19, digital contact played a crucial role in sustaining their family connections. Analysing data from the 2020 European Social Survey, this chapter provides new evidence of older adults’ digital contact with their non-residential children across 29 countries (28 European countries and Israel). First, it identifies four profiles of digital contact across the modes of phone calls, text messaging, and video calls: low digital contact (across all modes), phone-only contact, non-visual contact (phone calls and text messaging), and high digital contact (across all modes). Next, it examines how older adults’ in-person contact, internet access, and digital literacy, country-level internet coverage, and the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic relate to the four profiles of digital contact and moderate the associations between these profiles and older adults’ subjective well-being. The findings provide new insights into the digitalisation of older adults’ intergenerational contact, as well as the micro and macro social conditions configuring the link between their digital contact and subjective well-being.