Digital Inclusion Among Community Older Adults in Singapore: Measuring Digital Skills and Health Consequences

Today’s changing context of healthy aging includes continued advancement in digital technologies. Through a community survey of 364 older adults in Singapore, we assessed five types of digital skills: “operational internet skills,” “information navigation skills,” “social skills,” “creative skills,” and “mobile skills,” applying the LSE digital skill measurement instrument. We identified how distinct types of digital skills contributed to internet and digital technology use for health promotion activities: (i) to improve eating habits, (ii) to access healthcare, and (iii) to access long-term care services. Ordinal logistic regression was applied treating age, gender, education, and income as covariates. Mean age was 73.86 ± 6.07 years; 74.30% were female. Among five types of digital skills, higher “operational internet skills” and “creative skills” contributed to better engagement in internet and digital technology use for health promotion activities. Higher “social skills” and “information skills” lead to better use of the internet and digital technology to improve eating habits, whilst greater “social skills” improved access to healthcare. “Mobile skills” had a significant positive association with using internet and digital technology to access long-term care services. Therefore, leveraging digital skills among older adults can promote healthy lifestyles via the internet environment and help to create digitally inclusive healthy aging communities.