Despite the rapid growth of people who use digital technologies older adults remain the largest group of internet nonusers. Van Dijk’s (2020) resource and appropriation theory claims that digital inequalities stem from different personal characteristics and positions of individuals, which lead to different distribution of social capital, economic and cultural resources. Thus, individuals access the internet in different ways and achieve different levels of social inclusion. Digital inequalities are determined not only by self-reliant internet uses, but also by use-by-proxy which is quite common among older internet nonusers. They access the Internet with the help of proxy users, asking them to perform certain activities on the Internet on their behalf. The aim of this master’s thesis was to assess potential differences in the effects of categorical inequalities (i.e., gender, age, education) and social capital on the self-reliant internet use as well as on the availability and activation of use-by-proxy among older adults. In the empirical study, we used multiple logistic regressions on survey data collected by the Centre for Social Informatics at the Faculty of Social Sciences that referred to a block of questions on internet use and use-by-proxy among older adults in Slovenia. The results show that categorical inequalities and social capital have a very important effect on self-reliant internet use. Although categorical inequalities are less important predictors of the availability of use-by-proxy, social capital remains important. The key categorical inequalities of use-by-proxy activation are related to education, area of residence, marital status, and household income.
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