Adult education, the use of Information and Communication Technologies and their impact on elderly's quality of life: a case study

In recent years, there has been a growing interest among scholars on Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and their beneficial effects on elderly wellbeing; almost all contributions support the positive impact of ICT on the older population because their use has been demonstrated to enhance social participation and psychosocial wellbeing.This study contributes to the extant literature by using a specific and comprehensive measure of quality of life, the WHOQol-Bref, on a sample of 341 individuals attending the University of Third Age in an Italian town. Three different model specifications were built in order to test the impact of different aspects of ICT use on elderly’s quality of life, respectively: i) frequency of ICT use, ii) location of ICT use and iii) kind of ICT used. Results corroborate the findings of existing literature and provide insights on policy measures aimed at favoring a process of active ageing across western countries.