Computer use has no demonstrated impact on the well-being of older adults

Technology is frequently presented as a panacea for the support needs of the ageing population, based in part upon the commonly cited assertion that computer and internet use has an empirically verified positive effect on the well-being of older people. In this paper we review the studies that this assertion is based on and conclude that they do not support it. While the original studies rarely make unsupportable claims, the secondary literature which cites them is frequently very misleading; limitations include, failure to distinguish between the effects of training/support and computer use; misattributing causality; inappropriately generalising results from a different population.