Abstract
The impact of internet on the social wellbeing of the elderly is important in urban China. As the facility of the internet has been universalized in urban families, the elderly are inevitably involved in internet life. The purpose of this paper is to ascertain the relative effects of internet using on the psychological well-being of urban elders in China. The data were collected from a random sample of 3,274 elders over 65 years conducted in 10 big cities in 2016, including Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Chongqing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Wuhan, Xi’an, Haerbin and Nanjing. Based on Two Stage Least Squares (2SLS) analysis, there are three preliminary findings as follows: firstly, surfing the internet has positive effect on psychological well-being of urban elders, and the positive effect is significantly higher for elders living in “empty nested” family than those living with children, which indicates that internet could make up the negative impact of separately living arrangement between two generations. Secondly, the range of friends has been enlarged when using WeChat, the wider the range of friends in WeChat, the higher the psychological well-being of urban elders. Thus the friends from online community could also be an effective complement to social network during aging process.