{
  "abstract": "Background: A growing body of research documents a protective association between internet use and depressive symptoms in later life, yet standard longitudinal methods conflate stable between-person differences with genuine within-person change. Whether this association reflects a within-person process or stable between-person differences therefore remains unresolved.\n\nMethods: Using two-wave panel data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS 2018-2020; N = 15,772 adults aged 45 and older), we used a descriptive two-wave within-between (correlated random effects) decomposition, motivated by the random-intercept cross-lagged panel model (RI-CLPM), to separate the internet use-depressive symptoms association into between-person and within-person variance components. Depressive symptoms were measured with the CES-D-10. Robustness checks included bias-corrected bootstrap confidence intervals, leave-one-covariate-out and common-sample sensitivity analyses, a binary-outcome sensitivity analysis, an education-coding sensitivity analysis, and descriptive analyses of internet-use transition patterns.\n\nResults: The conventional cross-lagged panel model (CLPM) estimated bidirectional negative cross-lagged associations. The within-between decomposition showed that the between-person component was associated with lower depressive symptoms (b = -0.852, BCa 95% CI [-1.149, -0.579]), whereas the within-person component was small and its bootstrap confidence interval included zero (b = -0.141, BCa 95% CI [-0.533, 0.246]); these components are descriptive variance components and should not be interpreted as a formal partition of the cross-lagged association, because a two-wave design does not separately identify the within-person dynamics. Among baseline internet users with function-type data ( n = 1,869), neither WeChat use (b = -0.848, p = .086) nor general online chatting (b = 0.294, p = .192) was significantly associated with depressive symptoms, and a formal coefficient-difference test did not indicate a significant difference between them (difference = -1.142, SE = 0.584, p = .0503). Age moderation was not significant.\n\nConclusions: The results are consistent with a substantial portion of the protective association reflecting stable between-person differences rather than within-person change; with only two waves, however, the between- and within-person components are descriptive variance components rather than a formal partition of the cross-lagged association, and the within-person component cannot be interpreted as a causal effect. The present findings caution against causal interpretation of internet-depression associations estimated from two-wave observational panel data and highlight the need for multi-wave and stronger causal designs.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [],
  "article_type": null,
  "arxiv": null,
  "author_total": 1,
  "authors": [
    {
      "name": "Huijia Zhang"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/0k9e3mz0rhjx6.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.1186/s12889-026-29887-5",
  "fulltext_url": null,
  "id": "0k9e3mz0rhjx6",
  "issns": [
    "1471-2458"
  ],
  "landing_url": "https://link.springer.com/10.1186/s12889-026-29887-5",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "CC-BY-4.0",
  "licence_label": "CC BY 4.0",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0",
  "metadata_licence": null,
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "openalex",
      "3317|Technology Use by Older Adults"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": "W7221707619",
  "pdf_url": null,
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-10-13",
  "publisher": "Springer Science and Business Media LLC",
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/0k9e3mz0rhjx6.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T12:19:54Z",
      "native_id": "10.1186/s12889-026-29887-5",
      "source": "crossref",
      "url": "https://link.springer.com/10.1186/s12889-026-29887-5"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "medicine",
      "origin": "issn:1471-2458",
      "subfield": "epidemiology-public-health"
    }
  ],
  "title": "Internet use and depressive symptoms among chinese middle-aged and older adults: a descriptive two-wave within-between decomposition",
  "title_text": "Internet use and depressive symptoms among chinese middle-aged and older adults: a descriptive two-wave within-between decomposition",
  "type": "peer-reviewed",
  "updated_at": "2026-10-30T12:19:54Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/0k9e3mz0rhjx6",
  "venue": "BMC Public Health",
  "versions": []
}