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Category: Project

Description: Digital inequality research shows that certain sociodemographic groups (e.g., older age) experience fewer benefits from using digital technologies (e.g., not finding useful information). While disadvantage is typically conceptualized as not experiencing benefits, users also experience online harms (e.g., unauthorized access to personal information), which have been largely ignored. Better understanding systematic differences in online experiences can contribute to understanding mistrust in online companies and chilling effects (i.e., inhibiting certain digital behaviors). Using Bayesian inference to analyze data of a preregistered survey-based study (N = 1,410), we find confirming and contradicting results for digital inequalities. While older and less educated persons experience fewer online benefits and women and older persons tend to inhibit their digital behaviors more, no inequalities regarding harmful privacy experiences were found (older persons even reported fewer harmful experiences). Generally, mistrust and self-inhibition are higher when people experience online harms and lower when they experience online benefits.