The Internet has gained increasing popularity in the recent twenty years, and numerous services and products are provided online. However, the inevitable digital divide has differentiated people living in the same society into IT rich and poor. As world population is irreversibly aging, the elderly will be the largest IT inability group because of the digital divide. One information inability is their lack of access and capability to use internet. In China, despite many elderly-aimed ICT projects are carried out, internet prevalence rate among the elderly is lower than in Sweden. Successful online applications or services in western society finally proved total failure in another, which gives the designer and developer a good lesson to learn: to design or provide a kind of application to users across cultures or nations is more than simply interface language translation. Studies on cultural differences provide scholars in ICT field a good reference on how to take cultural issues into product design and applications, to make the applications and services more culture-friendly. Therefore, the research is carried out on elderly internet usage in China in comparison with the situation in Sweden: by comparing the elderly people‟s experiences, perceptions and expectations for the internet in these two countries, differences are analyzed from the perspective of cultural differences and an in-depth analysis of unique problems of Chinese elderly people internet use is given. By comparing China and Sweden, which are defined as countries under absolutely different cultural systems, implications on Chinese elderly people‟s expectations and requirements for internet are proposed.

China is moving into an aging society, and the quality of life of the elderly has become a topic of public concern. With the development of ICT technology, China’s digital level is increasing, and there is a digital literacy gap between the young and the elderly, and the intergenerational digital divide is widening. This paper combines the unique Chinese social context with smartphones as a representative digital tool aiming to analyze the dig- ital dilemmas experienced by the elderly living in Dongying, a fourth-tier city in China. Two research questions guide this study in the digital dilemmas of the elderly: 1)the role of smartphones in the lives of older people, and 2)the specific manifestations of digital dilemmas of older people and the influencing factors. The two theories UTAUT model and Cultural reverse form a theoretical framework to enhance our understanding of the digital dilemma.This study employed qualitative methods to collect (semi-structured interviews) and ana- lyze (substantive coding) data. Six elderly people over 65 years old living in Dongying participated in the study as interviewees. The results show that using smartphones is a re- quirement for the elderly from society and their children, therefore most of them no longer have difficulties in acquiring smartphones. However, smartphones still play an entertain- ment role in seniors’ lives, and most seniors only use their smartphones to make video calls with their children and watch short videos. They still lack an understanding of digital technology and are unable to apply it in a meaningful way. Such a dilemma is caused by a combination of technological limitations and psychological factors. They were born in an era when the country was still poor, their families were unable to support them in school, most of them did not graduate from elementary school, and their poor literacy skills would create obstacles for them to use smartphones. In addition, they did not have adequate learning access and had to rely on their children to help them learn smartphones, and their learning was entirely dependent on the cultural reverse ability of their children. In addition, they have resistance to learning smartphones, repeated learning due to memory loss, and a lack of confidence in themselves prevent them from further learning of digital skills.