Older netizens benefit from use of internet, report says

A large proportion of middle-aged and elderly Chinese netizens have benefited greatly from the internet - including browsing news and using mobile payments - despite the risk of being cheated because of inadequate networking skills, according to a report released recently.

The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and Tencent's Research Center on Society collected nearly 1,000 questionnaires from netizens older than 50 living in eight cities who use WeChat. Tencent, the developer of WeChat, also shared a user analysis based on big data using nearly 35.8 million samples.

According to the report, 75.8 percent of netizens over 50 browsed news and information on the internet.