Our dynamic probit model indicates that for retired older adults in the United States, Internet use was found to reduce the probability of a depressed state by about 33%. Number of people in the household partially mediates this relationship, with the reduction in depression largest for people living alone. This provides some evidence that the mechanism linking Internet use to depression is the remediation of social isolation and loneliness. Encouraging older adults to use the Internet may help decrease isolation and depression.

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In this paper, we explore whether broadband investment by municipalities has an effect on economic growth. To do so, we employ an econometric model to compare economic growth between counties in the State of Florida. Our econometric model shows that Lake County – a small county in central Florida – has experienced significantly greater growth in economic activity relative to comparable Florida counties since making its municipal fiber‐optic network generally available to businesses and municipal institutions in the county. Our findings are consistent with other analyses that postulate that broadband infrastructure can be a significant contributor to economic growth.

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The effect of religion on political behavior and attachment has been a topic of intense interest in the United States and elsewhere. Less attention has been paid to the issue of secularism. Some analysts have viewed secularism as anabsenceof religious attachment, and a number of studies have utilized indices of secularization to analyze such topics as economic development or modernization. In this article, we show that secularism, like religion, is in fact a multifaceted category, and should not be viewed as the antithesis of religiosity. Utilizing a very large sample of United States adults, we apply factor analysis to demonstrate that secularism is composed of two logically separate components, and we use these results to examine the role of secularism in political attachments. We suggest thatReligious SecularismandSocial Secularismare different motivations and have different effects on political behavior and that, politically, the marginal effects of Social Secularism are larger than Religious Secularism in all cases.