Association between digital engagement and urban-rural disparities in Chinese women's depressive symptoms: A national-level cross-sectional study

Objectives This study aims to investigate the impact of digital engagement on urban-rural disparities in depressive symptoms among Chinese women.Methods Using a dataset from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) wave 2020, this study analyzes the impact of digital engagement on the urban-rural disparity in women's depressive symptoms using multiple linear regression and recentered influence function (RIF) models. Furthermore, the extent to which digital engagement affects the urban-rural disparity in women's depressive symptoms was calculated using the RIF decomposition method.Results Analysis showed that rural women had significantly higher levels of depressive symptoms compared to urban women; digital engagement significantly reduced women's depressive symptoms levels and mitigated the urban-rural disparity for women with moderate to high levels of depressive symptoms, and the mitigating effect was stronger for the highly depressed sample, but still widened the urban-rural disparity in women's depressive symptoms overall. In addition, the results of the RIF decomposition showed that digital engagement explained 28.28% of the urban-rural disparity in women's depressive symptoms.Conclusion There is a significant disparity in depressive symptoms levels between urban and rural women in China. Digital engagement reduces women's depressive symptoms, but it also widens the depressive symptoms disparity between urban and rural women overall. Digital engagement is potentially positive for reducing women's depressive symptoms.