Abstract: With the rapid development of information technology and the continuous acceleration of the population aging, the elderly group is faced with the problem of the digital divide. At present, the digital divide among the elderly in rural areas is more pronounced. Exploring the realization mechanism for this group to cross the digital divide has extremely strong practical significance. Based on the practical research on the elderly group in FL Town, F County, Northern Jiangsu Province regarding their efforts to bridge the digital divide, we found that the cross of the digital divide among the rural elderly is a systematic process in which four paths, institutional support, senior-friendly core, peer mutual assistance, and intergenerational feedback, are deeply coupled with a ternary support network. Institutional support builds universal basic guarantees, core senior-friendly services promote precise matching of needs, peer assistance helps low-cost diffusion of skills, and intergenerational feedback provides emotional activation and continuous impetus. Eventually, a closed loop of "emotional activation - community diffusion - demand matching - institutional guarantee" is formed. To ensure that the elderly in rural areas successfully cross the digital divide, it is necessary to take into account the differential pattern structure rooted in China's rural society, promote the interaction of institutional support, senior-friendly core, peer assistance, and intergenerational feedback, and to ensure that each element plays a core role in specific circles based on closeness of relationship, so as to drive the elderly in rural areas to shift from passively adapting to digital technology to actively integrating into the information age.

Key words: rural elderly group, digital divide, differential pattern, flow of circle resources, differential order support network, population aging