How Social Media Can Improve Senior Citizens’ Quality of Life
Senior citizens are using social media as much as the rest of us!
How many people have helped their grandparents through the process of creating an Instagram account or found a friend request from them waiting for you on Facebook? As it turns out, most senior citizens are better with technology than we give them credit for, and we’re seeing a huge increase in their participation on social media.
There hasn’t been the same urgency in studying how social media affects older adults that we’ve seen in other age groups—likely due to an assumed presence of wisdom and life experience. Nonetheless, it was time to look into how social media impacted senior citizens.
How Much Do Senior Citizens Use Social Media?
Senior citizens, like the rest of us, spend quite a bit of time on social media. A 2013 study by Pew Research Center found a significant and climbing increase in senior citizens participating in social media, with 43% of U.S. senior citizens reporting that they used at least one type of social media, compared to 26% in 2010, and only 1% in 2008. Imagine where that number will be by 2025!
Due to this rise in popularity of social media among seniors, one pair of researchers looked into how, if at all, social media could improve senior citizens’ overall quality of life. Ractham and Techatassanasoontorn performed a study in 2014, surveying multiple groups of senior citizens.
The research for this study was conducted in two phases. Phase 1 focused on developing parameters for the study where the researchers interviewed multiple small focus groups of seniors and asked them three main questions:
How did you start using social media and why?
What social media services do you use and why?
What do you usually use social media for and how do you use them to support your lifestyle?
From the many answers provided for these three questions, 44 specific uses for social media were determined and then organized into ten major domains of life: family, friend, self, social, education, consumer, religion, leisure, community, and health & safety. For example, one participant reported using Facebook to contact their daughter who lived in a different country, and this fell into the family category.
To understand how the 44 uses of social media from phase 1 influenced life satisfaction, the researchers gathered a sample group of 318 senior citizens for phase 2 and had them participate in a questionnaire.
There were two limitations to this study, as noted by the researchers. The first concern was the possibility of a cultural influence on the results, as all seniors who participated in the study resided in Thailand. The second concern was the duration of the study. The researchers posited that they could learn more if they studied senior citizens’ social media use over many years.
Does Social Media Improve Seniors’ Lives?
After categorizing the findings, the overall evidence determined that social media definitely improved seniors’ overall life satisfaction. In fact, the study showed that seniors are generally satisfied with social media use in all ten domains of their lives. Specifically, the participants provided evidence that social media is most impactful in the areas of family, health, and leisure.
See—here’s one area with lots of good news! Senior citizens find connection, helpful health-related resources, and community involvement through social media. It helps lower concerns of loneliness and abandonment, offering senior citizens the opportunity to stay connected with family and friends, and also provides a way to reconnect with old friends. Remember: actively using social media to connect with others just might boost your life satisfaction, and by extension, your happiness.
So, seniors, as long as you’re using social media safely and within reason, keep on keeping on! And for the younger generations, accept that friend request from your grandmother or help your Dad set up his Instagram account!
Study Objective & Methods
Social Media Use and Senior Citizen’s Life Satisfaction
Peter Ractham, PhD; Angsana Techatassanasoontorn, PhD
Proceedings of the 25th Australasian Conference on Information Systems, 2014.
The goal of this study was to determine how senior citizens use social media in their everyday lives and its functions to improve their overall life satisfaction. Conducted in two phases in Thailand, the first groups of participants consisted of members of social media workshops, retired professionals, and retired civil servants. These participants were placed in focus groups and asked three questions: “How did you start using social media and why?” “What social media services do you frequently use and why?” and “What do you usually use social media for and how do you use them to support your lifestyle?” Based on the responses to these questions, the researchers established 44 specific social media uses for senior citizens. These 44 uses were divided into the ten domains of life as predetermined by a previous study: friend, family, community, leisure, health & safety, self, social, education, consumer, and religion. Phase two included surveying 318 senior citizens from varying economic and educational backgrounds. The survey questions were drawn from the 44 determined social media uses and divided into three categories: satisfaction from social media use, domain life satisfaction, and overall life satisfaction.
Social Media and Well-Being Training
This research (and all our social media and well-being articles) have laid the foundation for our 3-course program designed for anyone wanting to approach social media and communications in a way that protects well-being and puts people first. Learn more here.
