Older adults, who are Facebook’s fastest growing demographic, are joining the social network to stay connected and make new connections, just like college kids who joined the site decades ago, according to Penn State researchers.

“Earlier studies suggest a positive relationship between bonding and bridging social capital and Facebook use among college students,” explains Eun Hwa Jung, a doctoral candidate in mass communications at Penn State University. “Our study extends this finding to senior citizens.” According to the study, the main drive to use Facebook for older users related to the concepts of social bonding and social bridging. From the social bonding perspective, there was the desire of staying in contact with family, retrieving old friends and keeping in touch with them. From the social bridging perspective, instead, older users wished to find similar and like-minded people, to bond and communicate with them. Curiosity was also seen as a motivating factor. “Because they are now familiar with social networking technology, some seniors are just starting to use Facebook out of curiosity,” Jung explains. Older adults driven by social bonding and curiosity seem to commonly use Facebook as a form of control or, more specifically, a form of ‘social surveillance’.

Dr S. Shyam Sundar, Distinguished Professor of Communications and co-director of the Media Effects Research Laboratory who collaborated with Jung, clarifies the concept: “Surveillance is the idea that you’re checking out what people are up to,” explained Dr Sundar. “This is something that many older adults do. They want to see how their kids are doing and, especially, what their grandkids are doing.” It is interesting to notice that the active participation of seniors tended to drop when they were pushed toward use of Facebook by family and friends. “When senior citizens respond to requests to join Facebook, that tends to be a negative predictor of use,” notices Sundar. “In other words, they are not intrinsically motivated to participate when someone else requests that they join.” According to the researchers, seniors also show interest in using Facebook features usually popular between the younger audiences, as expressed in the study’s results published in a recent issue of Computers in Human Behaviour. “Our findings show that message-interactivity features – for example the chatting function and wall posting – are the dominant activities for older adults’ Facebook use,” added Jung. After analysing the results, the researchers provided suggestions encouraging designers of social media sites to provide simpler and more convenient interface tools, in order to facilitate seniors experience and attract this portion of audience to spend more time on the site. The study noted a certain amount of use of Facebook by older adults in the sample, with 2.46 visits per day and an average or 35 minutes per day. “Those who are motivated by social bonding are more likely to use the Like button, which shows the importance of simplicity in interface design for senior citizens,” notes Sundar. “The Like button is about as simple as you can get.”

The results of the study may be interesting for developers, as the ‘senior group’ represents the fastest growing demographic among these who use social media. The percentage of seniors aged 65 and older using social networks, such as Facebook or LinkedIn, grew from 27% in 2013 to 35% in the current year, with a prospect of continue growth. “This isn’t just a fast-growing market, but also a lucrative one,” added Sundar. “Older adults have much more disposable income than teens and college students and would be more desirable for advertising.” Despite the growing use of social media among elders and the consequent growing importance from an economical and a social perspective, the research focusing on seniors’ motivation to use social networks is limited.

“Most of the research is about how college students use Facebook, or how adolescents use Facebook,” explains Sundar. The study involved an online survey, with a sample of 352 adults between 60 and 86 years old. The gender proportion was quite balanced, with a 52.3% of female and a 47.7% of male participants. The researchers plan to look deeply into the topic in the future, through the use of qualitative interviews to explore in-depth the opinions of the older adults and their motivations toward the use of social networks.

Written by: Pietro Paolo Frigenti

Journal Reference: Eun Hwa Jung, S. Shyam Sundar. Senior citizens on Facebook: How do they interact and why? Computers in Human Behavior, 2016; 61: 27 DOI:10.1016/j.chb.2016.02.080