s’s elderly population—a case study in learners of the senior citizens academy in a city of Taiwan

Abstract

Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook site in 2004, and open to e-mail applications use in 2006. The global active users of the Facebook site surpassed one billion people on September 14th, 2012. It spent 13 years that the users of the Google site founded in 1998 surpassed one billion people in 2011. It spent 8 years that the Facebook site to do so. The official statistics of the Facebook site represented that there are about 15 million users visited the Facebook site monthly and there are about 12 million people visited the site by using the mobile Internet devices in the fourth quarter of 2013 in Taiwan. In the same time, there are about 11 million users visited the Facebook site daily and there are about 8.5 million people visited the site by using the mobile Internet devices in Taiwan. Taiwan is a mature market for the Facebook site, the website penetration is the highest in the world. Taiwan in where the Facebook site utility rate is so high faces the rapidly aging population issue. According to the statistics from Ministry of the Interior, Republic of China, the ratio of the population over 65 years old has exceeded 7% in 1993. It means that Taiwan is the aging society. The ratio of the population over 65 years old is 11.90% in October, 2014. With the statistics from Council for Economic Planning and Development in the Republic of China Executive Yuan, the ratio of Taiwan elderly population will exceed 14% in 2018, and Taiwan will be the aged society. The ratio of Taiwan elderly population will increase quickly from 2014 to 2025 because of the effect of the postwar baby boom. This investigation using action research discusses the elderly people studying IT lessons in the Senior Citizens Academy of a city in Taiwan. How do they use the Facebook site? We found that the elderly people is not the main usage group of the Facebook site, but using the Facebook site impacts positively for their learning, social networking, and the interactions among their family members. There are two difficulties for elderly people to use the Facebook site, one reason is they are not used to share their thinking to others, and the other reason is the computer operation is difficult for them. We also found that some of the elderly people begin to use the mobile Internet devices what are new things for them, and they use the internet, the Facebook site, Line by making use of the mobile Internet devices.