Concepts, terms, and mental models: Everyday challenges to older adult social media adoption

Abstract

Social connection and social support are strong predictors of wellbeing, but maintaining social relations often becomes more difficult at older ages. Because social media enhance feelings of connectedness and reduce feelings of loneliness, they may present accessible and relatively low cost mechanisms to enhance life quality at older ages. Using data gathered from two focus groups of potential older adult social media learners, we explored the physical and cognitive challenges to social media use, perceptions of social media benefits, and conceptual barriers to use. Findings support earlier studies that identify perceived benefit as important to social media adoption at older ages, and extend these by identifying that a lack in conceptual knowledge of these technologies is an additional barrier to use. We then discuss the cognitive implications of gaining this knowledge.