Social media and social wellbeing in later life
Open accessAbstract
Social wellbeing is important to health, but maintaining social relations often becomes difficult in later life due to retirement, chronic disease, and the death of spouses and friends. Social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, present accessible and low-cost communication technologies that have been demonstrated to enhance feelings of social connection and reduce loneliness in younger age groups. This exploratory study uses a four-week social media training workshop as an intervention in a randomised controlled study to examine whether similar social benefits might be realised for those at older ages, aged 65+ years. Social wellbeing measures of social capital, loneliness, social connectedness and social provisions were examined, revealing only small differences in social integration. As these findings seemingly contradict studies conducted with younger persons, the contexts of social media use in older adulthood are discussed, along with proposals for future research directions.
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Interventional studies on loneliness reported mixed results: some interventions were associated with improvements in loneliness (n = 4), while some were not (n = 3).
“Similarly, the interventional studies reported mixed results.While some interventions that attempted to increase older persons' use of social media were associated with improvements in loneliness (n = 4; e.g.Tsai et al., 2010), some were not (n = 3; e.g.Quinn, 2021).”
From The relationship between social media use and psychosocial outcomes in older adults: A systematic review (2024) · cites this paper as Quinn, 2021
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References 106 · Cited by 46
Research works printed but not linked: 5
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- Authors
- Quinn, K.
- Affiliations
- University of Illinois Chicago (US)
- Corresponding author
- Quinn, Kelly
- ORCID
- Quinn, Kelly
- Venue
- Ageing and Society
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press (CUP)
- Published
- 2019-11-21
- Volume
- 41
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 1349-1370
- ISSN
- 0144-686X (ISSN-L)
- 1469-1779
- PMC
- PMC10081153
- OpenAlex
- W2990801271
- Semantic Scholar
- d497d3bae402c7970760de3e88044be445b124d5
- Cited by
- 46
- References
- 106
- Citations by year
- 2026: 11 · 2025: 9 · 2024: 9 · 2023: 6 · 2022: 5 · 2021: 5 · 2020: 1
- FWCI
- 6.20
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Ageing and Society (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Funders
- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- University of Illinois at Chicago
- National Institute on Aging (P30AG022849)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Demography › Technology Use by Older Adults
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Neuropsychology and Physiological Psychology › Aging and Gerontology Research
- Social Sciences › Health › Health disparities and outcomes
- Keywords
- social media, social well-being, older adults, loneliness, social connectedness, social capital, social integration, Facebook, Twitter, aging
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