The dual impact of online communication on older adults’ social connectivity
Open accessAbstract
Purpose: – In today’s aging world online communication is often viewed as a means to enhance social connectivity, and therefore well-being, of older adults. However, previous research on the influence of online communication on social connectivity largely disregards older adults, yields conflicting results and fails to assess the – debatable − causal direction of relationship. The purpose of this paper is to overcome these issues by developing four hypotheses related to who uses what, how, with whom. Design/methodology/approach: – The authors use a panel data study to test the hypotheses, including 302 older adults. Response rates are between 62 and 75 percent. Findings: – The authors find, first, that older adults differentiate between social connectivity with other village members, i.e., village connectivity, and connectivity with friends. Second, the impact of online communication varies among these two types of social connectivity. Where e-mail use has a negative impact on village connectivity, it does not affect connectivity with friends. Facebook use on the other hand has a negative impact on connectivity with friends, but not on village connectivity. The negative effects were not found among those older adults that were already well-connected on forehand, indicating a buffer effect. Practical/implications: – Policy makers’ implementing online communication tools to strengthen social connectivity of older adults, may want to carefully select tools based on the type of connectivity they aim to enhance. Impact needs to be monitored. Originality/value: – The authors contribute by analyzing how characteristics of online communication tools, i.e., information richness and privacy protection, as well as social connectivity, i.e., geographical proximity and emotional closeness jointly shape older adults’ social connectivity.
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Social media use has been shown to be effective in maintaining social connections and improving older adults' psychosocial outcomes.
“Social media use has been shown to be effective in maintaining social connections and improving older adults' psychosocial outcomes.”
From The relationship between social media use and psychosocial outcomes in older adults: A systematic review (2024) · cites this paper as Hage et al., 2016
The Discussion (section 5) says online communication generally did not enhance older adults’ social connectivity. It reports that Facebook use negatively affected connectivity with friends, rather than showing it to be effective at maintaining connections; the paper does not establish improved psychosocial outcomes. (LLM, conf=0.90)
Checked by a reasoning model — may be wrong.
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredUsing social media is associated with some benefits for older adults, including cognitive health, feeling less loneliness and depression, better social connectivity, and quality of life.
“Studies have shown that using social media is associated with some benefits for older adults, including cognitive health (Quinn, 2018), feeling less loneliness and depression (Chopik, 2016), better social connectivity (Hage et al., 2016), and quality of life (Nam, 2021).”
From The relationship between social media use and psychosocial outcomes in older adults: A systematic review (2024) · cites this paper as Hage et al., 2016
Hage et al. is cited for better social connectivity, not for the other benefits listed in the sentence. Its Discussion (section 5, page unavailable) says online communication generally did not enhance older adults’ social connectivity; e-mail negatively affected neighborhood connectivity, while Facebook negatively affected connectivity with friends. (LLM, conf=0.90)
Checked by a reasoning model — may be wrong.
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredOnly one cross-sectional study found that more frequent social media use was associated with higher relatedness, and the other three studies did not find an association between social media use and social connectedness.
“Only one cross-sectional study (Clark & Moloney, 2020) found that more frequent social media use was associated with higher relatedness, and the other three studies (Challands et al., 2017;Hage et al., 2016, Quinn, 2021) did not find an association between social media use and social connectedness.”
From The relationship between social media use and psychosocial outcomes in older adults: A systematic review (2024) · cites this paper as Hage et al., 2016
Section 4.3 reports no effect of Facebook use on neighborhood connectivity, which supports the claim for that measure. But it also reports a negative effect on connectivity with friends, so the broader statement that this study found no association with social connectedness is not supported. The paper cautions that the Facebook effects were significant only at the 10 percent level. (LLM, conf=0.87)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
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- Authors
- Hage, E., Wortmann, H., van Offenbeek, M., & Boonstra, A.
- Affiliations
- University of Groningen (NL)
- Venue
- Information Technology & People
- Publisher
- Emerald
- Published
- 2016-03-07
- Volume
- 29
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 31-50
- ISSN
- 0959-3845 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2274717773
- Semantic Scholar
- a034528441df96df885689997834fc56b075d3bc
- Cited by
- 66
- References
- 73
- Citations by year
- 2026: 8 · 2025: 18 · 2024: 15 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 6 · 2021: 8 · 2020: 1 · 2019: 2 · 2018: 1 · 2017: 2
- FWCI
- 4.68
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- research.rug.nl
- Licence
- Locations
- Information Technology and People (publishedVersion)
- University of Groningen research database (University of Groningen / Centre for Information Technology) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Demography › Technology Use by Older Adults
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Neuropsychology and Physiological Psychology › Aging and Gerontology Research
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Aging, Elder Care, and Social Issues
- Keywords
- online communication, older adults, social connectedness, email use, Facebook use, friendship networks, buffering effect, information richness, privacy preservation, geographic proximity, emotional closeness, aging
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
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