Information Seeking Behavior of the Elderly in Social Media and the Internet

Narrative Literature Review

Case Scenario/ Task

Information seeking behavior of elderly on social media

Introduction:

According to Wilson (2000), information seeking behavior represents the ways in which people look for ad use information. Information seeking behavior involves human behavior and actions in relation to active as well as passive search for information. It also involves the thought processes of people while looking for information. In this paper, the information seeking behavior of the elderly in social media has been critically analyzed. Social media refers to the different social networking websites and applications

which enable people to communicate, form communities, share photos, videos and views, etc. Some leading social media options are Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Method:

In this paper, in order to assess the information seeking behavior of the elderly in social media, the qualitative research method has been used. In this method, the focus is on acquiring high quality, in- depth information. The research approach used is exploratory research. In this approach, a scenario or topic is explored in detail. This research involves secondary research only. In this option, existing research and literature are critically analyzed to find detailed information. For this research, search engines like Google and Google Scholar have been used to find researches relevant to the topic. By using search keywords like “information seeking behavior,” “information seeking behavior of elderly,” “social media use of elderly people,” etc., 3 relevant researches were found. These three have been critically assessed in this paper.

Critical analysis of the information seeking behavior of the elderly

in social media:

As per a study done on the Australian market by Wong (2015), 65% of the elderly people, that is, people aged above 65 years of age in Australia, use social media. 88% of these people use Facebook. However, their number of contacts is much less as compared to younger groups. Majority of the elderly use desktops and are not very comfortable with using mobile devices like smartphones. While the primary reason for using social media is staying in touch and communicating with friends, almost all social media users of the elderly age group in Australia use social media to seek different types of information, ranging from information related to different consumer products to medical information.

A 2015 study by Gollop assessed the health information seeking behavior of elderly African American women in social media. This study evaluated the methods used by the aged African American women living in urban locations to seek information related to health and identified the factors that influenced

information seeking behavior. Gollop (2015) revealed in this study that the influencing factors are the perception of literacy, access to information, mobility, etc. As per this study, majority of the elderly African American women acquire health related information from doctors, mass media like TV,

newspapers, etc., and people in their social groups. It must be noted that the use social media is not very popular and this group of people mostly prefer direct communication or traditional sources of information. They are not very comfortable with latest technologies and many of them do not even have

any presence in social media. The study revealed that this age group of people consider the public libraries as a significant and highly credible source of information. Thus, it can be understood that even in this age high speed internet and social media apps, the elderly still rely on the classic sources of

information like newspapers, TV, public library, etc. When seeking health related information, these people prefer to communicate with physicians directly at first.

Another research done in South Korea by Kim & Choi (2015) has focused on assessing the ways in which the elderly population of South Korea seek information. This study has pointed out that the extremely fast development of technologies related to information and communication has led to a huge

information gap and the elderly are excluded due to their lack of comfort with latest technology like social media apps, smartphones, etc. As per this study, the senior citizens of Korea prefer personal relationships the most when seeking information. In case of any query, they prefer to ask their relatives

and friends first. This reliance on human sources of information triggers information searches based on technology in some instances. For example, if an elderly person asks his grandson about something, and the grandson is not aware of the information, he searches online in order to find the data needed.

However, while elderly people do use technologies like mobile phones and laptops, there is an obstacle that prevents them from using these devices to seek information from social media. This obstacle is the fact that the elderly are not very tech-savvy and are not very comfortable in using social media apps.

They use mobile devices mostly for making calls and are not comfortable with the numerous other features available. They do not even have any significant interest in learning how to use social media apps and other features. However, this research has pointed out that in near future, a new generation of elderly people will arise in the entire world who will be tech-savvy and will be highly comfortable with technology.

A research done by Huang, Hansen and Xie (2012) revealed that more than 50% of the elderly people in USA use social media to look for health related information. This study has revealed that in a controlled research, 17 older people in the age group of 56 to 78 searched for information in social media. The ‘thinking aloud’ mechanism was used to assess the thought processes of the samples. This study pointed out some key challenges related to seeking information online. Firstly, the elderly people did not know how to use proper search queries to look for information. Secondly, they had minimum knowledge about the usage of different search tools in social media. Thirdly, they had high dependency on their existing knowledge about making searches and were not interested in exploring the options. Lastly, the elderly lacked the ability to assess the quality and credibility of information. Thus, it can be understood that even if the elderly use social media for searching information, they lack the acumen and capability to make effective searches and acquire valid and authentic information from the countless search responses.

Conclusion:

It can be concluded from this paper that even in this age high speed internet and social media apps, the elderly still rely on the classic sources of information like newspapers, TV, public library, etc. When seeking health related information, these people prefer to communicate with physicians directly at first.

This paper has revealed that even if the elderly use social media for searching information, they lack the acumen and capability to make effective searches and acquire valid and authentic information from the countless search responses.