Media Impact On Social Media

Social media plays a central role as a communication tool among several user groups with different purposes. In particular, the elderly individuals over 65 years old of age, who use a social networking, are on the rise in most developed countries. In recent years, the aging population has significantly utilised social network sites in their everyday life; however, there is few research to examine this unique community. As Grande mention in his thesis (2015, 1), elderly users utilise some popular social network sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube, to socialise and stay connected with their significant people, family members, and friends. Also, active use of social media could be a big part of healthy psychological aging in

According to Raymundo, Tentori, and Favela (2012, 340-342), ambient awareness is defined as the way to share information with family through digital social media to receive constant feedbacks from their family members in the same networking. For instance, Mrs Gibb living in nursing home, actively keeps in touch with her daughter and other family members via Facebook and YouTube. As she said in our informal interview

Johnson (2015, 1-4) remarkably discussed that 64% of seniors in Australia who living alone are possibly at risk of cognitive impairment or dementia due to three main factors: boredom, helplessness, and loneliness. When people are getting old, they have gradually lost their companions, friends, or even the most significant persons, and live far apart from the rest of their family. This can cause social isolation or social exclusion. (Guzzo, Fernando, and Patrizia, 2014, 8-14) However, social media can be helpful for this user group to combat feeling isolated by meaningful connection with their own family and other