BLOG 7 SOCIAL MEDIA

Social Media and older adults : Aging well 

The use of social media is significantly increasing among older adults with the 50 years and older group being the fastest growing demographic segment on the internet. In fact, internet users over the age of 55 are leading the growth in social network usage, according to a recent report from Nelsen, State of the Media. The picture below shows that seniors are joining Facebook, Twitter, and more, proving older adults are not too old for social media. 

In this info-graphic, it is clearly shown that Facebook is the social media that is mostly used by the older adults. I was surprised to see that Pinterest and Tumblr has also been used by the older adults because I've only seen most of the teenagers using it so this was a brand new information for me. 

It has also been said by the teenagers that because the older adults have been using Facebook so much so that they have loosen interest in using. I've myself heard a bunch of my friends saying the same thing. Teenagers nowadays prefer using Snapchat and Instagram mostly. But slowly, we can see that the older adults are moving on to those too. Not my parents but I've seen my friend's parents using Snapchat and Instagram almost as much as the teenagers do.

It is so different yet amazing to see that the older adults are becoming more active and showing the entire world that they can work their ways in things that teenagers are told to be good at. I like how they are not being dependent on us the teenagers and instead figuring out things on social media. Yes, they might have needed our help in the beginning but looks like they are working their way now.



                            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPpfR3JtaPA

Basically, this video shows how much parents know about the Social Media. Well, it was obvious to see that the app they are most familiar with is Facebook. Towards the end of the video, one parent said about Facebook that "It is for old people, that's what my kids say". I think this statement is being said by most teenagers nowadays as we can see too many older adults on Facebook which can totally be the reason why the teens are going away from it and moving on to other social media that are not being used by the adults. The app they were completely unaware about was WhatsApp. It is obvious that they didn't know about it because even teenagers don't quite use this app so it's completely normal to see why the adults wouldn't use it too.

My view

According to me, the connection between social media and older adults is something that is evolving day by day. At first, it was weird to see older adults using the social media but later I got used to the fact that they can also be independent and not depend on anyone else as far as the use of social media is concerned. My parents have Facebook and they like using it but I would love for them to know about other social media as well and learn how to use them. We can see that slowly the use of social media among the older adults is increasing in a good way. The teenagers should understand that the older adults are not going to stop the usage of social media and instead they will be using even more in coming days as we can see that they are really enjoying it.