Does Social Media Enhance Social connectivity of an aging Population?: Why Research is Inconclusive and What to do about IT

In today’s aging world social media are often viewed as a means to enhance social connectivity of older adults. However, previous research on social media’s influence on social connectivity yields conflicting results and fails to assess the –debatablecausal direction of relationship. This research in-progress paper suggests remedies that may yield more robust results. We propose that conflicting results may be caused by 1) the application of methods that are ill-equipped to assess causality, and 2) varying assumptions about What is adopted by Whom, How, When, and Where. We address this variation by offering four hypotheses on the social media adoption assumptions. Based on a longitudinal data set of 302 rural older adults, one hypothesis related to Where, i.e. on which geographical level, social media influences social connectivity was tested. Preliminary results show that older adults differentiate between their social connectivity at the village and neighborhood level. However, on neither of these levels significant impact of social media adoption on social connectivity was found. These results provide ground for future research on how older adults’ social media adoption affects social connectivity at different geographical levels.