SOCIAL MEDIA LITERACY AMONG THE ELDERLY

Abstract

The research on “Social Media Literacy among Older Adults” aimed to 1) study social media use behavior and social media literacy among older adults, 2) study differences between demographic characteristics and social media use among older adults, 3) study differences between demographic characteristics and social media literacy among older adults, and 4) study relationship between social media use behavior and social media literacy among older adults. The study was conducted using a survey quantitative research design. Data were collected from 150 men and 150 women, a total of 300 persons, at the age of 60 years and above who have and regularly use social media accounts. The study results indicated that LINE was the most frequently used application among older adults (mean = 4.21). The main reason for using social media was to learn about news and information. The study found that older adults with different genders and levels of education had different frequency of social media use. Women used social media more than men. Older adults whose levels of education are a bachelor’s degree or higher used social media more than those whose levels of education were lower than a bachelor’s degree but frequency of social media use was not different. Besides, it was found that most female and male older adults had media literacy but they had 2 different aspects of social media literacy, namely, evaluation of media value on production and creativity. Female older adults evaluated media value on production and creativity more than male older adults. As for levels of education of older adults, those who completed their study with a bachelor’s degree or higher had more social media literacy on information access than those who completed their study lower than a bachelor’s degree. In addition, frequency of social media use had positive relationship. Though the value was positive but closed to a moderate level; therefore, it cannot be trusted how much older adults are social media literate. Older adults who had high frequency of social media use would overall have high social media literacy and older adults who had low frequency of social media use would overall have low social media literacy, depending on frequency of social media use.