Why do elderly not use socialmedia? : An investigation of the elderly’s attitudes to HCI.

Abstract: How do social media and internet usage look like in the eyes of ageing people, specifically those at the age of 80 years or above that live independently? What technologies are most interesting to them and why? What do they struggle with that could lead them to avoid specific technologies or to prefer one technology more than others? The reason of the study was to get an insight of elderlies attitudes, regarding technologies in general and social media specifically, to know what hinders those seniors to be excluded of the recent technologies and to not be plugged into cyberspace. The specific questions that the research wanted to answer were “What are the actual barriers for internet use among the elderly?” and “Also, what could be done to address these barriers?”. The study was taking place in one retirement house in Skellefteå with 4 women at the desired age group and was carried out using semi-structured interviews mixed with focus groups as the method for data gathering. This research will be assisting an EU funded project aimed to start in the summer of 2017 named PLACE-EE and is planned to be a platform for ageing community engagement. The results showed that more technical and human support were required in a local environment. The elderly simply did not have the drive to personally engage themselves actively in technology to use the internet or social media among other things. One of the suggestions made to solve this would be to integrate the technology into their daily routines where they are socially active, like the community centers that they valued quite a lot.