Virtual Reflections: Understanding Social Media’s Role in the Self Esteem and Identity of Older Adults

Abstract

The use of social media has been poorly investigated among the elderly users using a set of appropriately constructed statistical methods. The analyses of the various psychological well-being aspects of the elderly population reveals interesting results about the impact of their social media engagement. The quantitative study initiates with designing a structured questionnaire through secondary sources for primary data collection. It includes 394 primary responses from elderly users of social media. The conceptual model focused upon three aspects which are closely associated with the psychological well-being of such respondents and can be impacted by the daily use of social media. These factors include the self-esteem levels of the elderly, the body image issues and the self-identity they have about oneself. All the three factors have been investigated and confirmed using statistical methods for effectively measuring the group of respondents in the study. The mean score analyses of each of the components shows that the social media engagement levels of the elderly are at a medium level. They are not highly addicted to the use of social media and mostly confined themselves to the activities of information seeking from different blogs and posts rather than involving in sharing by themselves.