The Older People and Internet Technology - Essay Example

Lecturer The Older People and Internet Technology The research study discusses the internet technology usage trends among the olderadults. The discussion thus challenges the notion that internet technologies like social networks are only suitable for the younger generation. The number of older people who use the internet is continuously rising. The usage trends on social media by the older generation are also broadening (Turkle 2012). The social networks use is considered very effective for the organizations that have older people as stakeholders. The social media enhances the trust that the older people have on various organizations, trust is very much critical in ensuring sense of belonging. The social media enables organization stakeholders like the older people to have a voice, based on their own terms (Benkler 2011). The image below shows an elderly couple enjoying using the internet, using a laptop. The social media players attract huge global interest. Twitter has more than 500 million international users who are active. In the United Kingdom alone, Facebook has users who number more than 30 million. Internationally, YouTube is visited 800 million people on a monthly basis. The usage of Twitter is diverse, and ranges from organizing revolutions to illustration of breaking news like for revolutions. Various internet usage researches explains that the older people above 60 years form the fastest increasing demographic, in terms of accessing the internet (Gentle 2012). As the present population ages, the internet usage will improve with time naturally. Thus, the diverse social media channels should be promoted. To further understand internet usage trends of the older population, a qualitative research will be conducted between April 6, 2015 and April 10, 2015. The research study will analyze a sample of 50 older people, who will be chosen through random sampling. The respondents will be subjected to one-on-one interview sessions, and they will be expected to answer five structured questions. The Five questions are: 1. Do you use the social media? 2. Why do you social media? 3. Do you consider social media beneficial to the society? 4. What categories of social media do you use? 5. What challenges do you experience when using the social media? The research study will observe very high standards of ethics. Anonymity of all the respondents will be ensured. The respondents will only be identified using the initials of their name. Anonymity ensures protection of the identity of the respondents. The information provided by the respondents will be handled with the confidentiality that it deserves. The data will be used for only academic purposes, and the findings will be available only at the university library. However, the research team will forward all the respondents a softcopy of the research findings. The respondents are also highly encouraged to provided feedback on the findings of the study. Adequate permission will be sought from the older adults to participate in the research process. They will be contacted and then requested to sign a consent form. The researchers will randomly select the elderly respondents from 5 places. 10 respondents will be chosen from each place. The five places are; shopping mall, elderly home, banking hall, recreational park, and sporting event. All the respondents will be above 60 years. Information on age, marital status and gender will be provided The table below shows the proportion of activities that the elderly internet users engage in. The research process will be done in three key stages; data collection, data analysis, and data presentation. Data will be collected through interview and data mining. Data mining will study literature concerning the elderly and internet technology. Online journals will be used for data collection. Data analysis will be conducted through two statistical measures; measures of central tendencies and measures of dispersion. The central tendency measures that will be applied are mean and mode; for instance, the mean age of the elderly who actively use social media platforms. The measures of dispersion that will be used in the analysis involve range and standard deviation; for instance the difference between users of Facebook and the users of twitter (Jue 2010). Data presentation will be done through charts and graphs. The numbers of different social media users will be compared through bar graphs. Information about gender of the elderly internet users will be presented using pie chart. The presented data will then be stored in the online database of the university library e-portal. Printed copies will also be made available at the library. The social media is a phrase that describes the approaches of developing and publishing information and graphics through the internet. The term also illustrates the media utilized by individuals and also organizations, to publish and retrieve materials over the internet platform and also to share the materials with other internet users. Social media ensures the access of materials posted by other internet users. This provides for feedback and related comments from the internet users who access the posted information or material. The material forms in clued; character texts, videos, blogs and also photographs. Social media have completely transformed individual communication, and also organizational communication (Powell 2011). The New York Times reported in 2009 that Twitter is not only attractive to the young population, but also to the decidedly older population. YouTube is also attractive to both young and older generation. PC world has explained four key reasons why the elderly continuously use the internet technology of social media. The reasons are; to reconnect with past known people, connection with other elderly individuals who suffer from chronic diseases and closing the generation gap.29% of the older population in the United Kingdom use the internet to purchase transport tickets, book flights or pay for car hire (Schoen 2013). The older generation also greatly influenced downloading of movies, literary materials and music. The rate of increase of the old generations in down loading materials is 23%. A research conducted by Umpf illustrates that 50% of pensionable individuals in the United Kingdom regularly use Facebook, and more than 30% continuously view YouTube. However, the trend in internet usage decreases with age. For example, 95% of individuals between 60 and 69 have internet enabled phones. This decreases with age and thus 20% of individuals above 90 years use internet enabled mobile phones (Rheingold 2012). The social media has greatly changed the relationship existing between businesses and their key stakeholders like customers. Social media greatly focuses on the community, which includes the elderly. The social media enhance connection between individuals, and encourage sharing of information and trust. It is the most effective technology that is applied in creating a belonging and collaborative virtual and local environments. This is important for the older generations, because they in some cases feel isolated. The older generation has embraced diverse social media platforms to stay in touch with friends and relatives, meet new people and being up to date with the emerging trends in various societal issues. The older generation also uses the internet platform to acquire knowledge in various areas. They can research on various topics of interest, so as to get adequate insights (Levine 2010). The older individuals possess great interest in applying the social networks. This interest is continuously increasing. Individuals from all age groups are interested in the social media due to similar reasons. People love to communicate with friends, relatives and also new people. Individuals need latest information immediately it occurs, and they also want to provide feedback to the information. Social networking is only effective if the users exchange information (Dhami 2011). Tweeters always aim at passing information to followers. The older generation benefits from social media platforms through accessing an effective medium of transmitting information and generating feedback. The information can be anything of interest; from appointment reminders to the social events update (Marche 2012). The number of online internet users is thus increasing at high rates. Bibliography Benkler, Yochai.(2011). The Wealth of Networks. New Haven: Yale University Press. Dhami, Nav. (2011). "Outbreaks of sentimentitis – riding the social media tiger". Global Connections. Gentle, Anne. (2012). Conversation and Community: The Social Web for Documentation. Laguna Hills, CA: XML Press. Jue, Arthur. (2010). Social media at work: how networking tools propel organizational performance (1st ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Levine, Locke. (2010). Markets are conversations. New York: Perseus. Marche, Seth. (2012). “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?” The Atlantic. Powell, Guy. (2011). ROI of Social Media: How to improve the return on your social marketing investment. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Rheingold, Howard. (2012). Smart mobs: The next social revolution (1st printing ed.). Cambridge, MA: Perseus Pub. Schoen, Harald. (2013). "The Power of Prediction with Social Media." Communication Abstracts. Turkle, John. (2012). Alone together: Why we expect more from technology and less from each other. New York, NY: Basic Books. Read More