Effects of SNS on Social and Emotional Well-being of Older Adults in Korea

Abstract

Advances in information and communications technology (ICT)

have potential to increase social contacts in later life. However, the possible

consequences of using ICT devices on mental health or successful aging of

older adults still remain controversial. The purpose of this study was to

examine the effect of smartphone applications use on social and emotional

well-being of older adults. We investigated the relationship between

individual characteristics of participants and frequency of smartphone

application use, and compared social network expansion and depression

level between low and high users of a social networking service (SNS)

application, KakaoTalk. We recruited community-dwelling older adults (N

= 107, Mage = 68.57, SDage = 6.12) and measured the actual use of

smartphone applications using an application tracker, App-Logger (Park,

Hyun, Hahn, & Suh, 2018). We collected digital performance scores,

indexes of technological, physical, and cognitive variables as well. Results

showed that KakaoTalk was the most used application among other

applications (including default ones like calls or messages). High users of

KakaoTalk reported of making more social relationships in both private and

public networks than low users. High users on average reported more

instances of depressive feelings than low users of KakaoTalk but not as

much as to be diagnosed with depression. Additionally, periods of Internet a

smartphone use, digital performance, processing speed were found

significantly higher in high users.