Abstract
Virtual social interaction amongst seniors is strengthened through face to face contact. While confirming previous studies that have shown the strengthening of virtual friendships result from physical meetings, this study also showed that virtual face to face meetings have a similar benefit. As more seniors around the world are encouraged to stay at home longer, rather than enter institutional care, virtual sociability is being shown to provide the necessary social inclusion benefits for particularly mental well being, that has been identified in psychological and sociological studies of seniors.
Chapter PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Keywords
References
Baltes, M.M., Carstensen, L.L.: The process of successful aging. Aging and Society 16, 397–422 (1996)
Baltes, P.B., Staudinger, U.M., Lindenberger, U.: Lifespan Psychology: Theory and Application to Intellectual Functioning. Annu. Rev. Psychol. 50, 471–507 (1999)
Baltes, P.B., Smith, J.: New frontiers in the future of ageing: From successful ageing of the young old to the dilemmas of the fourth age. In: Valencia Forum, Valencia, Spain (2002)
Christophidis, N.: Physical and mental changes during lifetime. In: First National Conference, Life Long Learning. University of the Third Age/University of Melbourne (1991)
McDonald, P., Kippen, R.: Ageing: the social and demographic dimensions. In: Policy Implications of the Ageing of Australia’s Population, pp. 47–70. Productivity Commission, Melbourne (1999)
ABS. One in four Australians aged 65 years and over by 2056. Australian Federal Government (2008)
ONS, Ageing, Office of National Statistics (Editor). Crown Copyright: Surrey, UK (2008), http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=949
Belsky, J.K.: The Psychology of Ageing: Theory, Research, and Interventions, 3rd edn. ITP, Melbourne (1999)
ABS. ABS report profiles Australia’s older people. Australian Bureau of Statistics (1999)
Burmeister, O.K.: What 45,000 seniors value about online social interaction. In: IFIP WG9.5 Conference on Massive Virtual Communities. Leuphana University, Luneburg (2008)
Wellman, B., Leighton, B.: Networks, Neighborhoods, and Communities: Approaches to the Study of the Community Question. Urban Affairs Quarterly 14(3), 363–390 (1979)
Wellman, B., Hogan, B.: The Immanent Internet. In: McKay, J. (ed.) Netting Citizens: Exploring Citizenship in the Internet Age, pp. 54–80. Saint Andrew Press, Edinburgh (2004)
Arnold, M.V.: The concept of community and the character of networks. The Journal of Community Informatics 3(2) (2007), http://ci-journal.net/index.php/ciej/article/view/327/355
Alexa. Alexa The Wed Information Company (2009), http://www.alexa.com/
Winner, L.: Do Artefacts Have Politics. Daedalus 109, 121–136 (1980)
Friedman, B.: Value-sensitive design. Interactions 3(6), 17–23 (1996)
Miller, J.K., Friedman, B., Jancke, G.: Value tensions in design: the value sensitive design, development, and appropriation of a corporation’s groupware system. In: Proceedings of the 2007 International ACM Conference on Supporting Group Work. ACM, Sanibel Island (2007)
Brey, P.: Disclosive Computer Ethics. Computers and Society 30(4), 10–16 (2000)
Leitner, M., Wolkerstorfer, P., Tscheligi, M.: How online communities support human values. In: 5th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction: Building Bridges. ACM, Lund (2008)
Friedman, B., Borning, A., Davis, J.L., Gill, B.T., Kahn, P.H.J., Kriplean, T., Lin, P.: Laying the foundations for public participation and value advocacy: interaction design for a large scale urban simulation. In: Chun, S.A., Janssen, M., Gil-Garcia, J.R. (eds.) Proceedings of the 2008 International Conference on Digital Government Research, pp. 305–314. Digital Government Society of North America, Montreal (2008)
Flanagan, M., Howe, D., Nissenbaum, H.: Values in Design: Theory and Practice. In: Van Den Hoven, J., Weckert, J. (eds.) Information Technology and Moral Philosophy. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (2007)
Flanagan, M., Howe, D.C., Nissenbaum, H.: Values at play: design tradeoffs in socially-oriented game design. In: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, Portland (2005)
Williamson, K.: Research in Constructivist Frameworks Using Ethnographic Techniques. Library Trends 55(1), 83–101 (2006)
Sudweeks, F., Simoff, S.J.: Complementary Explorative Data Analysis: The Reconciliation of Quantitative and Qualitative Principles. In: Jones, S.G. (ed.) Doing Internet Research: Critical Issues and Methods for Examining the Net. Sage, Thousand Oaks (1999)
Reneker, M.H.: A qualitative study of information seeking among members of an academic community: methodological issues and problems. Library Quarterly 63(4), 487–507 (1993)
Patton, M.Q.: Qualitative Research and Evaluation Methods, 3rd edn. Sage, Thousand Oaks (2002)
Boase, J., Wellman, B.: Personal Relationships: On and Off the Internet. In: Perlman, D., Vangelisti, A.L. (eds.) Handbook of Personal Relations. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (2004)
Wellman, B.: An Electronic Group is Virtually a Social Network. In: Kiesler, S. (ed.) Culture of the Internet, pp. 179–205. Lawrence Erlbaum, Hillsdale (1997)
Hampton, K., Wellman, B.: Neighboring in Netville: How the Internet Supports Community and Social Capital in a Wired Suburb. City and Community 2(4), 277–311 (2003)
Xie, B.: Multimodal Computer-Mediated Communication and Social Support among Older Chinese Internet Users. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13(3), 728–750 (2008)
Xie, B.: The mutual shaping of online and offline social relationships. Information Research: An Electronic Journal 13(3) (2008), http://informationr.net/ir/13-3/paper350.html
Xie, B.: Using the Internet for Offline Relationship Formation. Social Science Computer Review 25(3), 396–404 (2007)
Marsiske, M., Lang, F.R., Baltes, P.B.: Selective optimization with compensation: Life-span perspectives on successful human development. In: Dixon, R.A., Baeckman, L. (eds.) Compensation for Psychological Defects and Declines: Managing Losses and Promoting Gains, pp. 35–79. Erlbaum, Hillsdale (1995)
Park, D.C., Reuter-Lorenz, P.: The adaptive brain: aging and neurocognitive scaffolding. Annual Review of Psychology 60, 173–196 (2009)
Pfeil, U., Zaphiris, P.: Investigating social network patterns within an empathic online community for older people. Computers in Human Behavior 25(5), 1139–1155 (2010)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2010 IFIP
About this paper
Cite this paper
Burmeister, O.K. (2010). Virtuality Improves the Well Being of Seniors through Increasing Social Interaction. In: Berleur, J., Hercheui, M.D., Hilty, L.M. (eds) What Kind of Information Society? Governance, Virtuality, Surveillance, Sustainability, Resilience. HCC CIP 2010 2010. IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology, vol 328. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-15479-9_12
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-15479-9_12
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-15478-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-15479-9
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)