Social media survey

If you help older adults to use or manage their social media accounts (or if someone helps you), would you please take this short survey?

https://survey.napier.ac.uk/n/smp.aspx

This survey is part of a project that investigates how people help or support older adults to use social media accounts. It is conducted by Edinburgh Napier University and is funded by a Carnegie Trust Research Incentive Grant.

More about the study:
The project is titled “Social media by proxy: strategies for managing the online profiles of adults with dementia” and is being undertaken with Dr Gemma Webster (PI). The work was developed based on Gemma’s previous work with people with dementia, carers, and dementia support organisations and my own PhD work on social media use. The combination of these research areas is strengthened by the fact that social media use by older adults is at an all-time high and the increase in people with dementia*. This brings the ongoing discussions of social media use in today’s society to a growing population of users.

The general goal of this research is to identify how people manage the social media accounts of older adults and people with dementia “by proxy”. This includes:

  • How “proxies” manage social media accounts for older adults or people with dementia in their care;
  • How and if people with dementia engage with their social media accounts (with or without support); and
  • What kind of support (if any) “proxies” have for managing these social media accounts.

For more information about this research, or to note interest in participating, please contact me at f.ryan@napier.ac.uk.

*UK statistics: Nearly half (48%) of Internet users aged 65-74 and 41% aged 75+ maintain social media accounts. Further, there are currently 850,000 people with dementia in the UK with a predicted rise to 1 million+ by 2025.