The Value Of Social Media For The Elderly:Based On Social Capital Theory

Today,as China’s social informationization develops,the aging degree of our society is also further intensified.In the context of informationization,how to better respond to the problem of aging and bring into play the value of informatization is a new challenge for our enterprises,governments and society.The contemporary elderly in China have witnessed the whole process of the development of national social information,and many informatized ideas and products or services have quietly penetrated among them.There are more than 80 million elderly Internet users in China,including more than 60 million WeChat users.All these data tell us that we can no longer ignore the existence of the elderly in informationization.And we need to understand how older users use information technology to explore the value of information technology for them.Under the background of aging and informatization,social information systems have become the biggest entry point for the elderly to integrate into the information network society,especially WeChat with the most active elderly users.However,it is unclear how the elderly use social information systems such as WeChat and how such social information systems generate value for the elderly.Therefore,this article takes the social information system-WeChat as an example,firstly explores the situation of using WeChat by elderly users,and secondly,based on the social capital theory,explores how the use of WeChat is of value to the elderly.This study used 270 valid samples from 4 senior universities in Kunming,Yunnan Province,and analyzed the data and models with SPSS 22.0 and Smart PLS 3.0 software.The results show as follows.(1)The functions of WeChat in high frequency used by the elderly are text chat,view/send friends circle,forward messages,likes and voice calls,mainly focusing on instant communication and information processing.(2)The value of WeChat for elderly users is realized by increasing the frequency of the use of WeChat functions to obtain social capital to enhance psychological well-being.According to the results of the research,from the perspective of the WeChat functional requirements and WeChat value of the elderly,this paper finds the WeChat products or services that can generate value for the elderly population for the elderly groups for WeChat enterprises and merchants.