An Empirical Study Of The Middle-aged And Elderly’s WeChat Use And Digital Media Literacy

With the development of new digital media technology and its spread in people’s daily lives,the conflict between middle-aged and older people and new digital media technology becomes essential.The promotion of older adults’ digital media literacy has been noticed broadly.An investigation shows that WeChat has become the most popular digital media technology in the elderly’s life.Understanding why the elderly use WeChat and what kind of relationships between WeChat usage and digital media literacy are essential to improving older adults’ digital development.Using an offline survey in Jinan and a series of independent sample t-test and OLS regression,this study found demographic effects in digital media use and digital media literacy distribution among the elderly and found some key factors that influence the usage of digital media of older adults based on technology acceptance model(TAM),and revealed the positive relationship between usage of digital media and digital media literacy.Specifically,the results indicate that perceived usefulness was the main factor of using WeChat in the elderly.Perceived ease of use and privacy risk perception played different roles in different kinds of WeChat usages.Information acquisition,social&communication,and self-presentation positively correlate with the technology and cognitive dimension of digital media literacy,while entertainment has no relationship with any dimension of digital media literacy.The social-emotional dimension of media literacy was not related to any use of WeChat.Theoretically,this study contributes to the literature of the TAM by extending its independent variables and dependent variables.Findings from this study suggest the importance of using digital media in older people’s daily lives,which is beneficial for the digital development of middle-aged and older people in our society.