A Study On The Smartphone Use By Rural Elderly Women And Its Contributory Factors

Digital life and aging population are two major trends in China today.Old age is a life stage in which social status declines,social resources decrease and social adaptability weakens.The popularity of smart phones promotes the comprehensive digitalization and intelligence of information acquisition,leisure and entertainment,work contacts,travel and shopping,etc.More and more elderly people are facing the problems of social role transformation and lifestyle transformation at the same time.They began to touch digital products,use smartphone,or actively or passively integrate into the digital age.Among them,rural elderly women need more attention and support.Because of their geographical,age and gender disadvantages,their smartphone use and digital integration are often ignored.In view of this,this study takes the rural elderly women as the research object,selects Xin village in Hebei Province as the observation point,collects the research data through participatory observation and in-depth interview,and adopts the grounded theory analysis method to conduct an in-depth investigation and analysis on the smartphone use and its contributory factors of the elderly women in this village.This paper attempts to answer the following questions:What is the status of smartphone use among the elderly women in rural areas?What does smartphone use mean to their lives?What factors are affecting their smartphone use?In view of these possible contributory factors,what effective measures should we take to improve the use level of smartphone of rural elderly women so that they can better integrate into digital life?The thesis consists of six parts.The first chapter introduces the research background,research status,research methods and ideas.In the second chapter,the natural environment and social environment of the investigated village,the basic living conditions of the investigated objects,and the development process of mobile phones in the village are briefly summarized,which provides a macro background for the following analysis.The third chapter mainly focuses on the specific coding and operation process of grounded theory.The fourth chapter is a concrete exposition of the use of smartphone by rural elderly women,including the source,use mode,function and influence smartphone.The fifth chapter,based on the previous grounded analysis,divides the elderly women in the village into three levels according to the level of smartphone use,and summarizes their contributory factors respectively.The sixth chapter is the conclusion and discussion,which summarizes the findings of the paper and has a dialogue with relevant research.The study found that:rural elderly women mainly use the contact function,entertainment function and information acquisition function of smartphone.This is conducive to promoting family communication,strengthening social ties and increasing knowledge,but it may also lead to the negative impact of spreading rumors and eyesight decline.In terms of the use of smartphone,rural elderly women can be divided into three levels,namely,middle-level use,low-level use and non-use.In addition to the objective factors such as educational level,physical conditions,leisure conditions and price factors,subjective factors such as practicality,ease of use,pleasure,popularity,risk and recognition can not be ignored.When rural elderly women think that using smartphone can bring them obvious benefits and pleasant mood,and the difficulty is low,and the smartphone has a high degree of popularity in the community,it will easily lead to relatively high levels of use behavior;When elderly women in rural areas think that using smartphone is difficult,has little effect,and has a high risk of being deceived,it is easy to lead to relatively low levels of use behavior.