Wang Kun, Gu Danan
Department of Social Work, College of Community and Public Affairs, Binghamton University, Binghamton, NY, 13902, USA.
Independent Researcher, New York, NY, 10017, USA.
Soc Sci Med. 2023 Mar;321:115786. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2023.115786. Epub 2023 Feb 15.
Despite the positive impact of social media use in late adulthood, social media use is still low among older adults. Research in technology adoption and utilization indicates the importance of age-specific factors, such as self-perception of aging (SPA). As it is unclear whether SPA facilitates social media use or social media use promotes SPA, reverse causality has emerged as a major point of contention within this literature, with several studies reporting conflicting results. Thus, in this study, we aim to contribute unique insight by examining (1) whether positive and negative SPAs demonstrate unique associations with social media use and (2) whether these reciprocal associations differ by gender.
Using two waves (2014 and 2018) from the Health and Retirement Study, 4101 older Americans (age ≥65 years) with normal baseline cognition were included in this study. Autoregressive cross-lagged analyses were conducted to assess reciprocal associations between SPA and social media use among the total sample and by gender subgroups.
Controlling for covariates, we found that more frequent social media use marginally predicted higher positive SPA four years later (B = 0.02, p = .07), and higher negative SPA marginally predicted less frequent social media use four years later (B = -0.07, p = .08). However, the by-gender analysis showed that the positive effect of social media use on positive SPA was only significant among older men (B = 0.04, p < .05), whereas the negative impact of negative SPA on social media use only existed among older women (B = -0.13, p < .01).
The reciprocal associations between SPA and social media use differ by the valence of SPA (positive/negative) and gender. Future interventions for SPA and digital technology use among older adults should be gender-tailored.
尽管社交媒体的使用对老年人有积极影响，但老年人中社交媒体的使用率仍然较低。技术采用和利用方面的研究表明了特定年龄因素的重要性，比如对衰老的自我认知（SPA）。由于尚不清楚对衰老的自我认知是促进了社交媒体的使用，还是社交媒体的使用促进了对衰老的自我认知，反向因果关系已成为该文献中的一个主要争议点，多项研究报告了相互矛盾的结果。因此，在本研究中，我们旨在通过研究（1）积极和消极的对衰老的自我认知是否与社交媒体的使用存在独特关联，以及（2）这些相互关联是否因性别而异，来提供独特的见解。
本研究纳入了来自健康与退休研究的两波数据（2014年和2018年）中的4101名基线认知正常的美国老年人（年龄≥65岁）。进行了自回归交叉滞后分析，以评估总样本以及按性别分组的子样本中对衰老的自我认知与社交媒体使用之间的相互关联。
在控制协变量后，我们发现更频繁地使用社交媒体在四年后略微预测了更高的积极对衰老的自我认知（B = 0.02，p = 0.07），而更高的消极对衰老的自我认知在四年后略微预测了较低的社交媒体使用频率（B = -0.07，p = 0.08）。然而，按性别分析表明，社交媒体使用对积极对衰老的自我认知的积极影响仅在老年男性中显著（B = 0.04，p < 0.05），而消极对衰老的自我认知对社交媒体使用的负面影响仅存在于老年女性中（B = -0.13，p < 0.01）。
对衰老的自我认知与社交媒体使用之间的相互关联因对衰老的自我认知的效价（积极/消极）和性别而异。未来针对老年人对衰老的自我认知和数字技术使用的干预措施应根据性别进行调整。
