Social media decreases loneliness for older adults, research finds

01 april 2013—Social media can be an effective tool for decreasing loneliness for older Australians according to new research conducted at the University of Sydney.

Social isolation can pose a significant problem for older adults especially for those who are house-bound, says Professor Robert Steele who led the Connecting Older Adults research project.

Professor Steele says while technologies are increasingly assisting older Australians to reside longer in their homes, there is also a flip side: an increased risk of loneliness or isolation. He says the year and a half long research project aimed to determine if social media use could provide benefits for older adults in relation to loneliness and social engagement.

Professor Steele, Head of Discipline and Chair of the Discipline of Health Informatics at the University's Faculty of Health Sciences, said that in commencing the project, he was additionally interested in such questions as do cost, privacy concerns or lack of interest or self-efficacy in using the technologies pose significant obstacles to older adults utilising them.

The Connecting Older Adults project was funded by the Department of Family and Community Services and was carried out with collaboration from peak seniors community bodies, the Australian Seniors Computing Clubs Association and Council on the Ageing NSW.

The study involved 150 participants aged 55 and over with the majority aged 65 and over. They were provided with only brief training in three social media technologies, Twitter, Facebook and Skype, prior to a six month trial period.

"The results we have are very interesting and supportive of these technologies" reported Professor Steele. Standardised scales were used to measure loneliness, such as the 20 item UCLA loneliness scale, pre and post the trial period. Results showed a highly statistically significant decrease in loneliness when comparing pre-trial data to post-trial data, for participants who started using the social media technologies. The majority of participants also reported that the use of technologies help them to be more connected and engaged with the community.

"In post-trial data we also wished to further determine the views of the older adult participants to determine their possible continued future use of the technologies or otherwise and other indicators of their perceptions of the technologies" says Professor Steele. A number of results strongly supported the effectiveness of the technologies: approximately 80 percent of respondents indicated they would continue to use the social media technologies after the end of the trial, and approximately 65 percent agreed or strongly agreed that the technologies were easy to use. This suggested that even providing short training sessions may be effective in overcoming technology barriers.

While the researchers expected costs to be a possible barrier in using the technologies, surprisingly over 90 percent agreed or strongly agreed that the technologies were affordable to use, and even a majority indicated that they considered the use of the social media technologies would be a factor in enabling them to live independently at home for longer.

Other interesting results showed variation between pre-trial views and observed participant behaviours. In the pre-trial data collection, Facebook was initially viewed negatively by a number of participants with quite a few of the participants declining to participate in Facebook training for this reason. However based on the post-trial data, of the three technologies Facebook emerged to be the most frequently used by the largest number of participants, followed by Skype, and with Twitter being the least used technology, and by the smallest number of participants.

Provided by University of Sydney

Social media is mixed blessing in epidemics: WHO

A woman wears a protective mask in a street in Hong Kong in 2008. Facebook, Twitter and other social media websites boost public awareness of disease outbreaks but also make it more difficult to separate fact from fiction, world health officials say.

Facebook, Twitter and other social media websites boost public awareness of disease outbreaks but also make it more difficult to separate fact from fiction, world health officials said Thursday.

17 oct 2011--World Health Organization (WHO) director-general Margaret Chan said the Geneva-based UN body scans websites and online forums in different languages for indications of outbreaks across the world.

Any potential threat is analysed by experts and, if necessary, investigated, she told an international conference in Singapore on improving preparedness to fight disease outbreaks.

"I can assure you that with the rise of social media, the background noises for rumours have become much louder and making it so much harder to detect the really important segments," she said.

"But this development also makes it extremely hard for any country to hide a public health threat of international concern."

Chan, who was director of health in Hong Kong when a fatal outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) effectively shut down the territory in 2003, did not elaborate.

China was heavily criticised by the international community during SARS for initially covering up the epidemic, which originated in the south of the country.

The flu-like disease eventually killed more than 800 people worldwide, according to the WHO.

WHO assistant director-general Keiji Fukuda said that during the H1N1 swine flu that swept the world in 2009/2010, the Internet was rife with rumours about how to build immunity against the disease.

"One of the rumours which started was that if you increase your salt intake it can help," Fukuda told reporters on the sidelines of the Singapore conference.

The agency had to counter the rumour, also using social media, by telling readers that taking too much salt "will be dangerous to your health", he added.

"The availability of information is better than in the past, and I think this is positive," Fukuda said.

"On the other hand, in social media anybody can say anything so it's also possible that you have a lot of miscommunication mixed in with correct information."

Prognosis: Large Social Networks May Help Surgical Patients

By NICHOLAS BAKALAR
Having a large network of friends and family, a new study suggests, may help surgical patients experience less anxiety and pain before their operations and a quicker recovery afterward.
Researchers studied 605 people scheduled for chest or abdominal operations. They estimated their social connectedness by determining how many close friends and relatives each had, and how often they attended social functions. Using well-validated scales, the patients rated their levels of pain and anxiety before and after their operations.
The one-fifth of patients with the smallest social networks reported almost twice as much postoperative pain intensity as the one-fifth with the largest. Smaller social networks were also associated with longer hospital stays.
The authors, writing in the February issue of The Journal of the American College of Surgeons, say it is not clear from their data whether poor social connectedness is a cause or a result of increased postoperative pain. But when they adjusted for preoperative pain level, the effect of social connectedness on postoperative pain disappeared. This suggests a strong association between social network size and preoperative pain levels, which may be the reason for the easier postoperative recovery.
“The average physician, when he takes a social history, asks about smoking and drugs and not the real social situation of the patient,” said Dr. Daniel B. Hinshaw, the senior author and a professor of surgery at the University of Michigan. “And yet it looks like this is a real marker for problems.”