Internet access characteristics of middle-aged and elderly people in China’s Tier 1 cities

The collaborative research group of the Institute of Sociology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and Tencent Social Research Center conducted a field survey in China’s first-tier cities: Beijing and Shanghai, from August to October 2017. 17 interviews were conducted with people aged 50 and over, with 6-7 middle-aged and elderly people in each group. Through data analysis and typical phenomena, describe the Internet life of the middle-aged and old people, and reveal the impact of demographic characteristics and socio-economic status on the Internet use of the middle-aged and senior people.

 

The smartphone is the main access port.

Smartphones are essential hardware for middle-aged and old people to access the Internet. The survey found that most middle-aged and old people regard the large screen as the most critical performance of mobile phones. Ample storage space, high-cost performance and fast speed are factors that more than one-third of middle-aged and old people value. The demand of middle-aged and old people for mobile phones is no longer limited to meeting essential communication. Still, they have a higher pursuit for speed and storage space, which is related to their starting to use more Internet and mobile phone functions, such as browsing and storing photos and videos online. In addition, about a quarter of the middle-aged and elderly people interviewed said they valued the sound effect and shooting function of their mobile phones.

Most middle-aged and old people (90.6%) are satisfied with their mobile phones. Among those unsatisfied, the three main reasons are small screen, slow running speed and insufficient storage space, which indicates that middle-aged and old people have rich use of smartphones.

 

The Internet experience of middle-aged and old people is increasingly three-dimensional and comprehensive.

The Internet application by middle-aged and old people focuses on communication and information acquisition. Still, some convenient functions that seem exclusive to young people have also begun to integrate into the lives of middle-aged and old people, such as watching videos, mobile payment, mobile navigation, taxi service, etc. In terms of online information acquisition, 75.8% of the middle-aged and old people will read news information online, more than half of the middle-aged and old people (56.6%) can search by themselves, and nearly half of the middle-aged and senior people (45.9%) will pay attention to browsing articles on WeChat official account. According to the analysis of focus group interviews, the news that middle-aged and old people browse online is mainly national and social current affairs news, and less attention is paid to entertainment news. The leading search contents include recipes, travel and tourism-related information. The articles on the official account mainly focus on the topics of positive energy, health care, sports and fitness, life tips and so on.

Regarding WeChat communication, most middle-aged and old people (98.5%) will chat on WeChat. More than 80% will send expressions or pictures on WeChat, circle likes from friends, and receive or send red packets. Nearly 70% will shoot and forward small videos. According to the interview results, the small videos shot and shared by the middle-aged and old people are mainly tourism, fitness and grandchildren dynamics; The forwarded network videos are mainly humorous videos with strong interest. To a certain extent, this indicates that the use of WeChat by middle-aged and old people is not limited to using it as an instant messaging tool but also as an interactive platform for expressing emotions and maintaining social interaction.

In terms of life application, the proportion of middle-aged and old people using the Internet is relatively low. 40% of the middle-aged and senior people will pay mobile phone fees online, about 30% of the middle-aged and old people will shop online and use mobile phone navigation, and about one-quarter of the middle-aged and senior people will use taxi Hailing software or pay for water, electricity, coal gas and other living expenses. In contrast, the proportion of middle-aged and old people who can register online, book train tickets, air tickets, hotels and other convenient services is relatively low.

In terms of entertainment and leisure, most (59.3%) of the middle-aged and old people would watch videos on their mobile phones; Some middle-aged and senior people will use their mobile phones to make exciting functions such as photo albums (25.0%) and WeChat emoticons (20.0%).

 

The content most clicked by middle-aged and old people: content related to comforting the mind and regulating emotions.

According to the TBI Tencent browsing index, the content related to comforting the mind and regulating the mood is ranked high among the middle-aged and elderly users, with 76.51% and 72.02% of the middle-aged and elderly users choosing to browse, respectively; Followed by current affairs news, 67% of middle-aged and elderly users chose to browse; There were also health themes with health care as the main content and inspirational articles with emotional life as the main content, which was selected by 66.85% and 60.7% of middle-aged and elderly users respectively.

In addition, the top-ranked themes also reflect the diversified interests of the middle-aged and old people, such as tourism, military affairs, science and technology, humanities and food, as well as the concerns of the middle-aged and senior people on investment, finance and property purchase, such as real estate and finance.

 

The middle-aged and old people like most audio programs related to psychological counselling

Among the album topics that middle-aged and old people like to listen to most, audiobooks are far ahead; The hits of music and humanities albums are relatively high, and the educational training and children’s content also have a certain amount of hits. On the one hand, middle-aged and old people meet their needs for learning knowledge. On the other hand, many middle-aged and senior people also have to take care of their grandchildren, so they pay attention to education content.

The most searched audio programs for middle-aged and old people are related to psychological counselling, which to some extent reflects their psychological needs for understanding and care.

 

Half of the middle-aged and old people will use mobile phones to pay

According to the survey data, 46.3% of the middle-aged and old people said they had never used mobile phones to pay, 36.4% of the middle-aged and senior people said they used them occasionally, and 17.4% of the middle-aged and old people said they used them frequently. Whether middle-aged and old people use mobile phones for payment is closely related to whether they bind bank cards. Among the middle-aged and senior people who secure bank cards, as many as 92.4% use mobile phones for payment, of which 41.5% often use them and 50.9% occasionally use them. Among the middle-aged and old people without bank cards, 28.5% use mobile phones for payment, only 1.7% often use them, and 26.9% occasionally use them. Of the middle-aged and old people bound with bank cards, 91.8% bound with their own bank cards, 6.6% bound with their children’s bank cards, and 1.6% bound with their spouse’s bank cards. More than half (55.7%) of the middle-aged and old people bound with bank cards have a deposit amount or credit limit of less than 5000 yuan, mainly concentrated in the ranges of 500-1000 yuan and 1000-5000 yuan. The number of bound with bank cards with a deposit or credit limit of more than 10000 yuan (7.9%) is small.

There is a significant relationship between middle-aged and elderly people’s perception of mobile payment security and mobile payment use. Among the middle-aged and elderly people who think mobile phone payment is very safe, 97.6% will use it daily, of which nearly 70% often use it, and almost 30% occasionally use it. Among the middle-aged and old people who think mobile payment is safe, 80.9% choose to pay with the mobile phone, of which nearly 30% use it regularly, and more than half use it occasionally. Among the middle-aged and old people who think that mobile phone payment is not safe, 74.8% never use mobile phone payment, and 25.2% occasionally use it. For middle-aged and old people who think mobile phone payment is very unsafe, no one chooses to pay with the mobile phone.

 

Wechat plays an essential role in the participation and organisation of social activities of the middle-aged and elderly.

Wechat is the most critical contact method in the organisation of tourism, sports fitness and square dance activities that middle-aged and old people most often participate in. For square dancing, singing and sports and fitness, which are highly organised, with relatively fixed personnel and relatively concentrated location, WeChat contact is the most common way, with 69.4%, 61.9% and 59.5% of the middle-aged and old people choosing it respectively; Secondly, telephone contact; Face to face communication also accounts for a certain proportion. In community collective activities and communication activities such as calligraphy, painting, reading and writing, the balance of telephone contact is slightly higher than that of WeChat. The contact and organisation of tourism mainly rely on WeChat, and 67.2% of middle-aged and old people choose this item.

Middle-aged and old people have different preferences for different types of WeChat articles. Most middle-aged and senior people like health care and life knowledge articles. 74.9% and 72.8% of middle-aged and old people like to browse on WeChat at ordinary times. In addition, many middle-aged and elderly people want to browse current affairs news, government policies, tourism and inspirational articles. Most respondents said they would forward the reports after reading and selectively forward the articles to people in different social circles according to the content of the pieces to turn the forwarding articles into a positive way.

 

Reference
Guangming Daily 2018. Research Report on Internet life of middle-aged and old people in China http://www.xinhuanet.com/politics/2018-03/22/c_1122572999.htm

The research on the influence of Internet use on the loneliness of the elderly

The ageing population has become an essential process of social development in China. By 2025, the population aged 60 and above will exceed 300 million. With the gradual growth of age, the elderly usually face problems such as reduced social participation and social activities, separation from friends and family, and thus risk of loneliness. Loneliness is a negative emotional experience that makes individuals feel subjective and isolated from others. It is a common physical and mental health problem faced by the elderly. The loneliness of the elderly has become a significant public health problem.

 

The Internet is the product of the development of the times, and it has increasingly become the environment for people to live in. The rapid development of the Internet is both an opportunity and a challenge for the elderly. On the one hand, it provides the elderly with diversified online places for social entertainment and browsing information, enriching their social life and enhancing their sense of social integration. On the other hand, the rapid lifestyle changes tend to put the elderly at a loss, reduce their sense of security and belonging, and even be excluded from the Internet world, resulting in an increased risk of loneliness. With the unprecedented development of Internet technology, it is of great practical significance to fully integrate the development of the Internet with the active ageing and promote the elderly to share digital technology.

 

Loneliness is a subjective psychological feeling of loneliness and loneliness. The influencing factors of loneliness mainly include the individual and environment. The personal level specifically has individual personality psychological factors (coping style, self-efficacy, personality, etc.), essential demographic characteristics (age, gender, marital status, registered residence, etc.), health factors (daily activity ability, pain feeling), etc. The environmental level mainly includes family support and interpersonal network.

 

Internet use is an essential factor that affects the loneliness and mental health of the elderly. Scholars’ conclusions on the impact of the Internet are inconsistent, and there are mainly three viewpoints. The first view is that using the Internet benefits the mental health of the elderly and relieves loneliness. This positive role is primarily reflected in expanding human networks, promoting social integration, promoting technology empowerment, and facilitating access to health information. The second view questions the positive role of Internet use: it believes that frequent online activities will replace offline and face-to-face communication, thus reducing social contact and emotional support, which is unfavourable to reducing loneliness. The third view is that there is group heterogeneity in the effect of Internet use on the health of the elderly. The elderly with high social class and higher education levels are likelier to get high returns from Internet use. In contrast, for the elderly with low social type and lower education level, the positive effect of Internet use on mental health is not apparent.

 

Compared with the middle-aged and young people, the proportion of the elderly using the Internet is relatively low, and there is still much room to play the role of the Internet in reducing loneliness.

With the development of society, the integration of the Internet and the ageing society will be closer, and the impact on the health of the elderly will be more profound. However, the Internet use of the elderly is weak: on the one hand, there are problems such as a single learning path, the absence of community and social learning and training, and insufficient Internet access environment support. At the same time, the content of the elderly’s Internet use mainly stays at the level of universal functions such as voice and video chat, browsing information, leisure and entertainment. The use of instrumental functions such as health services and pension support is insufficient, which is not conducive to improving the elderly’s pension environment and realising their pension needs.

As a vast tool integrating information dissemination, chat and social networking, leisure and entertainment, convenient services and other functions, the Internet has significant advantages in meeting the needs of the elderly in life, pension and health. Especially in the current era of frequent population mobility, WeChat and other communication platforms generated by the Internet are not limited by space. They can meet the real-time social interaction needs of the elderly. At the same time, the Internet also helps the elderly to break through the limitations of physical function and social interaction, realise the free flow of information, expand the vision of the elderly, help them understand and integrate into social life, and improve their social adaptability. In addition, the Internet provides various leisure and entertainment options, helping the elderly to relax, entertain and reduce negative emotions.

 

The use of the Internet has a significant impact on the elderly’s loneliness and age.

The ageing of the elderly means the gradual decline of physical functions such as hearing, vision, cognition and activity ability, as well as the reduction of learning ability and social adaptability. The Internet use behaviour of the elderly will be affected by age, and the role of the Internet will also be affected by age.

With the growth of age, the role of Internet use in reducing the loneliness of the elderly is gradually weakened. The reasons why middle-aged and elderly people aged 70 and above can not get the benefits of the Internet can be understood from the following three aspects. First, for the elderly, whether the Internet can play a role is closely related to the development of the Internet age. The elderly 70 and above have lived in the Internet-free era for a long time. Their living habits, concepts and learning styles are far from those of the Internet era. In addition, their learning adaptability is reduced, and it is challenging to integrate into the social environment of the Internet era. However, young people under 70 can fully participate in the Internet when they have a particular ability to learn and adapt and can develop the habit of using the Internet. Even if they grow old, the Internet can still play a role. Second, middle-aged and old people are not involved in the Internet enough to meet their own needs through the Internet. Most use the Internet based on passive requirements, and most are mild users. Third, the influencing factors of loneliness of middle-aged and old people are more focused on living style, offline social support and other aspects. Instrumental help and practical, emotional support play a more vital role in alleviating loneliness. With the growth of age, their motivation and demand to make new friends, obtain cutting-edge news and get satisfaction from internet entertainment are reduced. Based on this finding, the role of the Internet in facilitating the loneliness of the elderly more follows the principle of “those who can use it will benefit for a long time”. Only when they actively contact and use it can the role of the Internet be reflected. With the deepening of the integration of the Internet and personal life and its rational use, its positive role will become more and more apparent.

 

The use of the Internet is of great significance to alleviate the loneliness of the elderly and help them integrate into social life. However, the important role of the Internet is age heterogeneous. At this stage, it is suitable for the young elderly, but not for the middle and old elderly. The meaninglessness to the middle-aged and senior people may come from the lack of opportunities for active participation among the middle-aged and aged people, the Internet environment is not suitable for the old, and the function corresponding to their needs has not been found. Based on this, the following suggestions are put forward:

First, we should create a convenient Internet access environment to provide conditions for the Internet to continue to play a role in the elderly. On the one hand, we should establish a friendly soft environment, popularise Internet knowledge, improve the information literacy of the elderly, and enrich Internet learning channels; On the other hand, emphasis should be placed on the provision and optimisation of hardware conditions. We should promote the use of the Internet by the elderly from both subjective promotion and objective conditions and play the due role of the Internet in the elderly.

Second, we should fully consider the age characteristics of the elderly, focus on improving the content, and promote the transformation of the Internet to adapt to ageing. Based on clarifying the elderly care and health needs of different elderly people, for the young elderly, we should focus on improving the depth of use, expanding the content of use, and concentrate on meeting the future elderly care and health needs; For the middle-aged and elderly people, more attention should be paid to how to guide the tools to be more suitable for the elderly and the content to meet the needs. On the one hand, we should promote Internet and home-based services and other elderly care services, expand the service width and depth, and integrate Internet technology into family and community elderly care. On the other hand, we should use the Internet to extend offline companionship and communication, alleviate the physical and activity difficulties of the elderly, expand the social circle of life, and increase contact with people, Enrich interests and recreational activities to reduce their loneliness.

The Internet wave and the “silver wave” will develop synchronously and coexist. The Internet wave will also be deeply integrated into the life of the silver people and constantly change the lifestyle of the elderly. The development of the Internet should fully consider and actively adapt to the age characteristics of the elderly, carry out ageing adaptation transformation in equipment, operation, content and other aspects, break down access barriers, and create barrier-free access and use environment. And then promote the Internet use of the elderly, help them fight loneliness, enhance their happiness and life satisfaction, and improve their mental health.

 

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Questionnaire design

The questions in the questionnaire are designed to encourage the elderly to recall the changes in their city. The primary purpose of the questions in the questionnaire is as follows: first, it comes from the research theme, the memories of urban life and the views on public art. Secondly, to sort out the collected data in visual materials, it is necessary to ask some questions about personal habits and hobbies properly and ensure sufficient detailed information to achieve the authenticity of practical work creation. Third, out of consideration of the limited energy of the elderly, design some yes or no questions. Finally, I hope that the interviewees can share some of their family photo albums or their photographic works, and I can obtain some visual information other than language to more comprehensively understand the memory of the interviewees and the characteristics of the times they live in, and extract the visual elements for later works.

 

I will divide the interview questions into four parts for the above purposes. The questionnaire will be developed from these four parts, which are about the memory of urban life, the change in the city, the current situation and the prospect of the future of the elderly interviewees, and the understanding of public artworks and Augmented Reality (AR) technology. Each interviewee will not be asked more than ten questions. Most of the questions will be designed as opening questions, and even the interviewees can choose the questions they want to talk about. And the interview time will not exceed 45 minutes.

 

Specific plan

1. Interview and question guide

(1) Interview purpose:
A. Memories of city life

When did you start living in this city?

What do you think of when we talk about this city? It could be things, scenes, or abstract feelings.

What do you like and dislike most about this city?

 

B. Changes in the city

Do you remember some of the changes that have taken place in this city? Such as means of transportation, buildings, population density and so on. Or we can talk about some things that existed in the past and have disappeared.

Are you satisfied with the changes in the city?

What was your favourite place to go when you were younger? Does this place still exist?

 

C. Recent situation and prospects for the future

Do you want to talk about your family history, do you want to talk about the work you’ve done, or do you want to talk about your children?

Do you have any hobbies?

Do you prefer to cook at home or eat out?

Have smartphones, computers, and games changed your life?

Do you have a favourite TV show/movie/play recently? What attracted you?

Do you prefer to live alone, with children? What are the advantages of each?

 

d. Understanding of public art and AR technology

Have you noticed the public art on the square/on the lawn/in the shopping mall? Do you like it?

Is there any artwork that has impressed you?

Are you interested in AR technology?

 

e. Visual element extraction

May I have a look at your family photo album?

Do you like photography? Do you like drawing? Do you have any favourite works of art?

 

(2) Question type:
Ice-breaking question: how old are you? What year were you born? What was your previous job?

Guiding questions: in the face of talkative older people, I may use some legends or traditional folk allusions to let the elderly open the clips, such as the birth time or date. Do you pay attention to the city’s public space (Art)?

Transition question: does this work still exist? How much do you know about this? Are you with your old colleagues? Are they all right now? Do you like your job? Why do you like it? Which cities have you been to? Is it a long time or a short time? Which city do you like best? Why?

 

(3) Time type:
Start with a simple, easy-to-answer question or easy topic.
Interview: ask appropriate questions that can evoke memory.
Near the end: ask some questions, such as flipping through photo albums or taking life photos.

2. Way of asking questions: it is best to ask questions in a gentle way to avoid some stimulating and sensitive topics to keep the emotions of the elderly in a relatively stable state.

 

Feasibility analysis
1. The interview report and finish the interviews before the end of February 2023, which is also a trial-and-error process.
2. Remedy it in the form of feature reports.
3. Flexible handling of interview questions.
4. Mastering interview skills.