Abstract
While the majority of older adults are now active online, they are often perceived as passive consumers of online information rather than active creators of content. As a counter to this view, we examine the practices of older adult bloggers (N=20) through in-depth interviews. We study this group of older adults as a unique case of content creation and sharing. We find that the practice of creating and sharing through blogging meets several important psychological and social needs for older adults. Specifically, blogging supports the development of identity in older adulthood; fosters selfexpression that supports older adults' values; provides meaningful engagement during retirement; and enables a sense of community and social interaction that is important for wellbeing in late-life. We argue for a focus on designing for late-life development and detail opportunities for online systems to better support the dynamic experience of growing older through online content creation and sharing.
Original language | English (US) |
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Title of host publication | CHI 2016 - Proceedings, 34th Annual CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems |
Publisher | Association for Computing Machinery |
Pages | 5529-5542 |
Number of pages | 14 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9781450333627 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - May 7 2016 |
Event | 34th Annual Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2016 - San Jose, United States Duration: May 7 2016 → May 12 2016 |
Publication series
Name | Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings |
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Other
Other | 34th Annual Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2016 |
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Country/Territory | United States |
City | San Jose |
Period | 5/7/16 → 5/12/16 |
Funding
We thank our study participants and Karina Sirota for her help transcribing interviews. This work was supported by NSF grant IIS-1533340.
Keywords
- Blogging
- Creative expression
- Identity
- Older adults
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Software
- Human-Computer Interaction
- Computer Graphics and Computer-Aided Design