Analysis of Elderly Persons’ Social Network: Need for an Appropriate Online Platform

Abstract

The increasing demographic change and the upcoming technology affinity of the elderly population provide many Internet-based opportunities for social interconnection. Thus, we focus on the status quo of social contacts, the use of the Internet as well as online information offerings and support in the neighborhood for the target group (age of 60 to 90). Hence, two partial standardized surveys including 37 and 50 participants with average ages of 68 and 71 years were conducted respectively. Results indicate that social contacts decrease with age and 75 per cent of the seniors already use the Internet. Thus, there is a general high importance of several web-based information offerings.