What seniors value about online social interaction: the case of an online community

This study also confirmed and extended the findings of several previous studies, to show that online sociability does increase overall sociability, and that face-to-face interaction is still seen as the ultimate form of socialisation, although technological substitutes, such as webcam, mean that physical meetings are not necessary, as had been suggested by previous literature. As future research builds on the findings of this study and its suggestions for further research, online sociability for seniors will improve substantially.Information and communication technologies are seen by many researchers across the world as a significant contributor in enabling seniors to live healthy, independent lives, and to remain out of institutional care for longer. For seniors to make more use of technologies, online and other, those technologies must be designed with them in mind. Yet, while human-computer interaction researchers have investigated how user values can help improve technology design, few such investigations have explored systems for seniors, or researched their online communities.