Perceived attraction of online communities among elderly people

Amount of elderly people that visit online communities is constantly growing. However, there is a research gap considering elderly people as Internet users and online community members. Therefore, in this paper we scrutinized elderly people's perceptions of factors that encourage them to join online communities and, on the other hand, of factors preventing them from joining the communities. The empirical data was gathered by both posing questions and linking a web questionnaire in discussion forums aimed for elderly people. The study at hand seems to verify the existence of the attraction factors identified in earlier studies. On the other hand, the study does not seem to support the suggestion that elderly people need any other special web services than focused communities. According to the study, elderly people prefer discussions with others from the same age group. At the time being, the number of online communities targeted at Finnish senior citizens is low. As a conclusion we propose that by offering elderly people more online communities their social well-being could be increased.