WhatsApp, the preferred application for grandparents

WhatsApp, the preferred application for grandparents

Older people perceive it as a secure communication channel, while the low cost of the service and the widespread use among family and friends are the main reasons for its success in this collective

   Seniors have long ago clicked with technology and were coaxed from social networks , shortening that digital divide that separates them with younger generations. Not that they are the fastest typing - we have all seen how the 'writing ...' of a mother on WhatsApp is endless - however it is the application most used by 65-year-old adults . This was picked up by the researcher of the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3) of the UOC Andrea Rosales .

A collective that since the appearance of smartphones and Internet , makes an increasingly intense use of the network and its applications. Thus, almost 50% are already connected from home, and the smartphone has become the device that most use to connect, 82.9% among those over 65 years.

Regarding the use of WhatsApp , the instant messaging application plays a central role in the daily life of older people who are familiar with new technologies. It is the application they access most often: an average of 16.9 accesses per day (the average population is 26.4). The main reasons are those pointed by UOC researchers Andrea Rosales and Mireia Fernández-Ardèvol , from Communication Networks & Social Change (CNSC), in their study ' Beyond WhatsApp: Older people and smartphones' (2016): social pressure and the economic factor.

"The fact that their environment has them pushes them to download it to feel emotionally connected with family and friends at any time. This does not mean that during the day they are permanently awaiting the device and the specific application, but they are making brief consultations repeatedly over time, "clarifies Rosales. In the end, it becomes another channel of sociabilization.

"What also makes the balance tilt for use is that the sending of messages and voice calls are included in the quota of the phone. In Béliga and Canada, unlimited SMS are often already included in the mobile quota and this makes seniors see it, as the general population, as a cheap communication service, "he adds.

Unlike younger users, they prefer to communicate important events or bad news and have long conversations through voice calls . "They do it on the mobile line or on WhatsApp," explains Rosales. Some older people also complain that everything is solved with a text message and that, therefore, communication loses a lot. "For them, the voice allows us to transmit and perceive emotions and be more spontaneous."

In addition, this communication channel is, for them, safer than Facebook . «They believe that in this way they can better control the final audience of their messages», says the expert.

«Spammers in series», a myth

   Younger WhatsApp users see people older than 65 as 'serial spamers' . "Children and grandchildren often complain about the re-sending of images, audio or other types of information, but this is a subjective perception," says Rosales. They do not do it more often than other users of other generations. "Sometimes our friends or other nearby people send content from third parties and we do not perceive them in the same way. The fact is that we see everything that does not interest us as spam, "he adds.

There are studies - ' Less than you think: Prevalence and predictors of fake news dissemination on Facebook ', from the University of New York and Princeton University, or ' Duty, Identity, Credibility: Fake news and the ordinary people in India ' , from the BBC- that point to this group as one of the most likely to share false news. Rosales explains that older people who have entered later than other generations in the world of new technologies later develop the skills to discern what is false news and what is not. "It is not that they are more prone to viralize false news because they are older, but because they have reached the world of new technologies after the rest and, like everyone else, they need time to familiarize themselves and build digital competencies," the researcher points out.

Own social norms and elaborate writing

    As for chat groups , they work with different dynamics. «They negotiate and establish specific social norms of consumption that can come from the fixed telephone. Messages that are sent later than 10 o'clock at night are not well seen ». And as far as the communication in groups, as well as the individual one, while among the younger ones it is often frowned upon to write with good spelling and grammar in this application, its writing is careful . "They use more elaborate language, accents, points, etc., and people who have not had so many opportunities to educate prefer not to write to avoid making mistakes," says Rosales.