Impact of Facebook Usage on Macau's People Aged 45 and Above: Implications for Marketers, Social Workers and Policy Makers

Abstract

Facebook kept growing since it was offered to college students in 2004 and became the number one online social network with one billion daily active users in September 2015. The daily one billion active users worldwide are sizeable enough to conclude that Facebook matters. Its heavy usage bridges the online and offline people connections, made Facebook a site for researchers interest. Researches were mainly conducted in western societies with college students and young adults. Not much research has been done on people aged 45 and above in Asia context. Aged 45 and above users were growing in a faster pace than the younger generation. Facebook has undeniably penetrated into different aspects of people’s life in Macau. This research is conducted in Macau and intended to "identify" and "describe" the Macau Facebook users life satisfaction, subjective happiness, and bonding and bridging social capital. The result generated from this research shall have implication and provide useful information for marketer on a wide span of marketing and product decisions on the segment of people age 45 and above. Results could also be employed for service planning and improvement by social workers and policy makers. This research shall be replicated for subjects in other countries and regions. This paper is part of an ongoing research on Facebook users aged 45 and above.