Social Media has Aged, It’s Time It Got Wise

IF 4.9 1区文学 Q1 COMMUNICATION

Social Media + Society Pub Date : 2026-04-16 DOI:10.1177/20563051261432482

Eszter Hargittai, John Palfrey

引用次数: 0

Abstract

As social media platforms mature, their user base is simultaneously aging, with older adults now representing the fastest-growing demographic of users. Despite persistent myths contrasting “digital natives” with “clueless seniors,” empirical evidence demonstrates that socioeconomic status, rather than age, is the primary driver of digital inequality. The study, design, and regulation of social media must undergo a paradigm shift to embrace older adults as active, vital participants. Market self-regulation has failed to address critical issues like privacy and interoperability and thus deliberate government intervention is needed to ensure user autonomy and data portability. To fulfill its potential, the social media ecosystem must “wise up,” abandoning ageist tropes and recognizing older adults not as passive victims, but as capable users, valuable support sources, and essential stakeholders in technology design.

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社交媒体已经老化，是时候明智起来了

随着社交媒体平台的成熟，它们的用户群也在同时老龄化，老年人现在是增长最快的用户群体。尽管将“数字原住民”与“无知的老年人”进行对比的神话一直存在，但经验证据表明，社会经济地位，而不是年龄，是数字不平等的主要驱动因素。社交媒体的研究、设计和监管必须经历范式转变，以接纳老年人作为积极、重要的参与者。市场自我监管未能解决隐私和互操作性等关键问题，因此需要政府审慎干预，以确保用户自主权和数据可移植性。为了发挥其潜力，社交媒体生态系统必须“聪明起来”，放弃年龄歧视的说法，并认识到老年人不是被动的受害者，而是有能力的用户、有价值的支持来源和技术设计的重要利益相关者。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Social Media + Society COMMUNICATION-

CiteScore

9.20

自引率

3.80%

发文量

111

审稿时长

12 weeks

期刊介绍： Social Media + Society is an open access, peer-reviewed scholarly journal that focuses on the socio-cultural, political, psychological, historical, economic, legal and policy dimensions of social media in societies past, contemporary and future. We publish interdisciplinary work that draws from the social sciences, humanities and computational social sciences, reaches out to the arts and natural sciences, and we endorse mixed methods and methodologies. The journal is open to a diversity of theoretic paradigms and methodologies. The editorial vision of Social Media + Society draws inspiration from research on social media to outline a field of study poised to reflexively grow as social technologies evolve. We foster the open access of sharing of research on the social properties of media, as they manifest themselves through the uses people make of networked platforms past and present, digital and non. The journal presents a collaborative, open, and shared space, dedicated exclusively to the study of social media and their implications for societies. It facilitates state-of-the-art research on cutting-edge trends and allows scholars to focus and track trends specific to this field of study.