Exploring the Relationship Between Online Social Network Site Usage and the Impact on Quality of Life for Older and Younger Users: An Interaction Analysis

This is an Open Access journal. ©Darren Quinn, Liming Chen, Maurice D Mulvenna, Raymond Bond. Originally published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (http://www.jmir.org), 29.09.2016. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, is properly cited

Discovering the Social Interaction Patterns of Younger and Older Facebook Users

Increased use of social networking applications has resulted in an explosion of user generated content; however the online interactions and differences in behaviour of younger and older users have not yet been fully explored. Traditionally, social network analysis has had a macro level focus, with little attention paid to individual behaviours. Interaction analysis is an emerging social behaviour analysis approach, investigating issues at a more micro level, providing an enriched capability to understand and contrast individual and group behaviour(s). In this study we test if age is a factor underlying the behaviour of users within Facebook. Data was gathered from 500 users, composed equally of younger and older users. To determine behavioural patterns, user data was analysed on a daily and weekly basis, detailing the day and hour of each user interaction. Results showed that distinct behavioural characteristics are identifiable between the cohorts, concluding age is a determining factor