The Impact of Smartphones and Social Media on Older People in China

Bingqing Yi

December 2022

Abstract

In the past several years, smartphones and social media have invaded people’s lives in China. Teenagers and adults alike are deeply affected, and as technology continues to mature, more and more people will use smartphones and social media in work, study, and daily life. They have become indispensable tools in human society, as we have become “information people.” Many scholars study the effects of these technologies on youth, children, and adults, but fewer focus on the elderly. There is a general perception that older people have difficulty connecting with the internet. They are stereotypically perceived as not being able to use smartphones and social media. For this research, I used interviewed five seniors using snowball sampling to explore the impact of cell phones and social media on older adults. In an environment of rapid adoption of internet technology, and its increasingly infrastructural role, I find that in fact elders are no exception.

Introduction

“I learned to use the smartphone by myself, and no one taught me. I am a new social person, but people older than me do not know how to use a smartphone, because their brains are no longer flexible.” These are the original words of Mr. Lee in my interview, 67 years old. “I know how to make money with WeChat; others are spending money, I can make money.” Ms. Lee is 60 years old, and she is very proud of this skill. Older people, their comments suggest, can use smartphones and social media independently.

The history of Chinese smartphone development goes back 15 years. The first smartphone in China appeared in 2007 and became popular in 2009. During the beginning of the 21st century, smartphones became widely popular, but there were still no cell coverage in some remote rural areas, and it was difficult to get electricity. Before the information age, the Chinese government had set up post offices to help owners communicate and deliver information. China Post was established in 1949 as a large central enterprise mainly engaged in postal delivery and postal savings business in China, and it remains a wholly state-owned company. At that time, mailing letters was the main way for people to communicate, but the time cost was difficult to estimate. Mr. Yi said that “It used to take a week or half month to receive a letter from home, but now a text message is all that is needed.” With the nationwide spread of smartphones, time costs have been greatly reduced, and the ways of exchanging information have become convenient and diverse. Nowadays text messaging, voice calls, and video calls are available for all kinds of people and easy to operate. Thus, in China, older people using a smartphone and social media has become common. In the rest of this paper, I will show my fieldwork results. The way that Chinese older people use a smartphone and social media and use the most popular Chinese platforms serve as examples to illustrate how older people use social media. Then I will discuss the impact of smartphones and social media on the older people I interviewed, and compare their experiences with commonplace teenage and adult use.  

Methods

This research inquired into the ways that elders use smartphones and social media, and the influences of these technologies on Chinese older people. Respondents for the fieldwork were selected by snowball sampling (I began with a family member), and all interviews were done remotely via online video call, so there was no restriction on locations. However, the online interview also has limitations. For example, I could not control the interview environment of respondents, and sometimes, the conversation would be interrupted by external factors. The first interviewee was my grandfather because he is the oldest person to whom I have ready access. After finishing the interview, he helped me to invite his friends to join this research project, and his friends are in the right age group. The five interviewees are all from Hunan province in China, are between 60 to 70 years old, and have different education levels. They have different retired and working statuses, and all experienced the era of underdevelopment and developed information. I chose three interviewees as specific examples, and all discussions in this paper are drawn from conversations in interviews.

Results

I interviewed a total of five older people, and they all use smartphones. After completing all the interviews, I summarized six main findings. The first is the brand of smartphones. Except for one person who uses an Apple phone, the others use the local Chinese brand Huawei, and the reason is to support domestic products. The second point, all the older people said that they had learned to use their phones on their own and no one had taught them, and one of them, Mr. Yi, said that nowadays smartphones are easy to use, and the font and sound could be enlarged. The third point is that older people also spend as much time on their phones as young people, except for the oldest, Mr. Zhang. He said, “The smartphone is a waste of time, I have to do a lot of farm work during the day, and I don’t have time to look at the phone.” The rest of the four seniors all look at their phones in their free time. Also, the social media they use are strikingly similar. WeChat and Tiktok are the applications they like to use the most, and they use them to develop interests. For example, my grandfather is Mr. Lee; his hobby is making friends, and WeChat is his main tool for developing this interest. He uses WeChat to communicate with friends and family members, and talk to them on video. Another person, Ms. Lee, is retired and spends a large portion of her time on both social media outlets. She sells her goods on WeChat to earn extra money, and she loves to raise flowers and watch videos of raising flowers on Tiktok. Fourthly, three of the seniors like to watch the news on their cell phones, and their attitude toward news on social media is worth highlighting. My grandfather Mr. Lee said that news from social media was both true and false, but the news posted by the government was true and shows adequate patriotism. Ms. Chen also has full faith in the government. However, Mr. Yi held a different view, and he said that government news may be true, but it took time and one’s own social experience to judge, and government news was somewhat leading. Finally, he said that he still believed the government news because he was a member of the Communist Party and the Communist Party was correct. The fifth point is the problem of privacy. Mr. Yi showed that he almost got cheated on WeChat before, and Mr. Lee almost gave out his bank card number during the conversation. The final point is that all interviewees indicated that they cannot live without smartphones. The oldest person Mr. Zhang also said that the smartphone brought some convenience.

Discussion

Older people do not know everything about how to use smartphones and social media, as one might expect, but they cannot live without them either. Older people want to show they learn and use phones by themselves and want to show independence. They do not want to be too old for these new technologies. In the era of rapid technological development, they try hard to catch up with the mainstream. Another reason they want to show independence is they want to keep connected with the younger generation. In China, most of the elderly communicate with their children through WeChat. As Yun writes because of the one-child policy and because the population has been increasing in the age in China, the social structure has changed (2015, p.10). The elderly are becoming more distant from their children because in China children grow up and go to work in big cities such as Beijing and Shanghai. Thus, WeChat has become an important tool in families. Yun suggests that WeChat helps reconstruct the family bond (2015, p.12). In China, for young people, WeChat is more for communicating with friends, while for the elderly WeChat is a place to continue their affection. For the use of WeChat, non-retired people are different from retired people. Mr. Yi is a manager of a maintenance company, and WeChat is a basic tool for working communication. Mr. Yi said, “I like to use WeChat to arrange the work, and we also like to use it to send official documents because we can open documents directly.” This is different from Ms. Chen; for her, WeChat is purely a social media for entertainment. She likes dancing, and through WeChat she made many dancing partners and built a charting group to share her favorite dance music. Additionally, for Ms. Lee, WeChat is a tool to earn money. She has a microbusiness and always advertises her products on WeChat and continues to meet new customers. Thus, WeChat has become the most commonly used social media in the real life of the elderly, and it also serves as a bond of affection between the elderly and their families. As Gabriele de Seta writes, WeChat facilitates intimacy, personal (2020, p.72). In China, WeChat is no longer just a virtual social media outlet, it is part of the infrastructure. The definition of infrastructure includes not only tracks and wires but also communication network infrastructures, such as the Internet (de Seta, 2020, p.68). Seniors who are keeping up with technology have the flexibility to use these infrastructural social media.

Smartphones and social media have a two-sided effect on young people, as well as older people. Privacy protection is a big issue. In my interview with my grandfather, Mr. Lee, he talked about how he would tie his bank card to his phone and proceeded to give out the first few digits of his bank card. Maybe he said it because I was his relative, but it also showed his poor awareness of self-protection. He did not consider whether this video could be stolen or it could be heard by a third-party. Another interviewee Mr. Yi also recounted an experience in which he was almost cheated. The information fraudsters stole his colleague’s WeChat account to borrow money from Mr. Yi. Finally, he called to confirm with his colleague and saved his wallet. Older people are much less aware of privacy protection than younger people and can easily be deceived in this environment of information transparency. We are data subjects, being recorded, processed, and copied, or as I call them, information people. Information people are extensively formatted as data, and these data are accompanied by a high risk of information politics (Koopman, 2019, p.4). As information people, when we are using social media, our data is being recorded constantly. Mr. Yi and his colleagues use WeChat to send official documents, which is also an act that does not attend to protecting privacy. Young people sometimes ignore privacy issues, and older people do too.

Another point is the attitude of the elderly towards news and information on social media. All five seniors believe the national news completely. Although Mr. Yi said that people need to discern, in the end, he followed his faith and believed in all the country’s news. This situation is related to the social system and the form of the state. China is a collective state, and people usually put the collective interest before their own, and the Chinese government has also been promoting a spirit of dedication. The older generation of Chinese had a more serious spirit of worship for the state. Previously, they had been in a closed environment due to the underdevelopment of information technology. Even though the information environment has been liberalized a lot, they have not changed this kind of thinking. As Wu said, exploring Chinese civil society begins with a perspective of interpersonal awareness and trust, and most activist non-government organizations see themselves and their colleagues not as casual partners, but as teammates with shared beliefs and ideals. Mr. Lee's unconditional trust in the government and Mr. Yi’s adherence to the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party illustrates the collective consciousness that influences the direction and use of social media in China.  

Conclusion

Older people in China have not become isolated with the development of the internet. They can use smartphones and social media. Most of the elderly people interviewed used domestic cell phones and showed their strong patriotic spirit by insisting on trusting the government news. This reflects their judgment and that they trust the government, perhaps incautiously. Privacy protection is also an issue for these older people. They lack awareness of precautions and are vulnerable to privacy theft. No social media or Internet model has been adapted for seniors, and I found that they can get carried away in this complex environment. All five older people said that they cannot live without smartphones, and they are like young people whose cell phones take up most of their daily time. Ultimately, this research shows that contrary to notions that technological change is passing by seniors in China, technology is being adopted at a rapid pace and elders are being affected as well.

References

De Seta, Gabriele. “Sociality, Circulation, Transaction: WeChat's Infrastructural Affordances.” Verge: Studies in Global Asias 6, no. 2 (September 22, 2020): 65–82.

Koopman, Colin. 2019. “Introduction: Informational Persons and Our Information Politics”, In How We Became Our Data: A Genealogy of the Informational Person. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Yun Ke. “Ageing on WeChat: The Impact of Social Media on Elders in Urban China.” https://www.hmkw.de/fileadmin/user_upload/hmkw-berlin-vma-journal-1-2015-aging-on-wechat-ke-yun.pdf

Wu, Fengshi. “Having Peers and Becoming One: Collective Consciousness Among Civil Society Actors in China.” The Journal of Contemporary China 26, no. 106 (2017): 564–76. https://doi.org/10.1080/10670564.2017.1274820.