Social Media Usages During COVID-19 Confinement: The Lebanese Older People

Background

In a report on the national strategy for older persons in Lebanon in the period 2020–2030, the Lebanese Republic, Ministry of Social Affairs (2021) highlighted the global trend of demographic change due to the aging of the world’s population, including Lebanon.

What makes Lebanon an interesting case are the special factors that lead the country to have the highest percentage of older people in the Arab world. Two of the most important factors are:

• 1.

  The successive waves of migration of Lebanese young adults due to the economic crisis.

• 2.

  The devastating consequences of the explosion at Beirut’s port on August 4, 2020.

In this paper, we will examine:

• •

  The role that social media played during the pandemic as an answer to the elderly’s limited mobility and social activities in the absence of some traditional means of social interaction.

• •

  To what extent social platforms participated in the reconfiguration of the daily lives of the Lebanese older people during Covid-19 confinement.

Our hypotheses would be as follows:

• •

  During the confinement, the Lebanese older people transposed their personal social interactions on social media platforms.

• •

  The social media platforms helped Lebanese older people reconfigure their daily lives.

Literature Review

In recent years, numerous studies have focused on social media matters, and the number of these studies is still increasing due to the growing importance of social media in all aspects of our lives. Zhou and Men (2023), for example, discussed new ways to further theorize the impact of digital media. They also discussed about the insufficiency of such research and provided suggestions for future theory development in corporate digital communication. On the other hand, Khataan et al. (2022) developed a conceptual model that identifies the factors affecting students’ intentions to use Facebook in education. Zhao et al. (2022) aimed at understanding how social media works as a knowledge-translation strategy for healthcare providers, policymakers, and patients, in order to provide them with information for their healthcare decision-making.

In a more complex manner, Mao and Wang (2022) elaborated on three pairs of ethical principles that are reflected on social media: Egoism and altruism, monism and pluralism, and utilitarianism and deontology.

Generally, it is believed that social media is not really accepted among the elderly. Yet, surprisingly, Teng and Joo (2017) found that the elderlies are more addicted to social media than the teenagers. They investigated the elderly’s adoption of social media and how they cope with this new technology. More specifically, they determined the effects of the usage of social media among the Malaysian elderly.