This societal tendency to pathologize the aging process intensified during the COVID-19 crisis, when misconceptions that only older persons were affected by the virus bred slighting references to it as a ‘Boomer Remover’. Scholars have found ageist stereotypes to be endemic on Twitter and Facebook, where users view the older cohort as cognitively and physically debilitated. Ĭonsiderable attention has been devoted to examining how older adults are portrayed on social media. The result is therefore a dichotomous stereotyping of later life, whereby an idealized image of old age is marked by health, independence and social vitality, and conversely an undesirable version by infirmity, dependency and social decline. At the same time, recent years have witnessed some emerging discourse on active and successful aging. Evidence indicates that later life is mostly conceived unfavorably, with societal views on old age having become increasingly negative over the past two centuries. In contrast, the presence of an audience on social media means that users may be motivated to curate their online personas, which could prompt older adults to either foreground or conceal certain aspects of their aging experiences.įrom a constructionist viewpoint, age is not merely a biological fact, but a social construct with no inherent meaning beyond that which is assigned to it in specific social contexts. Second, while surveys allow researchers to extract in-depth information concerning individuals’ thoughts and behaviors, responses are often anonymized, which means that participants may be more willing to disclose sensitive information. First, unlike survey responses, posts on social media tend to be unsolicited, thus offering a glimpse into information regarding users’ behaviors beyond the context of the study. We depart from these traditional methods for several reasons. Our study delves into this topic and looks specifically at how older TikTokers’ self-perceptions of aging are expressed in their videos.Įxisting inquiry into self-perceptions of aging has been conducted primarily through surveys and questionnaires. However, while journalists have picked up on this topic, scholars have been slow to accord it any attention. Lately, there have been news reports on the rise of ‘granfluencers’ -a portmanteau of ‘grandparent’ and ‘influencer’-or more broadly, older content creators on various social media outlets. If used purposefully, TikTok may serve as a promising platform for improving public perceptions of old age.Īlthough generally regarded as such, no longer is social media the preserve of younger people. Our findings suggest that older adults tend to portray themselves positively across various domains on the application. This is one of the first studies on older adults’ self-portrayals of aging on TikTok. 001) evidenced a negative association, controlling for age and gender of the user. Conversely, ‘cognitive functioning’ ( p <. As hypothesized, themes linked to positive self-portrayals were ‘physical functioning’ ( p <. Positive videos outnumbered negative ones by 10 times. The middle-old group (ages 75–84) created more videos than the young-old and oldest-old groups. We found that women created twice as many videos as men. Following previous studies, three raters coded each video for valence (negative-neutral-positive). These videos amassed over 3.5 billion views. We collated 1,382 videos created by TikTokers aged 60 and above with at least 100,000 followers. Given its wide reach, content on TikTok has the potential to influence public opinion. Even as stay-at-home orders and safe distancing protocols amid the COVID-19 pandemic have led to a dramatic increase in the consumption of media across various platforms, TikTok stands out among its rivals in terms of growth and user activity. TikTok has only gone from strength to strength since its global launch in 2017. Specifically, we analyze the valence of the content of these videos and factors associated with older adults’ self-presentations. Our study delves into this topic and looks at how older TikTokers’ self-perceptions of aging are expressed in their videos. Lately, there have been news reports on the rise of older content creators on various social media outlets.
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