ABSTRACT
‘Facebook is for seniors’ appear to agree the latest academic studies, highlighting that the elders are the fastest-growing age category of Facebook users and suggesting that, in the future, Facebook will be dominated numerically by elders. Moreover, recent studies have stressed that social media could function as an inclusive social space by allowing the elders to overcome the lack or the insufficiency of social connections, offering easy access to social networks and contributing thus to ageing well. This chapter discusses the results of an exploratory qualitative study to find out if and how the digital realm of social media constitutes indeed a social space where elders do experience a substantial level of social inclusiveness. The study examined social media features, online behaviours, and offline attitudes that facilitate, or on the contrary, impede, according to seniors, a sense of belonging to digital communities (considered as a forerunner for social inclusion). The chapter points out how the elders must constantly negotiate between the positive and the negative meanings they assign to being online and to cope with the permanent tension between online and offline.
