Video: Social Media Impact On Older Generations

COLUMBUS, Miss.(WCBI)—Well it’s no secret that social media is growing in popularity among students, universities and businesses
but there are a few people having a difficult time navigating.

Theresa Alirad has been using social media for about five years now.

“Older generations don’t like change we like our telephones and we like to hear our loved one’s voices,”said Alirad.

She says she had to make the switch from phone calls and letters to iphones and the internet to stay in the loop.

” My sons because that’s the way they communicate now they don’t like you calling them every other day or every two or three hours asking questions. They’ll say shoot me a message or shoot me a text so that’s what made me start doing it and of course they put all the pictures on there,”said M.U.W. Life Enrichment Coordinator Jamie Shields.

Shields just completed an Iphone/Social Media Course open to the public.

” We learned about posting pictures and video to face book Instagram. We learned about hashtags and that was one of those things that really blew their minds. We learned about reasons why to be on social media,”said Shields.

Shields says for older generations learning about social media can be Challenging and fun but there are dangers to be aware of too.

” Facebook games they love Facebook games but they charge for those so it’s like should I put my credit card on there is that something that’s safe. We talked about posting too many pictures of my grandchildren are they going to get kidnapped you know all of those things so it’s just that thing of you have to weed out,”said  Shields.

Shields says the number one fear most older generations have about social media

” Is hacking. you know is someone going to hack my account what happens and I was kind of telling them if it is a suspicious link then don’t click on it if it’s a video that looks weird or someone has if you see it posted a lot of times with the same wording then a suspicious link,”said Shields.

Alirad adds seniors are mirroring the millennials and using social media to stay up to date

” If your trying to learn about a lot of new things you can always do it on social media. They always have the latest updates and when you click on your page they always say this is trending now this is what’s going on now,”said Shields.

The next Iphone/Social Media class will be in the fall on the  M.U.W. Campus.