• Investigating the Impact of Social Media on the Health of the Elderly: A Systematic Review
  • Reyhaneh Norouzi Aval,1,* Khalil Kimiafar,2
    1. Mashhad University of Medical Sciences
    2. Mashhad University of Medical Sciences


  • Introduction: The aging population and social media are currently the two main social phenomena. Social media greatly increases public access to health information, and as a result attracts older people who care more about their health. Under the influence of social media, the real life experiences of the elderly become more and more connected to the online world, and the impact of the Internet on healthy aging can not be ignored. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of social media on the health status of the elderly in a systematic review.
  • Methods: To achieve this goal, the researcher conducts a systematic review of studies without time constraints by searching for the keywords Elderly, Social Media, Health in the authoritative scientific databases Scopus, PubMed, Web of Sciences and Google Scholar on June 15, 2022. Explore the contract. Inclusion criteria include studies in English, the presence of keywords in the title and abstract of articles, studies including the participation of the elderly and studies focusing on the impact of social media on the health of the elderly, and exclusion criteria include the absence of one of the keywords in the title and abstract Articles and abstracts without full text. The quality of the studies was also assessed based on the JBI checklist.
  • Results: A total of 753 articles were obtained and evaluated, and finally, out of 753 evaluated articles, 13 articles were carefully reviewed and included in the study. In general, the results of a series of studies showed that there is a positive and significant relationship between the use of social media and the health of the elderly. Social media has increased the levels of health management for the elderly. The positive effects of social media on the health of older people include: meeting emotional needs, communicating face to face with family and friends, expanding social relationships with people with common interests, increasing mental well-being and life satisfaction.
  • Conclusion: Although the mechanism of the effect of using social media on the health of the elderly has been analyzed and most studies have shown that social networks can have a positive effect on important aspects of mental health, but the results of this study only prove that the use Social media is significantly associated with healthy people. Due to the lack of controlled trials, this study could not determine whether the use of social media has a significant impact on the health of the elderly.
  • Keywords: Social Media, Health, Elderly