User requirements of social media for the elderly: a case study in Taiwan

Numerous researchers have proposed website design norms that are suitable for the elderly. However, in the design of community platforms, elderly users were not considered in social media usage. Young and middle-aged people are the main targets in several social media platforms. To co-ordinate the digital lives of elderly users, the emphasis in this study was to determine the problems and to search for solutions. The real requirements and proper solutions for the elderly were integrated by analysing possible factors. This study is an anthropological user centred approach, to explore the verbal behaviour of senior citizens while they accessed Facebook. Facebook, which is a social media platform with a multilingual language interface, is currently used worldwide and served the purpose of an experimental base for this research. By determining the user environments that are suitable for the elderly, including web page accessibility, interface design and real social life transformation, this article proposes the factors for a social media website, the factors for the elderly to use social media platforms, a social media platform design that can be easily used by the elderly and design factors suitable for the elderly.