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Older Adults Digital Gameplay: A Follow-up Study of Social Benefits

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Information and Communication Technologies for Ageing Well and e-Health (ICT4AWE 2015)

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 578))

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Abstract

This study involved 20 Wii Bowling teams of 3–4 players each in an eight-week tournament across a large city in western Canada. This paper summarizes the initial results, in which an increase in social connectedness and decrease in loneliness were found, and reports on a follow-up study three months after the tournament that examined whether people still played together and maintained their social connections. The follow-up consisted of 14 focus groups, with 46 Wii Bowling players, with at least one representative from each team. Many participants seemed to maintain benefit from their new social contacts three months after the tournament. However, participants experienced some difficulties in recruiting new players and in maintaining momentum over time. In seniors’ centres and facilities with scheduled activities, Wii Bowling remained a regular source of social interaction and fun. These findings are examined with a consideration of socio-emotional selectivity theory.

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Acknowledgements

We wish to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) for supporting this project financially through a four-year Insight grant.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada

    Simone Hausknecht, Robyn Schell, Fan Zhang & David Kaufman

Authors
  1. Simone Hausknecht
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  2. Robyn Schell
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  3. Fan Zhang
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  4. David Kaufman
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Correspondence to Simone Hausknecht .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computing, Dublin City University, Dublin, Ireland

    Markus Helfert

  2. Human-Computer Interaction, Medical University of Graz, Graz, Austria

    Andreas Holzinger

  3. RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

    Martina Ziefle

  4. Inst Sup Téc, Inst de Telecom, Technical University of Lisbon, Lisboa, Portugal

    Ana Fred

  5. Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom

    John O'Donoghue

  6. Sys Tech & Image Exploitation, Fraunhofer Institute of Optonics, Lemgo, Germany

    Carsten Röcker

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Hausknecht, S., Schell, R., Zhang, F., Kaufman, D. (2015). Older Adults Digital Gameplay: A Follow-up Study of Social Benefits. In: Helfert, M., Holzinger, A., Ziefle, M., Fred, A., O'Donoghue, J., Röcker, C. (eds) Information and Communication Technologies for Ageing Well and e-Health. ICT4AWE 2015. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 578. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27695-3_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27695-3_12

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