Communication with children for older adults’ life satisfaction: Non-face-to-face and/or face-to-face?

Abstract

Objectives Communication with children is an important way to reduce the effect of empty nest syndrome and increase life satisfaction of older adults. Under new network environment, more and more young people rely on non-face-to-face (nFTF) technology to communicate with parents, instead of face-to-face (FTF) communication due to the constraints of living condition and busy schedule of job. We are wondering whether it is good for older adults’ life satisfaction. Specifically, can nFTF provide the same benefit as FTF does to increase older adults’ life satisfaction? How to use nFTF to benefit older adults best? Theories From the perspective of family support (for instance, emotional support and instrumental support), this paper mainly uses Media-Richness Theory and Social Presence Theory to analyse the different capability of FTF and nFTF to increase older adults’ life satisfaction. Besides, we try to examine in which situation increasing nFTF can benefit older adults. Design The data of China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) is used to test our hypotheses. Results FTF is better than nFTF to increase life satisfaction. Only in the context that FTF is harder or less available (frequency of FTF is less than once every six months), nFTF is positively related to increasing life satisfaction; when the frequency of FTF is more than once every six months, more nFTF will not provide an extra benefit for older adults. In the present paper, we systematically analyse the difference of FTF and nFTF, and extend previous studies, which focus on nFTF’s advantage, to in what context nFTF can cooperate with FTF to increase older adults’ life satisfaction.