SOCIAL MEDIA: LINE APPLICATION AND ELDERLY HEALTH CARE

Abstract

The aimed of this descriptive study was to explore the frequency of using a Line application for searching health care practice of the elderly living in Nakhonratchasima province. The sample size was 165 samples who aged over 60 years old. An accidental random sampling technique was used to recruit elderly samples, 30 men and 135 women, who are living in the area of city district of Nakhonratchasima province. The survey questionnaire was applied from Jantima Kheokao (2017) named the use of online media and knowledge of online health information media of Thai elderly questionnaire. Data was collected in March 2017. Descriptive statistics was used for data analysis.

The results showed that the 61 samples (36.97 %) of the total samples used Line application for searching health care practice. The frequency of using Line application per week found that 31 samples (50.82%) of those who used Line application for searching health care practice reported using Line application for 1-2 day and only 3 of those samples (4.92 %) used Line application for 3-4 day. There were 27 samples (44.26 %) used Line application for health care practice every day. There was 22 of those samples (36.06 %) spent their time with Line application for 1-2 hour a day. A few of those, 2 samples (3.28 %), used Line application for 7-8 hour a day. Only 2 of those samples (3.28 %) spent their time with Line application for 9-10 hour a day. The highest health-seeking behavior from Line application was searching for drug use and looking for the organization which was founded by the patients or was founded by the patients who have had the diseases. A healthy lifestyle was found to be the least one. In short, searching for health care practice resources though Line application can be used to improve the quality of life of the elderly. However, all those health information need to be proved by health care experts before apply.