Introduction
Socialization is a crucial aspect of the lives of aging people since it provides them with an opportunity to feel a part of the community despite possible challenges associated with health and mobility. Online sites allowing senior citizens to engage in the active dialogue, particularly, online dating sites, can be seen as an important opportunity for retaining socialization rates at the needed level. However, I believe that the specific sites still provide only a substitute for an actual dialogue that aging people need desperately to feel welcome in the community. Therefore, it seems to me that a combination of online and live communication is necessary for aging people to feel active in the community.
Main body
However, as a woman of non-American descent, I understand the appeal of dating applications as the means of selecting a partner that comes from the same ethnic background and, thus shares a range of common characteristics. The concept of dating affects me since, being a Korean immigrant in the U.S. and having to support my grandchildren, I often feel that my personal life has been impaired significantly due to economic and social challenges. Being deprived of an opportunity to spend an extensive amount of time socializing in the community, as an aging person, I need dating sites geared toward older people in order to build my personal life.
Considering the benefactors of the relationships that aging people develop through dating sites and applications also helps to determine the actual value of the tools in question. The idea of benefit may be seen as slightly misconstrued in the described scenario since the success in using dating applications and sites hinges on a range of factors. These factors include being technologically perceptive to have the required tools and financial resources to purchase them. Nevertheless, it seems that the consumers of the service, specifically, the people that have difficulties with finding partners offline, benefit to the greatest extent from the services provided by online apps and dating sites (Mehrotra, & Wagner, 2018). Thus, introducing the tools in question as a supplement to live communication will be a sensible step toward improving the opportunities for communication for aging people (Menkin, Robles, Wiley, & Gonzaga, 2015). Personally, I have used similar sites several times in order to find a partner and, while not having succeeded, I feel that these tools provide enough support to aging people.
However, dating is not the only activity that I have been enjoying to keep my social life saturated and satisfying. I also talk sometimes to my neighbors and discuss community-related issues with them. For example, I have contributed several ideas to a recent fundraising fair in our community and participated in setting it. However, with my grandchildren demanding a lot of attention, my levels of participation in community life have dropped over the years. Still, I believe that there is the motto of Florida’s “The Villagers” needs to be updated due to the increase in the connection between different communities and the resulting information sharing owing to dating sites and applications.
Conclusion
Since the current level of technological development makes dating sites only a crutch for keeping the communication process consistently flowing, I think that the described activity should not replace the actual live dialogue between aging people and the rest of the community. Even though I understand why dating sites and applications may seem attractive to aging people, especially those of diverse backgrounds, I still think that the elderly should use it as a supplement to live communication and not vice versa.
References
Mehrotra, C., & Wagner, L. S. (2018). Aging and diversity: An active learning experience. New York, NY: Routledge.
Menkin, J. A., Robles, T. F., Wiley, J. F., & Gonzaga, G. C. (2015). Online dating across the life span: Users’ relationship goals. Psychology and Aging, 30(4), 987-993. Web.