Seniors Turn to the Internet for Sex Questions
Seniors Turn to the Internet for Sex Questions
October 20, 2015
Scientific American — When it comes to questions about sex, many older adults have trouble asking their doctor out of fear of being embarrassed or encountering ageist stereotypes.
Dr. Galit Nimrod, of BGU’s Department of Communication Studies and Center for Multidisciplinary Research in Aging, is studying how the Internet age is benefiting seniors who have these questions, but struggle to find the answers elsewhere.
Dr. Nimrod and her colleague, Dr. Liza Berdychevsky, a social scientist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a BGU alumna, have been exploring whether seniors get sexual support from online forums.
Dr. Galit Nimrod
After reviewing nearly 700,000 messages posted in the span of a year to an international collection of online senior communities, they found that all signs point to yes.
“The communities offer their members reassurances that they are not alone and that whatever they experience is faced by many others in their age group,” the researchers say.
Dr. Nimrod and Dr. Berdychevsky found that online forums provide “a channel for sharing their difficulties, gaining firsthand knowledge and exchanging advice.”
Their findings indicate that actively participating in the forums gave seniors the most benefit, but suggest that simply reading the posts of others can be enough to boost knowledge and confidence.
“It is possible that all protagonists, regardless of whether they were active posters or passive lurkers, received an additional benefit in terms of self and group image,” they conclude.
Read more on the Scientific American website >>
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