Still Hungry for Information: Information Seeking Behavior of Senior Citizens in South Korea

Abstract

In Korea, the rapid development of information and communication technologies and the aging of the society have caused a wide information gap between generations and the effective exclusion of the elderly. As such, this research attempts to discover ways in which the modern elderly in Korea's metropolitan areas seek information, as well as factors that influence their attitudes. The results of this field study show that the elderly people value interpersonal relationships most when seeking information. They actively seek information from human information sources, which in turn triggers further information seeking. Seniors do use digital devices, but there is a high barrier that prevents them from actively using digital devices to locate information. These findings would bring meaningful insight with which to investigate "new seniors," the generation of seniors who possesses digital literacy, in the future.