Although younger people are familiar with and use the internet including social media often to the extent that we identify a whole generation on that basis (see Chapter 6 and section on “Generation Theory” ), middle-aged and older people are now using it too. We have met midlife before (see section on “Midlife Crisis” in Chapter 7) and Quinn (2013) argued that the review and reflection that characterises midlife can be expressed in a desire to re-awaken dormant friendships from one’s earlier years. School and university memories of the way we were, hometown and sojourner friendships, and marital break-up, moving house and home are all catalysts for this desire to renew. For a budding explorer current social media provide ease of searching and the ubiquity of the medium increasing the probability of finding like-minded participants willing to resurrect friendships. As we get older there does not appear to any lessening of the increase in social media. For example the UK communications regulator Ofcom reported that “record numbers of older people are embracing smart and social technology, with a quarter of over-75s using tablet computers, and half of online baby boomers taking to social media” (Ofcom, 2017, June 20).
Ownership and Growing Older
By the time we enter midlife and depending on where we live and what our earnings, family structure, business acumen, general social capital were as we grew up into adulthood , it is likely that we will own or possess things. A home for example, and a car or two. 20 Maybe we play golf or enjoy films and have equipment for the former and for the latter a room with a big digital screen and subscriptions online. Our ‘stuff’ is stored and scattered artfully in ‘the home ’ together with furniture and general décor with embellishments like photos, prints, cushions, memorabilia and so on. But let’s look at who all this belongs to. Mentally count what you’ve got. Some of this will be shared either formally or informally. So the house might be mortgaged and you share payment and ownership. 21 Or if you are a young person living at home you might ask your Dad if you can ‘borrow the car’. In an extended family there are strong mutual obligations to contribute together with shared expectations to benefit from the family connections extending both vertically (age e.g. grandparents) and horizontally (kin extension e.g. cousins, 2nd cousins). Consequently, in such a family sharing and ownership becomes complex and there are sanctions if a family member ‘let’s the side down’ by for example marrying someone who doesn’t fit in or fails a university course that all the family have invested in. Belk (2010) discusses sharing as a concept and after some careful analytic work where the semantics of sharing are identified with surgical precision from other associated ideas like gift giving , the role of sharing within families is described (op. cit., pp. 724–725). For family members access and use of the home space is usually acceptable without restriction, although gender segregation in Arab Muslim homes can operate. 22 Informal conventions exist however. Married couples tend to share more possessions than cohabiting unmarried ones and even the laundry tends to be separated for unmarried couples. Children in Western cultures need to be socialised and taught to share however although there is evidence that that sharing is the dominant norm within indigenous Australian groups. Although the main income provider for the household in heterosexual marriages is often the man, it is becoming more likely now that both parties contribute their regular income to the household. But the distribution can be less than fair where the woman’s share is seen as household oriented such as maintenance and food and child-related expenditure with anything left over categorised as ‘spending money’. In extended families there is an implicit assumption that we invest in child rearing with the (eventual) pay back that they will look after us when we are old. However as values change children become more independent and are less willing to look after their parents although there are differences between families here and what Belk (op. cit., p. 725) calls a ‘pass-along’ effect . This occurs when parents provide generously for their children who then provide for their (older) parents in turn. In other words shelter from the winds of change in basic values can be provided although it might not work for everyone as it relies on children helping their parent(s) when they are carving out their own careers in an increasingly global market place. As well as that, there are sweeping changes in traditional mores over time, toward a more self-reliant, individually based ethos. Older consumers who are grandparents can be called on to spend time and money supporting their own children’s sons and daughters. In China where until recently (BBC News, 2015, 29 October) a ‘one-child policy’ was obligatory the singleton could be at the receiving end of care, kindness, gifts, and general largesse showered from a potential cohort of six adults i.e. four grandparents and two parents (Cheng , 2009). So we can see that the older man or woman can be caught up in quite a complex web of sharing possessions , informal commitments to be generous to others and other obligations. The vision of a smooth downhill progress of downsizing, retiring, travelling and generally starting to commit to a vision of the ‘golden years’ unfortunately is the world of advertising where smiling couples seem to be perpetually on vacation with the sun setting behind them. It’s a bit messier than that.
Consumer researchers have explored the world of ownership and what happens when acquisition is put into reverse and possessions are disposed of. Price , Arnould , and Curasi (2000) interviewed several older persons and often obtained a coherent narrative showing that disposing of treasured objects was a necessary part of one’s life when it was reviewed at that age. There were intimations of mortality and death and one’s future demise in the near future was mentioned by some as a spur to disposing of valuables as part of family continuity. Transfer was not necessarily done by just leaving these emotionally charged items in one’s will after death and there were other ways, such as bequests, of transferring them to future generations. These anthropologically valuable insights were partially validated by Curasi (2011) with a large questionnaire based sample in the USA when respondents reported that they hoped their loved ones would care for their treasured possessions and pass them on to future generations and reflect the family identity (op. cit., p. 111).
Notes
1.The history of psychology is replete with examples of a discipline being strengthened by a blending of two apparently disparate areas into one, ranging from perceptual theory and subjective attitudes as in the ‘New Look’ research of Bruner (Otten, Seth, & Pinto, 2017, p. 69) to more recent work in cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) where cognitive, behavioural, and clinical psychology come together.
2.Think IKEA, B&Q, and the DIY world of home improvement.
3.As results are reported from Sedikides et al. (2008), sources for the summary can be found there.
4.Attributing to other authors where appropriate.
5.The image of Gulliver pinned down by the Lilliputians seemed appropriate as I watch my fellow travellers on my daily rail commute peering into the world of screens on palms. Remember that Swift invented Yahoos who were materialists obsessed with pretty stones they found by digging in mud.
6.Encryption or cryptology is a career for the twenty-first century. The savvy students who are good at maths, but maybe not so good with people, are suddenly employable.
7.There may be a limit on logic gate size, the basic 1s and 0s, as we approach the molecular level. But the exciting new future of quantum computing looms on the horizon (Dolev, 2018).
8.There is an immense variety of kinds of fish, insects and other small creatures in the oceans and forests of the planet that have evolved both structurally and functionally in amazing ways. So have we but most of it has been inside our brains. We still leave a lot to be desired with bodies that are dysfunctional for giving birth and sitting down—we do a lot of the latter.
9.Abbreviation for ‘long play’. Nowadays called vinyl.
10.The influence of the Beatles seminal album Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band should not be underestimated here.
11.An example of the iconic, viral episode would be Susan Boyle’s performan
ce on Britain’s got talent.
12.The list of memetic videos were obtained between 2006 and 2009 and this sort of research needs continual updating.
13.The term is taken from Venkatraman and Nelson (2008) who presented a case study of how young urban Chinese consumers transform the iconic global brand of Starbucks in Beijing using their own experiences and identities. This seemed to reflect how the great vinyl browsing urban palaces such as HMV in the 1960s have been replaced by specialist browsing shops for aficionados.
14.I am using the terms distal and proximal in the sense of proximal being in bodily contact and distal referring to sensory stimulation which can work at a distance such as hearing, sight, smell.
15.I should add that access to the vast international electronic store of journals (the last count of titles of academic journals listed on Scopus was 37,956 and of course each journal contains many articles over many years) is even more valuable and my university (Exeter) has been most helpful in that regard.
16.As an older consumer I would anticipate new users from this demographic to approach the task of renewing friendships with relish. However be prepared to be disappointed. You will probably not recognise the person you have discovered and find that he or she has lived so many decades without contacting you that you have little in common.
17.I am borrowing this term from advertising where it means inflated claims (such as Brand X is ‘the best ever’) which are legitimate by consensus as everyone expects them and applying it as self-puffery in the medium of Facebook .
18.OK—an acronym but a handy one as it covers all different kinds of Online Social Networks.
19.My paraphrase of the lists of advantages and disadvantages provided by the authors.
20.Yes this is a picture of an affluent Western person. There are still individuals who don’t live in cities or urban environments , who are often poor and displaced. Recent press stories of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar show us people whose possessions are cows and goats and they have had to abandon them as they flee persecution. They are dispossessed.
21.For an intelligible list and review of ways of owning a home in the UK see Jasmine (2017).
22.Sources can be found in Belk (2010).
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