Social media ‘on the go’: Examining the impact of age.

Abstract

Social media can, therefore, be seen as an extension of people’s lives with opportunities to construct virtual identities as well as personal, social and professional spaces that altogether extend boundaries of offline contexts. Social media consumption is particularly immersive and complex in the cases when individuals are accessing and using social media on the go, via mobile devices. Although extensive number of studies explored the consumers’ adoption of mobile technology and adoption of social media, adoption of mobile social media (consumption of social media on mobile devices) remains underexplored. Moreover, existing research on social media adoption has identified two generational groups, generation Y (aged 18-25) and generation X (aged 35-60) which have active use of social media, although their motives and attitudes towards social media as well as consumption patterns differ. With the increased use of social media ‘on the go’, no existing studies have investigated the generational gap in the adoption and use of mobile social media (MSM). Hence, this work-in-progress paper aims to address identified research gaps by proposing and justifying conceptual model to be examined via mixed research method.