Unraveling the links between active and passive social media usage and seniors' loneliness: a field study in aging care communities

Purpose The literature reports inconsistent findings about the effects of social media usage (SMU). Researchers distinguish between active and passive social media usage (ASMU and PSMU), which can generate different effects on users by social support and social comparison mechanisms, respectively. Drawing on social presence theory (SPT), this study integrates an implicit social presence mechanism with the above two mechanisms to explicate the...