Abstract
Currently, there is a considerable increase in the number of older population groups worldwide. Therefore there is constant effort to prolong the active life of these older individuals as long as possible.
And mobile devices such as smartphones seem to offer some benefits for enhancing the quality of life of seniors in the field of healthcare, independent living, socializing, or commerce. The purpose of this review study is to explore the main issues, benefits and limitations of the use of smartphones by older individuals.
This is done by conducting a literature review in three acknowledged databases Web of Science, Scopus, and Science Direct, and consequently by comparing and evaluating the findings of the relevant research studies. Altogether seven original studies on the research topic were detected.
The findings indicate that the smartphone use is not ubiquitous among the aging population groups, which is a pity since the use of smartphone could contribute to the improvement of quality of life of these older people and could increase seniors contributions to the society. Therefore there is an urgent call for the implementation of training in the smartphone use among the older generation groups in order to enable them to become aware of the benefits of smartphones for the enhancement of their quality of life.
In addition, there is a need for evidence-based studies revealing the effectiveness of smartphone use by these people, as well as showing them the benefits of this use.