Complete 8 pages APA formatted article: Men and Women engage differently with social networks.Critically discuss gender and social network support in later life.

Complete 8 pages APA formatted article: Men and Women engage differently with social networks.Critically discuss gender and social network support in later life. This paper aims at critically discussing gender and social network support in later life. Studies have proved that women form about 58% of individuals who have attained the age of 65 years and above. This percentage increases to 68% when the same studies were carried out amongst individual with the age of 85 years and above. The marital status has an impact on the economic and emotional situations of elderly people. However, women in old age are more affected emotionally by their marital status than men. This might lead to an increase in the need for social networks such as the internet to maintain the emotional connection. Someone’s well being in old age might also be affected by their educational standards (Walker 2000, P. 143). Higher educational attainment might lead to higher social confidence that might influence how older people interact with people in social networks. There are researches that suggest that the social support exchange patterns differ with gender especially in older age. Social emotional supports such as vocal support, advice, and encouragement are very common within the social network settings. The researchers also prove that women are more likely to seek this kind of emotional support as compared to men (Formosa & Higgs 2013, P. 301). This even explains the big difference between elderly men and women who are fond of social networks. Married people are likely to be less fond of social network because of reliance on the emotional support from their spouses and family. Gender is not the assent of people, they claim. however, a characteristic of societal circumstances that both initiate and reaffirm gender disparity. Susan in his literature argued that “getting elderly is less deeply injuring for a male. According to research, the UK social network has grown dramatically across all age groups, with older users been unusually enthusiastic over the past year about developing new networking tools. Social networking use among internet users aged 50 and older nearly doubled from 22% in 2009 to 42% in 2010, between 2009 and 2010 social networking like the internet grew among people aged 50-64 in 2009-2010 from 25% to 47%, during the same period, the use among those aged 65 and older grew from 13% to 26%. The use of status update services like Twitter has also grown among those aged 50 to 64 (Age UK). Women at old age have been discovered to make use of social support as compared to men. However, their rate of health complication diagnosis is also high. Despite the high rates, women were also found to have higher chances of surviving psychological health complications as compared to health (Backes, Lasch, & Reimann 2006, p. 34). This is attributed to their ability to effectively seek social support. This is because social support has the ability to foster the sense of purpose and meaning of life and also reduce the impacts of psychological stress. The gender difference is one of the main contributing factors for eating disorders, which has always influenced nutritional outcome of eating. The most common forms of eating disorders among elderly people are binge eating, nervosa, and bulimia nervosa. Eating disorders affect both male and female people and are closely related to their involvement in social network support.