Background: In the last decades, the relationship between social networking sites (SNSs) and older people’s loneliness is gaining specific relevance. Studies in this field are often based on qualitative methods to study in-depth self-perceived issues, including loneliness and well-being, or quantitative surveys to report the links between information and communication technologies (ICTs) and older people’s well-being or loneliness. However, these nonexperimental methods are unable to deeply analyze the causal relationship. Moreover, the research on older people’s SNS use is still scant, especially regarding its impact on health and well-being. In recent years, the existing review studies have separately focused their attention on loneliness and social isolation of older people or on the use of ICTs and SNSs in elderly populations without addressing the relationship between the former and the latter. This thorough qualitative review provides an analysis of research performed using an experimental or quasi-experimental design that investigates the causal effect of ICT and SNS use on elderly people’s well-being related to loneliness. Objective: The aims of this review are to contrast and compare research designs (sampling and recruitment, evaluation tools, interventions) and the findings of these studies and highlight their limitations. Methods: Using an approach that integrates the methodological framework for scoping studies and the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines for systematic reviews, we identified 11 articles that met our inclusion criteria. A thematic and content analysis was performed based on the ex post categorization of the data on the selected studies, and the data were summarized in tables. Results: The analysis of the selected articles showed that: (1) ICT use is positively but weakly related to the different measures of older people’s well-being and loneliness, (2) overall, the studies under review lack a sound experimental design, (3) the main limitations of these studies lie in the lack of rigor in the sampling method and in the recruitment strategy. Conclusions: The analysis of the reviewed studies confirms the existence of a beneficial effect of ICT use on the well-being of older people in terms of reduced loneliness. However, the causal relationship is often found to be weak. This review highlights the need to study these issues further with adequate methodological rigor.

There is an urgent need to understand the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemics on older people’s lives. However, conducting qualitative research is challenging, because of the shortage of guidelines and methodological research on how to recruit and interview participants during biological disasters, such as pandemics. This paper documents the procedures we adopted to recruit and interview 40 older people living in a rural area of Northern Italy that was subject to the first full lockdown in Europe. Despite the challenges arising when qualitatively researching the old age population in pandemic times, our study has shown that it is feasible to recruit and interview older people remotely. Specifically, community engagement and tailoring video-interviews according to older people’s needs and ICT skills are the key aspects to consider when designing these types of studies.

Bifurcation of an elastic structure crucially depends on the curvature of the constraints against which the ends of the structure are prescribed to move, an effect that deserves more attention than it has received so far. In fact, we show theoretically and provide definitive experimental verification that an appropriate curvature of the constraint over which the end of a structure has to slide strongly affects buckling loads and can induce: (i) tensile buckling; (ii) decreasing- (softening), increasing- (hardening) or constant-load (null stiffness) postcritical behaviour; and (iii) multiple bifurcations, determining for instance two bifurcation loads (one tensile and one compressive) in a single-degree-of-freedom elastic system. We show how to design a constraint profile to obtain a desired postcritical behaviour and we provide the solution for the elastica constrained to slide along a circle on one end, representing the first example of an inflexional elastica developed from a buckling in tension. These results have important practical implications in the design of compliant mechanisms and may find applications in devices operating in quasi-static or dynamic conditions, even at the nanoscale.

Social isolation and loneliness have been recognized as problems older people face due to their adverse effects on health and mortality, but very few researchers have analyzed their co-occurrence, which might be particularly prevalent and critical among the very old. In this study, we investigated the prevalence of combinations of social isolation and loneliness among near-centenarians and centenarians. We used data collected from 94 individuals aged 95–107 from the Fordham Centenarian Study. We built a four-group typology and explored associations with individual characteristics in various domains (demographic, socioeconomics, social, health, care, and psychological) with multinomial logistic regression models. Considering their combinations, the most prevalent groups were “isolated and lonely” and “neither isolated nor lonely” (29.8% and 28.7%, respectively). The “lonely but not isolated” (20.2%) and “isolated but not lonely” (21.3%) groups were also notably large. The likelihood of belonging to each group varied according to various individual characteristics, such as education, health, and personality. Social isolation and loneliness are distinct phenomena among centenarians. The consideration of their varied combination can help better assess life conditions at very old ages. Taking into account the differences between groups can facilitate the design of tailored interventions to improve the lives of near-centenarians and centenarians.

An ageing society poses unprecedented challenges to societies. Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), including Social Networking Sites (SNSs), may contribute to contrast loneliness and social isolation in old age. Despite of the potentialities of SNSs, there is only a handful of studies assessing the causal relationship of SNS use and older people's well-being. This paper aims to provide further evidence on the design of randomised controlled trials exploring the causal impact of SNS use on loneliness and social isolation in old age. The Aging in a Networked Society-Social Experiment Study (ANS-SE) is a randomised controlled trial conducted on people aged 75 and over residing in a town located in the Milan area (Italy) aiming to assess the impact of SNS use on loneliness and social isolation (i.e. the primary outcomes of this study). The study is constituted of two stages, i.e. the baseline and the follow up. The experiment is structured into one treatment group and two control groups; the interventions are the attendance to a course on SNS use (T1) and lifestyle education and brain functioning (C1). The inactive control group (C) is constituted of a waiting list. We will perform bivariate and regression analysis. The study has been approved by the Ethic Committee of the University of Milano Bicocca (prot. 431/2019) and was registered at Clinical Trials.gov (NCT04242628). Written consent was obtained from all respondents. Results from the study will be discussed with the local community and stakeholders, presented in national and international conferences and published in leading peer-review journals. The consent forms, the anonymised dataset, and the relevant statistical codes will be deposited with the Italian Unidata archive, also in charge of releasing the data to the public, upon a short embargo period.