Does Social Media Improve the Subjective Well‐Being of Older African Women?

ABSTRACT The decline in social relations is one of the main obstacles to the well‐being of the elderly in Africa. Using cross‐sectional data from 31 sub‐Saharan Africa countries, corresponding to 42,224 respondents including 2558 elderly women aged 55 and over, this study examines the effect of social media use on the subjective well‐being of older African women. The ordered probit with an endogenous regressor framework has been adopted to analyze the data. This approach addresses the possible endogeneity bias when the ordinal dependent variable and regressor are both endogenous. The major finding reveals that social media use improves the likelihood of high subjective well‐being among older African women. This increase is greater for absolute subjective well‐being than for relative subjective well‐being. In addition, the aforementioned is more pronounced for educated women and those who are satisfied with democracy in their country. However, older women who are victims of corruption and those with a lack of cash income experience a reduction in subjective well‐being. It is therefore important that the development of information and communication technology infrastructures and their corollary, social media use, be integrated into public strategies for adapting to the aging population and the resulting social problems.