Utilização de sites de redes sociais e apoio social associado à solidão de idosos

Abstract

Loneliness is investigated from different perspectives that may involve emotional, social and cognitive aspects, which have the potential to impact the life of the elderly, making it a public health issue, and the execution of this research contributes to the gathering of scientific evidence and subsidies for policies and practices that assist in this context. This research aimed to characterize the elderly according to sociodemographic and economic variables, medications of regular use, use of polypharmacy, psychiatric drugs, antidepressants, benzodiazepines and use of social networking sites; determine the scores, by dimension and total, of social support; determine the total loneliness score and verify the association of sociodemographic and economic variables, use of polypharmacy, psychiatric drugs, antidepressants, benzodiazepines, use of social networking sites and social support with loneliness. Telephone, quantitative and cross-sectional survey carried out with 206 elderly users of social networking sites residing in the urban area of Uberaba, MG. Data were collected from May to July 2020, by telephone interview. For the survey, we used: Instrument developed by the Research Group on Public Health; Questionnaire on the use of social networking sites; Social Support Scale and Brazilian Loneliness Scale. In the preliminary bivariate analysis, Student's t-test, Pearson's correlations and Mann-Whitney's U were performed, considering p<0.20, those that met the established criteria inserted in the multiple linear regression that considered p<0.05. Elderly people who used female social networking sites prevailed, aged 60 | - 70 years old, ≥ 8 years of schooling, married or with a partner, lived with their spouse, did not perform paid work, regularly used 1├5 medications acting on the cardiovascular, digestive and metabolism systems and the central nervous system; did not use psychiatric drugs, antidepressants and benzodiazepines and used the social networking sites WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram several times a week to send and receive messages to friends and family, share content and access news. The dimension of social support with the highest score was material and the lowest was affective / positive social interaction. Loneliness was associated with lack of schooling (p=0.001), use of polypharmacy (p=0.01) and low affective support / positive social interaction (p<0.001). Conclusion: loneliness is associated with social and therapeutic issues, which emphasizes the need to include it in the planning of measures to be implemented in health services for the elderly.