Retirement community introduces seniors to social networking
Allison Sutton, right, an ambassador for ConnectedLiving, shows Jane Gibbs, back, and Betty Seignious, center, how to use the ConnectedLiving program on Thursday at Summit Hills Retirement Community.
Betty Seignious, an 82-year-old who lives in the Summit Hills Retirement Community in Spartanburg, often feels left out of the conversation.
She said her four daughters, who all live in various parts of the state, always communicate with each other via text and social networking sites.
"I don't know how to do any of that stuff," she said. "I feel left out. I say, 'Girls, I'm just going to call you. It's easier.'"
Seignious recently attended a session in the library at Summit Hills, where she learned more about that intricate piece of technology called the computer. She learned how to use a secure web-based social network to connect with friends and family, email her daughters, share and view photographs, listen to her favorite songs from the 1940s, search the web and much more from her own personal homepage.
No, it's not Facebook.
ConnectedLiving, a social network site formed in 2007 and catering to senior adults, was recently introduced at Summit Hills and is offered throughout every neighborhood of the retirement community. Allison Sutton, a ConnectedLiving Ambassador, offers classes about the site twice a week to residents on the campus.
"It's like Facebook," she said. "But it's more of a closed network ---it doesn't allow residents to get spammed by outside people they don't know. It's a one-stop shop for everything."
Kathryn Wiley, media relations coordinator with Summit Hills, said many of their residents own computers and some even carry around iPads, Kindles and other tablets.
These residents will ask Sutton specific questions such as: "How do I download a book to a tablet?" or "How do I use Skype?" or "My daughter gave me this, what do I do with it?"
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Retirement community introduces seniors to social networking