Introduction

One of the primary objectives of adult social work is to support and safeguard adults in order to promote individual autonomy, increase and maximise individual choice, and enhance people's health and wellbeing while ensuring their safety and protection. Adults who access services are often challenged by complex needs and burdened by social stereotypes and stigma that aggravate their difficulties; these include individual vulnerability and human frailty, isolation, social exclusion, social stereotypes and stigma, and so on. These and other challenges may influence people's identity or their ability to meet their own needs, maintain their independence, exercise control, achieve their goals and priorities, and lead healthy and rewarding lives with dignity and integrity. Social media present a host of opportunities to address these and other challenges and to support people in a powerful, transformative and person-centred manner.

This chapter presents a glimpse of some of the applications and transformational implications of digital and social media technologies. It begins by briefly examining adults’ use of social media and some of the misconceived assumptions and stereotypes about older adults’ use of digital and social media technologies. Challenging Prensky's (2001) notion of digital natives and digital immigrants, it highlights the need for a more critical view and awareness of intersectionality within society (intersectionality refers to interconnected nature of social categorisations such as race, class, gender, ethnicity, religion, age and so on that create overlapping and interdependent experiences and systems of discrimination, oppression, exclusion and disadvantage within society). The chapter then considers the ‘social’ in health and social care, followed by a discussion of social media and its impact on social capital and relationships. It then offers a brief note about digital storytelling followed by a discussion of social media and people with disabilities with specific focus on social media and autism. This is to demonstrate the transformative power of social media in challenging stigmatising notions of vulnerability and in reframing and repositioning the identity narratives of people who experience difficulties and vulnerabilities or those who may have different modes of information processing. Finally, it presents an example of coproduction and the use of social media to meet an older person's needs, followed by examples of some helpful apps and concludes with a few suggestions for social work and social care practice and education.