Age differences in the perception of social presence in the use of 3D virtual world for social interaction

3D virtual worlds are becoming increasingly popular as tool for social interaction, with the potential of augmenting the user’s perception of physical and social presence. Thus, this technology could be of great benefit to older people, providing home-bound older users with access to social, educational and recreational resources. However, so far there have been few studies looking into how older people engage with virtual worlds, as most research in this area focuses on younger users. In this study, an online experiment was conducted with 30 older and 30 younger users to investigate age differences in the perception of presence in the use of virtual worlds for social interaction. Overall, we found that factors such as navigation and prior experience with text messaging tools played a key role in older people’s perception of presence. Both physical and social presence was found to be linked to the quality of social interaction for users of both age groups. In addition, older people displayed proxemic behavior which was more similar to proxemic behavior in the physical world when compared to younger users.