Elderly? not tech savvy?

Have been reading the comments on the thread 'Well, that's rather sucky'

How patronising some members are on this forum ... I am elderly now and my friends, all in the same age bracket, contact each other via this medium and use the internet for various reasons just as the younger members do ... My sister who at 80 yrs of age is stilll managing a small rent roll and using sophisticated software. I moderate a community neighbourhood app -the list goes on.

I have had tradies being surprised that I can pay them instantly and the last straw last week was my solicitor assuming I was not capable of emailing documents !!!

 

My PA from many lifetimes ago has been living on the sunshine coast for the past 15 odd years. Her use of computers was limited to word/excel etc back in the day. Now into her mid 70's (and some), the on demand viewing via wifi to her smart tv is her lifeline to movies, I've (mis)-guided her through her NBN woes (and she's thrown me a few new ones as well), she has a friend up there who is the computer repair person but she is the go-to girl for IT issues in the retirement village.

 

I read something amusing last week...

Baby boomer: Back in my day, if something broke, we'd fix it. We didn't need to call an electrician to change a light bulb. Kids these days are simply incapable.

Millennial: Grandpa, today you can't go online without getting three virus' and loosing half your life savings to someone in Nigeria.



As someone with a degree in software development, I'd actually argue that most people today are no more truly tech savy than the average person was 30 years ago. The difference is more recent generations have grown up with the tools and have learned how to use them, but their mastery of those tools is still rudimentary. Even your average app developer these days is only putting software libraries together. They'd have little idea how to actually code those libraries.

In the same manner my father knows how to use his saw bench, drills and other tools in his workshop. He's far more capable with the tools he grew up with than the average 25 year old is with a computer. Still he's no carpenter.

 

My mother is 86 and teaches younger and older people computer skills. People who learnt on the old original systems before AI had to have much greater understanding and knowledge of the computing process.

 

We did all kinds of things at school - BASIC & for the nerds machine language, cobal, fortran etc as you would have too @Peter_Tersteeg. We probably got more of an understanding of how & why rather than 'just do it', same goes for driver education - how often do you see a car broken down by the side of the road nowadays compared to the overheated engines, broken fan belts etc of yesteryear? My GPS isn't working, how do I get home?

 

There are a lot of oldies doing just that, good on your mother!

I cut my teeth using Bulletin Boards ...

 

Retirement village without internet facilities? not these days.

 

My IT first job was getting COBOL & C++ code to talk to each other. My second job was a file system diver for a secure file system to talk to Windows NT.

I actually wasn't very good at the second job. From there I moved onto low level applications development. I found my niche at the applications level, but mostly in the low level library development.

And then I got retrenched and convinced banks to give people money. Basically moved from technical engineering to social engineering.

 

OK I'll enter the "My Mum's more tech savvy than your Mum" stakes. She recently entered a retirement home and at the very top of her requirements for home selection was the internet speed. She took her Macbook Air with her to each inspection to test the speed.

Mum's 94.

By the way she picked Berrington Como partly because it's resident-centred as well.

 

Not on WiFi as far as she knows, she needed a landline which is fibre to the node. Her area wasn't even on ADSL (Noosa hinterland). It may have changed.

 

She is my kind of girl ...

 

Lol that was me .

I don't attempt to be patronising and at no point was it directed at an individual so apologies if what I said struck a nerve for you, one of my very good friends is in his 70's and EXTREMELY tech savvy.

He is however the exception not the rule. It's a fact (that I really don't need to research) that there is a higher percentage of less tech savvy people in the boomers and above groups than there are any more recent generations.

I love that you are tech savvy and wish more people were (believe me I know people who won't use their phone to pay because they believe their fingerprint is less secure than a card with a 4 digit pin????) but the older you are the less exposure you have had and it's human nature to "shy away" from what we don't understand.*

*Again, I am not saying "everyone" is like this but the majority.

 

That might be true of lower socio economic groups but that's not because they dont want to learn, I got talking to shopper who was behind me at the checkout and she remarked she wished she was able to tap on a card to pay her bill, we resumed our conversation after she had finished and I told her about the classes held at Belmont TAFE for beginners who had tablets or a laptop, she didn't know about them and by the time we finished our conversation she was going home to book into the class.

 

Most wise "mature's" in my mother's circle are tech savvy - some moreso than myself - but I do find that generation either embraces technology or shies away completely.

My father in law, who is similar age to my mum, won't go near anything to do with computers and will drive half an hour to pay a simple bill (can't remember last time I paid a bill in person). I bought him a mobile years ago but it's only in the last year he's really used it - just about fell over when he sent me a txt the other week

 

Since I don’t consider myself elderly or old, I know you were not talking about me!

 

We are talking about tapping a card (or phone) to pay a bill but the conversation was about tech savviness, setting up your own router, building a NAS, synching data across devices, snapchat, instagram, configuring bluetooth devices, configuring Google Home, setting up smart devices. All these things are "normal" to younger people. I have a massive learning curve every time something new comes out but i'm a coder with a massive IT interest so I kind of need to stay on top of it but I would go so far as to say there are less tech savvy people in my generation (Gen X) than there are in Gen Y or even the I Gen, it's about exposure and experience.

I commend you for helping that lady and again, I meant / mean no offence, I am a middle aged pommie white guy with Indian heritage like I literally can't ridicule anyone without ridiculing myself or coming close to it. But when I say Elderly folks and not being tech Savvy, I am talking about the things that are commonplace for youngsters today, not tapping a visa card to pay for something.

If you don't get or need exposure to something, you won't learn about it. I knew nothing about investing before I was on this very forum and you know what? a larger percentage of my generation are in that boat than are not, it's just how it is .

I teach everyone I can what I have learned about getting in the investment boat just like you teach everyone you can about tech but us individually doing these things does effectively nothing to skew the numbers that have the knowledge we are trying to share.

Also a MASSIVE skew occurs as people retire. Retired people have less need, experience and exposure to remain forefront of tech compared to people who will most likely need tech in their career in some shape or form. Even if they learn it for some reason, they will use it less frequently on average therefore their skill will not sharpen at the same rate as a youngun.

It was never a personal comment to anyone in fact the original comment was about how companies are doing the wrong thing when it comes to Elderly people (the majority of, no particular individual) of who there is a large portion whom are not tech savvy.

 

OMG

 

Did I miss sarcasm and post something pointless again? it happens on busy days .

 

They are definitely talking about me . I was the basis of that movie “Grumpy Old Men” .

Yes, I am grumpy. Yes, I am old (got grey hair to prove it), ...

No, I am not tech savvy. No, I am not property savvy, ...

Now, where is my chequebook? I got a bill to pay !!!!

 

This cranky old so and so is annoyed as all heck with technology. Setting up a NAS and, dang, port 2 not receiving power, swapped disks around and, yup, port 1 not receiving power. A crappy HD disk it would seem. Back the heap of $^*# goes to the retailer. Gimme a new box and disks in working order or gimmie my money back.

Grumble, grumble............