In the time since I left for college until present day, I'm completely unable to recall one trip home where I wasn't summoned down to my grandparents house to fix all the "terrible" things that had gone wrong with the damn picture-box. However, since that fateful day that I ventured off to college, the damn picture-box just keeps getting more and more complicated. But does it really? I'm not so sure. My grandparents on the other hand (and most older adults I know) consider modern technology to be something best left untouched because they don't understand it. Most often, they REALLY want to understand it but are soon disheartened by their own "tech illiteracy." For example, my dear grandmother called me down to visit her on one occasion because she had somehow managed to change the language settings on her computer to Arabic and was absolutely convinced the computer was doing this intentionally. I assured her that this wasn't the case as I changed the language back to english. In this Blog post I'll be discussing a slightly less talked about issue, making technology more accessible to our elders.
Internet use has been rising in a big way in the last few years among senior citizens according to a recent study at The Pew Research Center. These day's it's calculated that 59% of Americans over 65 years of age are internet users. That's 6 in 10 grandparents! If they're anything like my grandparents they spend a lot of time at home wishing they could still be out and about causing a ruckus. Unfortunately, our bodies get too tired for some of life's day to day adventures at a certain point and we're left to twiddle our thumbs. Or at least we were.
The table above shows us some of the few reasons seniors may go on the internet. These are all perfectly reasonable. Each area of information has life changing potential once we have access to it. But seniors get confused by all the "junk on the screen" or the "computer having a mind of it's own."
So what are some ways that we could help our previous generations out as they've helped us by laying the groundwork for our society? Why not start with a senior citizen friendly internet? What if there was a browser (just like Chrome or Firefox) that was specifically geared towards senior citizens and they're understanding of the web. I'm talking big buttons to reduce squinting and lot's of explanations of how to navigate. There could be a limit on how many windows are open at one time to avoid confusion. The browser could include Senior citizen versions of popular sites like Facebook and Youtube. It would be all the fun and excitement of having the world wide web at your fingertips without all the pesky small fonts, and the all confounding scroll bar.
Our old folks are no less than the reason we all exist today and they deserve the opportunity to keep up with the world around them. Even if that means giving the computer a chance to redeem after its latest offenses. We can see that senior citizens are ready and wanting to join the digital age. There's got to be a way to make the transition a seamless one.
Thanks for reading,
- Ricky