I attended an event today with my wife and I got to befriend a very old friend. She didn’t look like it at all, but she told me she was turning 90 in a few months. 90!!! It certainly looked like she was in her 70’s or something.
We talked about dogs, we talked about languages, we talked about a bunch of things. Then I told her my job is working on computers. I saw her eyes light up: she said she wanted to learn computers. And I could immediately tell that she wasn’t just saying it to be polite. I could tell that there was a genuine passion inside.
Fortunately, I am very well versed in teaching people computers because I learned how to have infinite patience when giving technical support to older people (thanks mom and dad!). So I told her that I would teach her how to use a computer. I’ll teach her how to check her email, read stuff off of the internet, and such.
She also told me that she wants to learn more English as a Spanish speaker. She wished there was a teacher who could review her writings to see if they were good. She also wanted to learn German, and learn how to play Fur Elise on the piano. There was so much passion inside of this 90 year old lady.
Again, fortunately I know that there are extension programs and online tutors on the internet and I told her that after she learns computer, I’ll get her enrolled in online school so she can learn everything she wants to. As we got passionate over this conversation, she had a request for me: could I teach her how to check her email on her phone?
This is where I got very upset.
She was using an iPhone, and how the fuck do you explain what a home screen is to an elderly person who has no idea of what a gesture is? She practically had no idea what screen she was on if she didn’t spend 5 minutes reading everything on the screen in the current moment.
And you know how you have to drag just the right amount to get to the home screen? Because if you drag too high, you go to the app windows tab? And I remember the home button taking you to uhh, the fucking home screen, but now if you somehow get into a nested folder to open an app it takes you to the folder instead of the home. WHICH BY THE WAY AUTOMATICALLY HAPPENS WHEN YOU DOWNLOAD AN APP.
How do you explain the concept of a playlist to a 90 year old lady who just wants to watch her saved crochet videos? She told me how she does it, she has a friend who doesn’t check her text messages; she texts the video link to that friend so she can refer to it later.
Some other deeply frustrating moments: you know the three dots UI at the top right of a video? How are elderly people supposed to detect that with their diminished vision? And you know how when you tap on the name of the app, it used to take you to the default screen of the app? Well say goodbye to that thanks to something like this:
Because the moment you tap on Live of Music by mistake, your entire feed replaces while seemingly looking like your default home page! And unless you know all the bells and whistles available to an app, you have no idea how to navigate out of it! Did I also tell you that all of this is extremely crowded and confusing when the font size is big on an iPhone?
My wife is very against infinite development of technology for the sake of development (as opposed to purposeful development that fulfills a deficiency). She’s also very against advancements that prohibit certain people from accessing public goods. For example in Korea most stores are human-less now because everything is ordered via kiosks and orders are fulfilled by machines. Now elderly people can’t buy hamburger because they don’t know how to use a kiosk.
So as my wife and I were sitting with our new friend, all three of us were dumbfounded and frustrated at the stark difference in reality that we all participate in together.
Thanks to my mom and dad I learned how to sit down with an elderly person and teach them computer stuff. Thanks to my clients I learned how to effectively communicate in a screen share situation as I walk through a technical problem together. And I’m sure there are more people like me, in fact I’m sure the senior centers have programs specifically designed for digital literacy.
But my overall sentiment is that digital literacy for elderly people usually fails at the home level. What do you do when your children just run out of patience with you and don’t want you to do things? I’m going to be honest, that’s happened to me a million times but my mom and dad yelled at me enough times for me to come back to my senses and understand that they’re not intentionally being dense for me to feel frustrated at.
What happens when you don’t know what’s available at the senior center due to lack of outreach? What happens when your family doesn’t let you out of the house? What about when language barriers are in the way? I spent around two hours with our new friend today and I could tell that I sparked a fire in her heart that’s been out for a very long time.
Not because of someone’s malice. Not because of someone’s lack of care. It’s simply a shortcoming of the system where we are forced to keep up with technology because it keeps on changing to appease stakeholders. I’m nifty on the computer today but I can’t promise that I’m going to be like this until the end of my life.
I remember when Apple used to design their hardware and software with accessibility in mind. So many of their quirks were so that both left handed and right handed users can use the computer in the same way. So many of their bleeding edge advanced technology was around accessibility. I got to witness the old death of that mindset today and it hurt a lot.
It feels good to have hung out with our new friend because taking care of the elderly and the lonely is not something we have to do. But because it is an optional good deed, it is good karma. The Buddha praised it as one of the deeds equal to providing alms for the Buddha. But it also feels a bit heavy to share how heavy the elderly’s hearts must feel to be so disconnected from where everyone else seems to be at.
