My father has zero interests and is lucky if he can turn off the monitor. My mother is better and has used her credit card online for the first time just recently, after much prodding from my brother and myself.
She came across a porn site by accident last week and had to tell me all about it. She was shocked! I tried my best not to crack up over the phone.
Any funny stories from your parents’ internet awakening?
Ten years ago, my dad got so very upset that I spent all my free time online, and mocked me for it mercilessly. (Not the least of which was “We’re having chicken for dinner, but you probably want virtual chicken.” Why yes, I have a couple of issues about this.)
Now he has a MySpace page, a realm into which I dare not enter. Go fig.
My parents were using the internet in 1993. They had MacBBS. We had the internet way before any of my friends did.
My dad is a Civil Engineer. He’s fairly internet-savvy for a 78-year old. He’s not really into much surfing though - he’d rather do stuff in meat space (gardening and stuffs).
My MIL doesn’t even have a computer. She’s 88.
My mom, the technophobe, pays all her bills on line, sends emails with attachments, even IM’d with me once. She reads the funny papers on line, does searches, even checks things on Snopes before forwarding (and she’s very judicious with forwards.)
Unless you know my mom, you have no idea how impressive this all is.
My future SIL tells the story that he once got a panicked call from his grandmother telling him to hurry over because she had accidentally deleted the internet.
She deleted the shortcut for her browser - but its funnier her way.
My dad is 85 and he is big on forwarding lame jokes, political crap and stuff people send him. Sometimes he even forwards me shit I have sent him…
I get the “blank” e-mails from him every now and again and I just laugh.
He can cut-n-paste like a pro when I am there to show him, when he is on his own, not so much.
Oh well.
I know people that are way younger than him that “hate computers” and take pride in their computer illiteracy. That I don’t get
I still Snope-reference for my mom (I can’t wait for election season to be over), but at least she has email down pat. My dad (early 70s) will go to his grave a happy man if he never has used a computer.
My father who is way more proficient in power tools than I will ever be is completely intimidated by that evil box sitting in the corner. I don’t know if he expects evil death rays to shoot out at any moment or what. I should mention their ages 67 and 65 so I can kind of see the fear of the unknown.
My Dad barely even watches TV, so he has no interest in the computer.
My 71-year-old mother, on the other hand, is really good with it. She can install software, manages to keep her computer virus-free (at least now that the grandkids are a bit older), uses e-mail, and even has a digital camera that she moves the pictures off the camera, onto the computer, then onto a web site. She surfs and enjoys it. Her TiVo had problems with the phone line a year or so ago, so I hooked up a wireless router for her and then she figured out she could download movies from Amazon onto the TiVo and she’s now uncontrollable.
I’m pretty proud of her. She even Snopes things herself!
True. I know a dude, whom I used to work with a few years ago. He is a few months younger than I am (I turned 48 this year).
This guy graduated engineering school without learning the first thing about computers - forget writing simple Fortran programs; he can’t even use a word processor. So many of the Excel spreadsheets I had made at work for calculating repetitive things were useless with him! The worst part is that he doesn’t want to know. He only uses email and the web site for the tennis league that he’s in. It’s weird.
I don’t think my parents would even know how to turn a computer on, let alone figure out how to open a web browser. My father actually just borrowed my original Playstation, and it took about 6 phone calls for me to explain to him how to get it to work.
My father is 56, and my mother is 46, fwiw.
My brother is a noted computer engineer. Our mother does not own a computer, and has never used the Internet.
My mom (56) is pretty awesome. She’s had to get used to computers for her job as an administrative assistant so that wasn’t so bad for her. She does a good bit of shopping online now which is good because I get tired of going with her to stores to “shop” when I know she can just browse online and get it 
I have her buying MP3s on Amazon now and she is doing well after a few phone calls about “where did my songs go?”
I think she burned her own CD today too. I’m so proud
My dad (57), on the other hand, thinks technology is awesome and “learned the television” out of necessity because I told him I don’t own a TV and I can’t help with his new fancy setup. He did just fine. But, he won’t get online. I am pretty sure it’s because he knows what a devious little brat he is and he will get himself into trouble. Seriously.
Here’s a hilarious video about keeping your parents off the Internet
My parents are pretty computer savvy, but they refuse to upgrade. They are still using the Gateway they bought for me more than 10 years ago. Last year, my dad was all pissed that Turbo Tax stopped writing their software to work on Windows 95. He had to go into the office on the weekend to use their internet connection and do his taxes because the dial-up at home couldn’t handle the java on Turbo Tax’s website.
We’re planning on buying them a new computer for Christmas.
My folks are both pretty internet-savvy. They don’t depend on it as much as I do, and they don’t use it for recreation that much, but they have an active neighborhood listserv, and they order things from Amazon, etc.
The funny thing is- my Dad is a fairly well-known Operations Research guy, still consulting at age 77, and was working with computers before they had punchcards. He tried to get me interested in FORTRAN when I was in Junior High, but I wasn’t having any of it.
Now that everything has moved to desktop machines (he still marvels at the processing power available on a $1,000 machine), I’m the guy who has to answer his questions.
I’m not looking forward to the inevitable day that happens to me…
Dad died in 03 at the age of 82 and he used email, surfed a bit. Mom gets frustrated at the least unexpected response from a computer. She didn’t figure the net was worth $15 per month (DSL) and shut it down completely. Forget the net, she probably wouldn’t type a letter on her computer. That’s really tragic because what else does she do all day?
My grandfather, born in 1912, was hip to the Internet before my parents were.
The smartest thing I ever did was to install Firefox on my parents’ computer and hide Internet Explorer. Before that, I had fielded a million complaints about popups and spyware.
Now they’re pretty savvy, and are online constantly, emailing relatives, researching diseases, and spying on the sub-30-year-olds with a stealth Myspace account.
My mom, a very active and youthful 72, got with the computer age by being extremely selective: she learned only what she absolutely HAD to know. Case in point: She spent 15 years as editor of a major (and fully computerized) national magazine without ever learning to cut and paste. Still can’t and has no intention of trying.
Yeah, my mom does this, too. Before Dad died, the two of them traveled a lot with a digital camera, and she still goes on trips with her senior group. She has learned to download her pictures to a directory that my brother set up for her so that her screen saver is a slide show of all of her photos in random order. It’s kinda cool to go from Germany to Norman Rockwell’s house to my niece’s graduation to who knows what else. How odd to be entertained by a screensaver… 