Older people and difficulties with new technology

Factual Questions
21

A lot of people in general don’t want to learn anything new. Old and young people come to me here at the library all the time and say “I don’t know anything about computers” and it’s clear they have no intention of paying the slightest attention to how I’m showing them how to do things and the next time they need the exact same thing they’ll drag me over to do it for them. They just have no intention of learning, they “don’t know anything about computers.”

One of my damned COWORKERS just gave me the filthiest look when I just suggested that she might eventually want to learn how to tell patrons to burn their own CDs instead of running to get me every goddamned time. It being her job and all.

22

I think part of it may be their perception of “authority.” They grew up in an authoritarian time when there was a right and wrong way to do things. To adapt to new technology you have to be willing to experiment, try things, see what works and what doesn’t, and also to have the confidence that if you make a mistake it’s not going to be the end of the world. I think they tend to see things more catastrophically.

23

I think that this is the biggest difficulty, for my mom. She doesn’t want to experiment with settings and such, for fear that she’ll break something. I’ve been teaching her that she shouldn’t worry, and she’s learning, but it’s slow.

Thinking more about Mom here, it’s probably also partly a matter of motivation. She got a fancy new sewing machine a year or so ago, with more computing power than most of the computers I’ve used, and every feature conceivable, and she knows how to use all of them. Meanwhile, try though I might, I can’t sew a single straight seam.

24

I’m 61, and have never had a problem with technology, old or new. But, like others have said, it gets to the point at which some innovations are simply pointless and a waste of time and money. Why do I need a phone with text messaging? Why do I need a phone that takes pictures? And why do I need to carry my phone around with me 24/7/365.25?

I made the transition from LPs to CDs 25 years ago, and am in the process of downloading my 2000+ CDs onto one of my hard drives. The best get downloaded onto my iPod. I’m happy with this, and don’t need to chuck it all when the next new thing comes along.

And yeah, I’ve got Tivo. And love it. I’d be happy with Tivo (with a few improvements) for the rest of my life. I don’t need what’s next unless it’s better in some really substantial ways. But if it has a lot of bells and whistles I don’t need, I couldn’t care less.

On the other hand . . . My mother was in her mid-80s when she decided to take a 1-hour class in “How to Use a Computer, for Seniors.” They taught her how to use a mouse, how to open, save and close a file, and how to send and receive e-mails. She came home and said, “I never realized that using a computer could be so complicated!”

25

I’ve been nodding along at pretty nearly every post, and I’m only 32!

I was in charge of the iPod in the car for our road trip this weekend - my husband’s iPod. I don’t have one. I haven’t played with one. He hands me this white plastic and metal box with a wheel of some sort and a shiny candylike button in the middle.

“Scroll down,” he says. “Just push it - push down! No! Go down!”

Down? Uh…there’s no down here. Tentatively, I tried pushing with my thumb on the bottom part of the wheel, as if it was a toggle switch. Nada. I push the candylike button in the middle - pushing is “down”, right? Nope.

Oh! You want me to rest my thumb lightly on the top of the round wheel thingy and move it (my finger, not the wheel) gently and smoothly in a clockwise direction? HOW IN THE @#$%&ing UNIVERSE DOES “SLIDE GENTLY CLOCKWISE” = “PUSH DOWN”?!

If I was my mother, that’s the point at which I’d give up and listen to ABBA for 300 miles. As it was, I got the hang of it, but the very interface itself was so completely foreign to me that it took me a few minutes to feel even remotely comfortable with it - and iPods are supposed to be one of the pinnacles of design functionality at the moment, aren’t they? The only reason I stuck with it was that I knew I wouldn’t wreck it by fiddling with it - my mother is terrified that if she clicks on the wrong thing on her computer, she’s going to erase her whole hard drive (not that she’s sure exactly what that means.)

So yeah, I’d say that some of the many reasons include the requirements to shift your thinking to just simply master the interface, an overwhelming array of options and features, a comfort level with the old technology already mastered, visual acuity, interest level, being “bothered” to learn something new, and being afraid to break or otherwise ruin the equipment or the software.

And one more, that has nothing at all to do with age: if you play stupid, there’s less work for you to do.

26

It’s also the case that many devices have user interfaces that appear to be designed as a complete afterthought.

I have an A/V receiver, made by Sony, that has far more features than I’ll ever use, but even the ones I want to use are hard as hell to use. Setting the speaker setup is difficult and must be attempted often, since there are stupid buttons on the remote that change some stupid setting and revert to a 2-speaker setup. It supports everything from stereo speakers up to 6.1 surround. In order to set any meaningful option, I have to use a series of four buttons on the console and an output display that’s a 10-character 7-segment display. This thing’s a video receiver. It could have a video menu! Better yet, it could just try sending a signal down the speaker wire and see if there’s anything connected.

27

I guess I am apprentice senior and getting close to the real thing. (I’m 55.)
As others have said, it’s a royal pain in the ass to go through a LOT of trouble to learn a skill that once learned, is not transferrable to anything. (It’s like learning CPR that can only be used on one person who will be dead in 6 months. Forgive the crude analogy).

My favorite story is from 15 years ago, when I was using someone else’s desk phone. (It was a new one with the built-in digital clock). I noticed the time was slow by a couple of minutes and so I tried to change it. Was there a time set button? NO. Was there a menu button? NO. There was an 800 number which I called and the woman instructed me that to change the minutes, simply press intercom 720. Of course - how stupid of me !!! I’m still embarassed that I did not know that. No doubt some of you younger kids on the SDMB would have known that right? :rolleyes: AND the joy of learning that valuable information is that you can use that knowledege for … ???

The point of this posting is a LOT of the modern technology was designed without giving one damn about people who will actually use it. How many of you folks have new cars? When you get your oil changed you have to *tell *the car it has been changed (usually through an Intercom 720 process). Speaking of cars I’ve also heard that the so-called “safety” features can become a threat if they actually don’t deploy when you’re in an accident. (Example: You’ve just had a minor accident. (No air bag has deployed). You’re slightly dazed as an EMT of firefighter comes to your rescue by using the jaws of life, pry bars, etc. The car’s sensors detect “ACCIDENT” and out pops the air bag. Since you are facing sideways, it cracks your neck and kills you.
Similarly, the rescuer actually manges to squeeze inside the driver’s cab. The sensors might detect this as an accident and the rescuer’s neck gets broken.

Now am I to believe if you are a young kid you would somehow be “immune” to this misfortune? I don’t think so.

Forgive me if this sounds rather bitter but over the weekend I was trying (and finally succeeding) to help a neighbor with her Ipod. (I don’t own one nor a cell phone either). In those 2 cases I’ll admit I don’t want either one because I never grew up with these but not because I don’t want to go to the trouble of using them. (Heck I’ve learned HTML and JavaScript and built a website, so I’m not quite ready to start a life of playing Bingo all day long).

28

There wasn’t a right way or a wrong way – there were lots of ways. Anyone who’s ever watched a carpenter, mechanic, cook, seamstress, whatever, has seen them experiment with new ways to do things. I grew up in a time when it was common to take things apart to see how they worked. I think every guy I knew had rebuilt a car engine at least once. These people are in their 60’s and 70’s now.

29

I think a part of it is that learning is itself a learned skill. Someone who is used to continually learning new skills, analyzing new situations from first principles, and solving new problems will have a much easier time keeping up with changes in technology than someone whose environment never really changed since they finished school.

It’s somewhat harder to learn at an advanced age, absolutely. It’s harder to form new memories, it’s harder to train new skills. But it’s not that much harder. The gap in learning ability from 70 to 35 is tiny compared to the gap between 14 and 7. In my experience, people who have to be active in knowledge-driven fields into their 60s and 70s, and who spent their whole lives keeping up with the state of the art in their field, will find it much easier to keep up in general - no matter what the field. It’s a question of figuring out what you know, and what you don’t know, and coming up with a plan for rectifying the latter. And that is something that only comes with continual practice.

30

I learned to type on a manual typewriter. There was an advantage to having a lot of finger strength to mash down on the keys and get a good solid inkmark on the paper and make an impression on the three carbons beneath it.

Now I use a keyboard. Mashing down on the keys is a bad thingggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg.

Yet, despite the fact that I’ve been keyboarding for more than 25 years, and used an electric typewriter for years before that, and my mind KNOWS I don’t have to mash the keys, my fingers still want to hit the damn things as hard as they can.

On my digital camera there’s a little jagged red lightning bolt in a circle that signifies that my flash is on. Unfortunately, there’s a little jagged red lightning bolt in a circle with a 1-pixel wide line through it to show the flash is off. And if I’m in the sun, my LCD is so washed out I can’t tell if anything is there.

Compare that with the camera I learned to take photos with. If you wanted to turn the flash on, you put a bulb in a socket.

And since when did a circle with mark at the top come to represent turning on the power. What the hell happened to “ON”?

Twice a year I have to dig out the owner’s manual in my car to remind myself how to set the clock. I’ve used the owner’s manual more times to set the clock than I have for anything else. My instincts tell me to push and hold the button that says “clock” and use up and down arrows (or maybe left and right arrows) to set the time. But that’s too simple for the manufacturer.

If they made user interfaces that humans could logically figure out, and they made them visible to the naked eye, there’d be a lot fewer problems with new technology.

31

Y’all should come down to my local club on pension day to see the blue-rinse brigade on the slot machines. Twenty years ago, they were the old one-armed bandits with mechanical reels, that would go clunk clunk clunk. These days, they are highly complex GUIs on a screen. Old Edna or Mavis will sit there all day, and if you ask what she’d doing, she’ll tell you something like “I’m playing fifteen credits per line twelve ways. I’m trying to get the free game feature with scattered pyramids, and that’ll give me a chance to get some Cleopatras which substitute for all symbols except pyramids, and…” etc To me, it might as well be the cockpit of a fighter plane, but these old ladies are intuitively using a relatively complex GUI that has all sorts of playing and gambling options - but they refuse to use an ATM because it’s “too hard”.

32

My wife’s elderly aunt has a similar problem with a new TV remote. She just can’t understand that she needs to NEVER TOUCH ANY BUTTONS EXCEPT THREE: On/off, volume and channel. She keeps grabbing the damn thing like it’s kiolbasa sausage, which causes her to accidentally jab buttons that make the TV “not work,” then she had no inkling how to undo what she’s done. We’ve re-programmed the damn remote every other day for two weeks.

I do have a solution, though. I’m going to take a razor and slice off all the rubber buttons except those three, and cover them with duct tape. I can stilll push the buttons with a pen if I need to, and she can’t accidentally push the ones she isn’t supposed to.

My wife has asked, “why don’t they just make a Remote for Old People she could use?” Good question.

33

Everytime I goto CVS, I laugh at a remote control they have on sell that certainly seems like it’d be good for old fogies that looks something like this: http://cgi.ebay.com/Big-Jumbo-Large-Giant-Universal-Remote-Control_W0QQitemZ110131630630QQihZ001QQcategoryZ61323QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Then again, that’s probably way too many buttons for the average senior citizen.

34

Brandon

“Everytime” is NOT one word. “goto” is one word ONLY in programming.
Did you mean they have on sale?

Pretty good for a 55 year old fogie huh?

Believe it or not, I’m not offended by your posting.

As you get older (something you think will never happen to you), think back to your posting about the remote control and you’ll find it isn’t as hilarious as you once thought it was. :slight_smile:

35

Great, now if you can just master going a speed other than your age on the highway in the left lane with your blinker on for 20 miles as well as you’ve mastered the English language, you’ll be set! :smiley:

36

wasson’s mom hit on an important detail.

Mom’s printer gave up the ghost because of an electrical storm. So for Mother’s day we got her a new printer. She was confused because “on the other printer, the power button was the one on the right, and on this one it’s on the left!” It took a trip around the house, pointing out all the pieces of equipment that have the exact same symbol on the power button, to convince her that I wasn’t just inventing things up and the appearance of similar symbols on her monitor and her printer was not a coincidence. I say similar because one of her objections was “but it’s not the same, that one’s silver and this one’s grey!”

Oh, and Mom’s grab on the mouse is the opposite of the way she grabs the remote. The remote, with both hands as if it was trying to escape. The mouse, with the tips of her thumb and little finger - it doesn’t bite, Mom!

Funny thing? Mom’s Mom has absolutely no problem learning new stuff. If she says “teach me this,” she’ll have it down pat in minutes. And yes, as usual, Grandma is older than Mom. By 27 years.

37

I’m not sure there is a factual answer to this question. However, I think some of it may have to do with the peer group you’re with.

It’s probably safe to say that a 30 year old who does manual labor is likely to have weaker computer skills than an office worker. The office worker may not want to learn email and Excel spreadsheets, but they don’t have a choice if they want to keep their job.

Cell phones? Most teens are probably better at playing games on them than most adults. I’m thinking this has a lot more to do with teens having a lot more spare time, such as algebra class, than the average adult.

38

Well put. I think some of you need to remember that a human being has only so many brain cells. Someone in their 70s, for instance, learned how to work radios, adding machines, transistors, manual shift cars, dial-TVs, rotary telephones, cameras with flash bulbs, etc. If you’re under 40, you didn’t have to use up brain cells for any of those things.

When you’re young, you learn new things quickly and readily (no one learns faster than a toddler!) I predict that, 30 years from now, all the people who are criticizing the oldsters for not learning new technology will themselves be critized for the youngsters of that generation for the same thing.

When I was a kid (I’m nearing 60), all machinery had labels: each TV dial said what it did, like “Tone” and “Tint” and “horizontal” (Would a 20-something today have any idea what such buttons do? I remember that we still had a rotary dial phone about 25 years ago, and a visiting 8-year old said, proudly, “I know how to work that!” Most of his peers didn’t.)

The way we learned how to operate machinery – any machinery – was to read the labels. Each button had one function. Coming to a new mechanism that has multifunctional buttons but no labels is therefore confusing: it’s not just learning how a new piece of equipment works, it’s re-learning how to learn. The entire approach towards equipment has changed. That’s not an easy transition.

And then, as dropzone points out, technology changes at an amazing rate. Telling anecdote: I dropped and killed my digital camera, so I bought a new one last week. I wanted to get the same camera, I really liked it, but of course it was two years old, so they don’t make that style anymore. Here’s the new one, cheaper and it does more. My point: The pictures on the control dial are different from those on the old camera … althought it’s the same brand, similar style. Having learned one set of pictures (now uselessly filling my brain), I now have to learn yet another set of pictures. I mention in passing that the instruction book is written in a some bizarre language that superficially looks like English.

Back in the old days, every TV, regardless of brand, had the same labels on the dials (perhaps a different arrangement.) It was easy to adapt to a new piece of equipment. Not so today. Again, with limited brain space, my head is filled with too many things, it makes learning a whole new technology very difficult.

39

My mom, who once edited the first national magazine to go entirely to electronic production, ran it for 15 years without ever learning to cut and paste.

I’ve tried to teach her repeated times. It just will not take. She made up her mind years ago that it is impossible.

40

Amen, sister. That clerk who gave me the dirty look upthread? We just got an e-mail today, after evidently she went crying to the boss over how mean I was, that basically says that some people don’t have to learn how to do their jobs. When I spoke to the boss about it, I got, well, she works all the time! Maybe for you, honey. I, on the other hand, rarely catch her standing up.