Tech Care For Elders

CONNECTIONS | by MOLLY MARTIN

MY FIRST INKLING OF THE TECHNOLOGY GAP WITH OLDER FOLKS came when my mother needed to fax a document to my brother in Chicago.

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Me: I can do that from home; just give me the document.

Mom: Don’t we have to make a copy first?

I’m not sure she ever truly understood that the document itself didn’t go to Chicago, merely a facsimile of it.

Later she got her first cell phone. To make it easier to use, my other brother programmed it for voice-activated dialing. Which sounded like a great idea, until we realized she couldn’t remember whether the phrase to call my brother was “Mike at home,” “Michael at home,” “Mike home”, “Mike home”, or something else. The phone didn’t get used much.

But we shouldn’t give up on incorporating appropriate technology into the lives of our elders. A study by the Phoenix Center think tank in Washington, D.C., found that using the Internet can reduce depression in seniors by 20 percent. Corporations are working on a range of technologies to help seniors stay independent.

Sometimes making technology work for elders is a simple matter of listening to their specific issues.

My 90-year-old neighbor recently told me how confused she was when trying to check her email from her grandchildren. I sat down with her and saw that she was being deluged by popup windows about software updates. She didn’t know whether to click “Yes”, click “No”, ignore the windows or simply close them. The solution: Turn off all automatic updates and have a more computer-savvy friend or relative come over, say, once a week, to deal with them all in one swoop.

Once those were dealt with, things got fun again: “Want to see the photos of my great-granddaughter as a spider at Halloween?”