Complete refusal to use technology

I should say she can text, and she tries to google things but most of it is really difficult. She even tried to take classes, she genuinely has tried and doesn't want to be a burden. My Dad tried too, but he's even worse. It's a pain, but unfortunately technology has really displaced older people, I feel sorry for those who have no one to help. Even I'm starting to feel overwhelmed how you need an app for every friggin thing. My parents were great parents, of course I'll do what I can.

Could you share the responsibility with your children? Would she be able to call them to ask them to do something like that for her? I feel your frustration though! My son had a job in a cool centre when the switch over to digital from analog TVs was going on. He had to lay in a dark room after those conversations with elderly people!Some of them hadn't even turned the TV on at the wall, not that they told him that until the last minute.

i guess it is her way of having contact with you, dont rob her of your presence

Yeah my mum is the same. She's 89 today and was widowed in 2017. Dad used to do little bits on the laptop but she never touched it. Today she has the most basic mobile phone possible which she only ever uses to phone me, my brother or a cab company. Despite trying to show her multiple times, she cannot text. It's too basic to have WhatsApp or apps and it would be pointless anyway. She doesn't know how to top it up or delete the confirmations from the cab company, so I have to help when her inbox is full.

She moans occasionally that my dad never used to show her how to use the laptop, but she refuses to learn with us so I can understand why he never tried. She's never sent an email, wouldn't have a clue how to access online banking, has never paid for anything online. The other day she was asking whether there were any shops she could go to to buy her tv licence. I said why don't you phone them and pay over the phone? Nope, can't do that. I ended up buying it online and she gave me the cash for it.

Her only progress is having a tablet which she has learned to use basic functions on. She watches You Tube and BBC iPlayer. I've shown her repeatedly how to Google different shops and browse products but she still can't do that independently. She also never updates the software so after a while things stop working and I have to sort it out.

I do believe part of it is pure stubbornness. If she goes to the supermarket she refuses to use the self service tills and if she's directed to one she will insist the person overseeing them scans her shopping for her. Drives me nuts.

You made a point of it in the OP though. I bought an iPad Pro in 2021 and it was under £750, to have spent £1k it must have been one of the top end ones with large storage. Why would you buy that for an elderly person, unless you aren't tech savvy yourself

my dm doesnt have internet
she gets annoyed about how so many things are on line.
why waste your dm's time with internet?

My parents are the same age and both use tech, it’s not an age, it’s a mindset. My mum had to learn for work 30 years ago and my dad thankfully got us an early pc for our house long before they were common, in the 80’s - getting them off their iPads is hard!

I'd give her a break tbh, it's really difficult for some people. I think if you never really used computers it's difficult to get your head around. My mum has tried really hard, but I do most things for her

You had me at 1k of iPad.why would you risk so much coin on something she wouldn't use? You could have bought a tablet for £120
However, stop doing stuff for her, she will either get with the project or have to go back to phoning folk!

Why would you spend £1k on an iPad for someone that isn't interested, it must be one of the top of the range Pro ones, you can get iPads for about £300

I would find it infuriating. My mum was older and embraced it, needed help with some things but that was fine.

My mum used to do a lot on the internet. Now her dementia means that if the battery is flat she thinks the device is broken and throws it away.

My 81yr old dm tries, she really does, and it's taken a good few years to get her to send text /WhatsApp messages and ring on WhatsApp. But that's it!
We live in different parts of the country so it can be frustrating.

She's been shown loads of times how to send a photo but for some reason it's too much. Same for email.

She can do her banking though, just shows her priorities!

She accesses Google cards which is mainly cat videos and royal family news, with the odd random celeb like Hugh Grant or Torvill and Dean 😅

@NonCommThank you. It’s easy to be positive with her as she is such a nice person. I’ve been very lucky.

You and your mum sound so positive. It’s lovely.

My Mum is 85 and I think I deserve a medal for helping her do things with her iPad. She is the best Mum in the whole world but I have to admit it can be challenging when we have to do something such as open a new account or change a password long distance. I have to be so patient. I can relate to the issues you have with your Mum bashing the screen😅
My Mum lives a few hours away and having her able to use her IPad so convenient and helps her stay independent. However, even with my help, it is difficult as so many companies refuse to accommodate for customers who have poor vision and poor dexterity. Sites like Amazon are extremely annoying as are companies that two part authorization stuff (my Mum doesn’t have a smart phone)

OP, have you a good understanding of all the accessibility features on the iPad? They are amazing. You can tweak the settings to allow for how hard your Mum presses the screen annd there are loads of other tweaks you can do. You can really simplify the iPad so that your Mum might have a better chance of using it. My Mum uses SIRI and that’s really helpful. She’s recently started to use Gemini AI chat and I’m hoping that will be useful for her when she gets more used to it. Her sight is already poor and it’s only going to get worse so we are trying to make sure she is comfortable using things that will be useful to her when her eyesight gets worse.

My mum is 81 and my goodness, she loves her tech! Always gets latest iPhone, surgically attached to her tablet... it peaked when DS complained it was difficult to have a conversation with her because she's constantly scrolling

From an accessibility point of view, if she was familiar with using a typewriter, she might struggle with the lack of feedback from an iPad - many older people who were used to typewriter keyboards, then the "stronger" Cherry type IBM keyboards of earlier computers find the lack of haptic feedback difficult. A magic keyboard might make it easier for her to use the iPad, as it will provide the tactile sensations that make it easier to judge what she's doing.

No I wouldn’t refuse but does she have anything like Wiltshire Farm Foods? They do a ring up and order service.

Reading some of thes posts and thinking of my own experience* I think for a lot of us, this isn't just about 'old people refusing to learn new tech'. It's that lots of folk can't or won't learn new anything at any stage of their lives, for whatever reason. But because of the pace of change, and because so many things in the modern world rely on tech, it's exacerbated the issue.
*Leaving detailed instructions for the video recorder in 1993 and still having to go over it on the phone.

I am pushing 60 and I definitely find that I don't remember things as easily as I did when I was 50.

Which has made me even more determined to keep abreast of the ever-changing tech. I don't want to limit my old age by being stubborn now, and I also don't want to be a pain in the arse to my DCs.

I suspect that I will be a bit of a pain in the arse regardless, because I can be quite a bolshy mare, but I'd like to do what I can to make myself easier on them.

I see that in myself. I acknowledge my brain cells are fully occupied with work skills and I can be really slow with everything else- like the tv and the tv side of the internet. However it’s a choice I’ve made and I don’t ask other people to organise it for me. I just do something else.

When people are really frustrated, it’s rarely with someone who is trying hard and or doing their best. It’s more often with someone who is deliberately preferring to inconvenience others instead of making a change themselves. My mum will micromanage me, insist we go to 3 different shops to get her food, rather than let me get everything from one shop in a third of the time. She’ll then complain about how busy and short of time she is.