Why have some older people not adopted Internet?

[SparklyNewMe]

My parents have embraced it naturally somehow, and DM is very active on SM.
PIL have not - similar ages but always scoffed at it as if it was devil’s work. No smartphones. Both were switched on and active in olde age. MIL is on her own now, dependent on DH and BIL for all admin, and simpler things she deals with on her own like finding opening times are harder. But it was 100% choice, not inability, to adopt it, as MIL went to college in her 60s to learn Microsoft Office and has been using Word and Excel for her hobby. But email or internet - dismissed completely.

And that’s absolutely fine!

Some people can be stubborn and didn’t realise at the time how revolutionary it would become. Maybe she’s too proud to ask for help now in using it.

My parents didn’t bother with it for over a decade and then suddenly realised how good online shopping could be for them. So some can change.

Why is it fine? It means other people just have to do stuff for them instead. It’s everyone’s responsibility to keep up with this stuff as we get older.

Because they are stubborn and still think it's the 1960's when "life was better" 😂
(sarcastic.....but based on a few "older" folks I know)

My mum "doesn't" internet, my in-laws do.

She may well be the happier for not being on social media.
My mother is nearly 95. She is formidably capable , runs her home, sorts out life admin, has an allotment, all without the Internet. She uses social connections and the phone, ( though BT is truly testing her). She is very happy.

It's the Douglas Adams thing isn't it?

I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:

1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.

Exactly

Some people have never used a computer and therefore have never used a keyboard so that's a blocker for starters. If you've never had a mobile phone going straight to a smart phone is a big jump if you've no experience. Also failing eyesight and manual dexterity.

It's really important we don't assume everyone is computer literate and can happily use technology.

My late DF couldn't manage a smartphone, he had very shaky hands through doing factory work so could barely manage his big buttoned dumb phone to make calls.

Because they were already much older when it came out? How they managed their finances and social lives and hobbies was all done without technology so they continued in a way that worked for them, whilst the world around them was technologically advancing at a pace that they couldn’t keep up with?

why do some young people not understand that one day they might not be able to keep up with the world around them?

I was wondering this yesterday when I went to the bus stop near my house. The buses are timetabled every half hour. Because I'd been checking on a bus tracking website I knew the previous one had been cancelled and this one was ten minutes late.

At the bus stop there were two women, probably late 70s, who were freezing cold and unhappy as they'd been waiting there for 45 minutes. I told them our bus was only a couple of minutes away and explained how you could track them. They both said they didn't have smartphones and didn't want smartphones. Why chose to be cold and miserable? It's self-defeating behaviour.

Ha! True.

I'd better start using AI more regularly so I don't become a cliche

Because initially it seemed very niche. You had to dial up. It seemed to belong in the workplace. Who could have imagined it would end up like this?

When it became obvious it was widespread and essential, people struggled with touch screens and passwords. It can feel like breaking into a bank even when you’re confident and comfortable. It would only take a couple of problems to put you off.

And believe you me, it would be easier to do all that for DM than to coach her through it at a distance, and sort it out every time it goes wrong! I’d like her to give it up.

My Mum couldn't get her head around the DVD recorder despite being shown, mobile phone (which she currently says isn't working but I suspect has run out of credit, internet. It's up to her, she manages without all these things. I'd rather she have a mobile phone by her bed for emergencies, but I haven't got the headspace to explain her mobile again when I know she's hardly going to touch it.

@NigelHarmansNewWife I would find it hard to believe no one under 90 would have "never used a computer".
We had computers at my primary school in the early 80s. A 90 year old in now would have been in their 40s back then.
Cheap mobile phones (ie the pay as you go) started in the 1990s. Again the current older generation wasn't old then.

This isn't the point really, is it? The point is that the onus is on each of us to adapt to change while we are still capable - as the OP says they were.
My parents are still working/volunteering in their 70s so use email, Zoom and online services but they are both very scathing about social media and have not joined the grey legions on Facebook. It's a shame as I think they're missing out a bit on keeping up with their friends. But they treat it with disdain

I bet youngsters would struggle to navigate a world where you could only access cash and banking between 9 and 3, Monday to Friday, had to order your milk a week in advance from the milkman who needed money in an envelope on a regular basis, and needed to keep a coal fire alive overnight to have heat the next day.

Every generation has its own skills.

@TimeForATerf completely agree. Not everyone worked in a setting where computers were normal. The developments have been incremental over the last 30 years, but if you've never been interested or felt it was too big a step then it's a mountain to climb nowadays. It's not the be all and end all to do everything online. I'm fact I would say a lot of older people are better at face to face communication or making phone calls whereas a lot of younger people won't actually speak to others and avoid doing so preferring to email or message instead.

These people were fully in the workforce when we had dial up if they're in their 70s now. They were mid career in the late 90s

Can you get a landline installed by her bed?

I barely use my iPhone as I find it a bit fiddly, it's an iPhone 15PM so not small or ancient, I mainly use my iPad and iMac as they are all connected but use the phone as a vehicle for these, it must be quite difficult for much older people if they only have a smartphone to use.

I think there are probably lots of different reasons. For some it's possibly a lack of confidence in their own abilities to get to grips with new technology. For others (possibly like your in laws) there's a sort of snobbish element (like people who don't like big TVs) and/or a slightly warped sense of superiority in being "different" to the majority. Showing they're not sheep, have the strength of character to be an individual and keep doing things the way they've always done them.

This. Plus, lack of opportunity to embrace it when they were still of working age (if we consider that an 85 year old today would have been in their 40s at the start of the home PC age, but it was still unusual to own one back then because of the expense).

My DGF would have been over 100 this year, but he had a laptop back in the 1990s the size of a breeze block. However, he was actively interested in new technology and privileged enough to be able to buy one. Most older people are not in that position.

It is something that will change in a generation, though.

I know people in their late 50s who haven’t used a computer. They use mobile phones, but that’s it. They have family email addresses.

If you work in retail or are a carer for example, you wouldn’t be issued an email address by your employer or use a PC at work.

If your other half works in an office, you’d leave them to it. If he’s a lorry driver, you’d just use your phones.

I know lots of families only have a phone as their access. You see it as an issue for homework.