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.

All this talk of "computers" is a red herring really. Modern cars are computers, Smart TVs are computers, shop tills and restaurant ordering systems are computers. Most shop workers will be using computers via their tills or tablets for stock control, etc. So you really don't have to have worked in an office to be computer literate to the extent of understanding how to use menu driven systems etc.

how on earth did you get that from what I actually said?

In my example people who refuse to use the internet but manage their own lives fine without it, are the equivalent to those who don't drive but get the bus, etc. My grandparents are like this, as one example, I've offered to set them up with dd's but they still go to the council office every year and pay their council tax upfront with a cheque. Seems odd and inconvenient to me and I'm sure it might be a bit annoying for the staff at the council to have to cash, but as long as it's an option the council offers then people are entitled to do it, and it has no negative impact on me, so crack on.

it was only those that refuse to do things online themselves but expect family members or friends to do them for them, thus making their lives harder (i.e. like people who choose not to drive but who expect lifts everywhere) that I was criticising.

If the council stopped offering people the option to pay by cheque, and my grandparents wanted to give me the money and then pay by direct debit out of my account, which would give me the faff of having multiple dd's and going to the bank to pay the cash/cheque back in, that would be inconsiderate.

you are criticising me for saying exactly the same thing as you

There weren't computers 30 years ago though which is when we are talking about these older people working, iPads came out in about 2010, but not used widely in the workplace until much more recently, they were for personal use.

@Badbadbunny As I have said on this thread I know a few people in their sixties who are retired and never learned to use a computer at work. I mean strictly speaking they did, but not a computer that taught them any transferable skills.
So they include -

• Friend who was a plumber and worked for a local firm. Did not use computer at all. Did drive a manual van and used sat nav.
• Friend who worked in a factory. She had to press various buttons that were linked to a factory computer that ran the production line, but totally irrelevant to using a tablet or smart phone.
• Friend who delivered glasses to housebound customers. Used company car, sat nav and a simple tablet signature where customers signed to say they had been given their glasses.
• Dog groomer at home. Used sat nav and car to get to customers houses. Had built up a large mainly elderly client base and did everything by paper.
• Tractor driver, works mainly as a contractor through word of mouth.

There are lots of practical jobs where use of computers was non existent until recently, or was only used for a specific easy task e.g. getting customers signature.

There were definitely computers around in 1995.

I’m puzzled why you seem to think iPad = computer?

@Badbadbunny I know people with a driving licence who are illiterate. They can't use computers. One still works as a mechanic and is a very good mechanic.

I was replying to a specific post that was on about tills and tablets, I probably worded it wrong but I meant the computer systems that that specific post was on about. Tablets in the workplace now are generally iPads.

What is it then

Exactly. At least they won't get ripped or hacked.

There were definitely computers around in 1995.

There weren't many computers with menu driven systems (which was the specific point iirc - the familiarity of that sort of UI in general) widely in use outside of certain types of work then, iirc.

It can be hard to remember which devices and paradigms appeared when! If anyone wants an entertaining reminder of what state of the art computer technology was like through the 80s to the early 90s can I recommend watching 'Halt and Catch Fire'.

Yeah true, but someone who can't drive for medical reasons has no choice.

Deciding to stubbornly opt out of learning to use the internet is a choice, and because you unfortunately need it to do life then you've kind of needlessly put a burden on others to help you out.

I get the mentality, but the reality is, it's a skill we need to do banking / book doctor's slots / stay in touch with relatives.

As I said, I hope it changes somehow.

Mil and Pil, both hitting 80, are very tech savvy, do bills and shopping online but avoid SM apart from the "papers" .

I just wish I could divert them from the DM!

It’s a tablet, which is obviously a type of computer but your post read as though you were saying iPads were the only computers in existence

Hmmm. But the genesis of the user is very different.

For my mum, the improvements in her TV technology went from “.stand up to change the channel” to “remote control” to “ buy a VHS and programme it by selecting channel and time period” to (a decade or two later) “use rhe Tv guide on the Humax to programme recordings after you have flicked through the Radio Tiimes”

the last is just about a menu based approach to record and play back names programmes, but she can achieve it by evolution from the previous TV steps. It doesn’t make her fluent in menus for Windows or whatever.

(she doesn’t have Netflix etc - she wouldn’t feel she could understand the streaming apps)

I do wonder about sat nav, and not just from the POV of losing map-reading skills. Dh used to have a fantastic sense of direction - he could visit a city for half a day, go back 10 years later, and easily find his way again. Since having had sat nav on his phone for years he’s definitely lost much of that ability.

My sense of direction is rubbish, but I’m very proficient at map reading.

There really were.

Commodore PET widely used in secondary schools and businesses from around late 70s
1980 - ZX80 (cost under £100) then ZX81 then sinclair spectrum
BBC computers in primary schools
IBM personal computers from 1981
Amstrad 8256 from 1985 cost as little as £399 plus VAT

It basically all kicked off in the 1980s, both for business computers and personal computers for games and word processing, databases and spreadsheets.

The first Amstrad for example sold over 2 million in the UK alone
The Sinclair ZX81 sold 1.5 million in 1981

Fun fact - in 1988, 17.2% of UK households had a home computer - that's a huge proportion so early on.

In 2020, 90% of UK households have a home computer.

Is it the idea of Netflix that daunts her, rather than the reality? After all, press the Netflix button on your remote then look at a picture of a TV show and press play now is a really simple process, arguably much simpler than navigating through a live TV guide menu with channel listings. Given that it automatically brings up shows she’s working through, and suggests things she might like based on prior viewing, she doesn’t even need to be that good at search.

Or is it actually that she doesn’t know where to start with the content and prefers to read reviews of terrestrial tv shows in the paper to choose what to watch?

We had a BBC micro at home and my secondary had a PET but only I think 83.

I did gap year work in 85 and did programming at GEC but you had to book slots on the computer. Reports were typed up by the typing pool.

When I started work in software development in 88 we all had computers. No word processing and editing was by vi.

A 85 year old concert pianist may still be quite capable of playing a Rachmaninov concerto from memory but quite unable to master using a mobile phone.
there is no doubt that playing Rachmaninov is far more demanding than making a phone call

It’s not about how demanding it is. A concert pianist probably learnt a Rachmaninov concerto in their youth - when the laying down and storage of memories was at its most efficient. Motor memory is also very strong, if the movements are repeated over and over again. All they have to do now is retrieve that motor memory from storage.

Learning a new skill in old age relies on a memory system far less effective than it was in their youth. It won’t be laid down and stored as well, and retrieval will be more difficult or even impossible!

I am not that old, but I am finding I need more concentration for driving than I did 10 years ago. I also forget things, like the name of an actress in a tv drama, which wouldn’t have happened 10 years ago.

No school computers for me in the 70s. My first computer use was writing fortran ...on cards. But I used terminals to access the mainframe for my PhD research.
Then into scientific software development in 1985. It still wasn't the era of a computer each, it was shared workstations. I remember the first Silicon Graphics Unix box cost the same as our house.

Roll on of course I use a laptop, and access servers and VMs in the US routinely. But I still use vi.

My dad was never really interested, but he would love plane finder, Google maps, and on line news if he was still alive. He retired in 1980 and died 25 years ago.

The next big thing will be robotics. And those struggling to set up their advanced robot will be told that they should be fine with it as we have robots in the home in 2024 - vacuum cleaners.

She is daunted by the very idea of learning new tech. She will get very anxious at any such suggestion. I described it upthread as a phobia: you couldn’t talk a claustrophobic person into a cupboard by showing them the safety features that meant they could get out whenever they wanted, and you won’t talk DM into trying a technology by describing the simplicity of it and the benefits.

It isn’t logical, but it is insurmountable.

Well firstly the internet is not social media.
If you mean using the internet for online banking, online shopping and food shopping etc. I think that is a matter of personal choice or local availability.
My parents both embraced technology (died mid to late 80s). Dad did the mobile phone side and Mum did the computing side. My aunt, 16 years older than my mother, regularly used e-mail to my cousins in Australia over 30 years ago.
I think it very much depends on attitude.
Also, there is a world of difference between having a mobile phone with data and using a pc, tablet or laptop at home.

I wonder what older people who don’t have children or grandchildren to assist them do?

My mum is in her 80s and I often wonder how she would manage if I wasn’t around.

She has a smartphone but can only use Facebook (for scrolling only, cannot post or message), WhatsApp, text and phone and even with those she’s not fully competent and cannot retain much of the many lessons I’ve given. A friend of hers who I’ve come to realise over the years has what would probably be classed as mild learning difficulties and is not fully literate gets on a lot better with her smartphone, as, in my mums words “she just dabs away at it”. As in, she has no fear of breaking it or getting into settings she doesn’t understand and just uses it a lot more.

She refuses to use online banking and goes to the bank at least once a week. Won’t and can’t pay bills online so goes to a shop with pay point. Can’t do online shopping for neither groceries or items/gifts so I have to do that for her.

She left the work place when she had me in 1984 (single mother) and prior to that had just been sent on a computer training course by her employer. It’s possible that she would be more internet literate if she hadn’t had me as she would have stayed in her job using computers rather than switching to cleaning and childminding which didn’t require computer usage.

My own experience as a 40 year old is of 1 computer in the classroom in the final year of primary school. I remember typing up Boyzone lyrics while the other children were being read to on the mat. It was a Macintosh and I wasn’t afraid of it.

Entering secondary school in 1995, I developed a terror of computers. We would go as a class to the computer room to do various things. The OS was something like Windows 3.1 and you had to us dos to boot up. I became terrified of computers (in the sense I felt I didn’t know what I was doing and was afraid I would do badly academically in having to use them) so much so it would give me stomach pains and the shits.

By 1996 I lobbied my mum for 2 years to get a computer to do my school work (much as I hated them). We were very poor but I got a Gateway in 1998 and still remember the terror of setting it up. I typed up coursework on it which I would hand write first. I lived in fear of something going wrong with it or me breaking it. We had no males whatsoever in our life who could have fixed it. My mother never touched it.

Into 6th form in 2000 I still hand wrote my essays for A Level History and English and then typed them up. Even a piece of English coursework that was meant to be 2k words but I went overboard and did 10k. I just found the mental flow better. I couldn’t compose as well when typing up directly. My mum refused to have the internet as she saw it as the work of the devil. I wouldn’t have achieved the grades I did if I’d been on MSN messenger every evening like my peers. I got a Nokia 3210 in 2001.

I got a laptop and finally got the internet at home when I was at university. This revolutionised my computer usage and I finally got to grips with it and started chipping away at the fear, probably because I was using it more. From then on I used computers in my jobs and it became second nature. Got a smartphone in 2009.

I’m self employed now and work by myself so use a computer daily but I am a little concerned about going back to an office based job in a few years as I haven’t used Teams, etc. Seeing my mum get left behind makes me very conscious that I want to keep up with technological developments.