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.

I agree. I would far rather speak to an actual person, and get all the questions and answers over in one conversation than all the constant to-ing and fro-ing of texts/emails. I sent a message to the tax department here once on their website, got a reply many days later (a busy time), sent another message answering their question - then got fed up and phoned them. The issue was sorted in minutes.

Those adverts drive me mad! When I was young we had to know how to write things which weren't badly worded. This is leading to the dumbing down of society, why bother to learn how to do things properly when technology will correct it for you (and not always well!). We used to be able to find our way to places with a map and some research for instance.

So many skills are being lost now, and it's not a good thing.

This is a really interesting thread. I'm always a little bit wistful when i hear about older people in their 70s, 80s and 90s embracing internet usage, because my mother is 79 and refuses to use ANY technology that isn't her TV or the landline phone.

She used a computer at work up until she retired 18 years ago. She sent emails to her friends until about five years ago. She point blank refuses to use a mobile phone and always has done, even a Doro or a Nokia brick which is exactly the same as her cordless landline phone. My sister set up a Facebook page for her about 7 or 8 years ago, and she had a total meltdown until my sister deactivated it. Its really very odd.

My dad was very technology-focused, and we grew up with early PCs in the house, from the very early 1980s onward. All of us children happily fiddled about with them, but mum refused to go near any of them. It was very strange. My partner's dad was the same age as my mum, and right up until he died, he had his iPad and liked checking the football results and looking at photos we sent him.

I often wonder what will happen to people my age. I use all manner of gadgets, feel very comfortable with them, am happy to adopt new things - I'm 54. Will I become an old person who isn't comfortable with the new technology that is introduced in the next 10 years? What would have to happen to me to be like that? Is it a lack of confidence, or increasing infirmity? I know a few people in their 60s and they seem as tech savvy as my children.

I'm old and I keep up to date. If something changes or anything new comes out, I do my best to get proficient in it. I will spend hours to try to keep up with everything because I don't want to be left behind. There's not much I can't do.
At the moment!

I'm 70 and pretty much across everyday tech, though had a steep learning curve when moving to Australia. All teachers had a laptop and had to use it, unlike the the classroom-bound PCs in the UK. We could take it home and perforce I upskilled.

Availability and necessity drove familiarisation.

Back to your speculations

I think that later developments will not defeat you as you will be able to imagine how it links to what you already know, not be as alien as the very speedy developments of the last decade will have been to some older people, and taken them on the hop.

@needmorelego Cornwall! They may as well be living in a cave!

You just need to keep up with changes as they happen so you don't get left behind. Smaller, incremental changes are easier to deal with and adapt to. It's always going to be harder (if not impossible) when the gap between what you know how to do, and what you need to do, gets wider.

I.e. in terms of Windows, moving from 10-11 is a doddle. Moving from an old brick of a 90s laptop using windows 3.1 to a new laptop using windows 11 would be a massive challenge for anyone, young or old.

Same with car parks. Moving from putting cash in a machine and getting a paper ticket to paying by an app on your phone or pre-booking a parking space for a period of time on your laptop is a big leap. But starting to use your debit card to pay the "pay and display" machine rather than coins is a "baby step" to move from one system to another.

Take banking. In the 70s it was mostly all about cash/cheques - i.e. need for physical/face to face interaction. Then along came debit/credit cards and cash dispensers. Cash dispensers originally were just to withdraw notes. Then they morphed into accepting cheque deposits, then cash deposits, then other services etc. Then in the early 90s, we had telephone banking using tone generator devices! Then mid to late 90s, we had online banking starting to appear (business first but personal shortly after). And so it goes on. Lots of relatively small incremental changes. If someone is still using cash for everything today, moving to online banking/apps is a huge challenge, but if they'd kept pace with changes, i.e. cards, telephone banking, basic online banking, etc as the decades passed, they'd be well placed for the future when everything is app based as they'd be better able to cope with current and future changes if they were already "somewhere near" in terms of only being 1 or 2 steps behind the latest app functionality.

@Badbadbunny Same with car parks. Moving from putting cash in a machine and getting a paper ticket to paying by an app on your phone or pre-booking a parking space for a period of time on your laptop is a big leap. But starting to use your debit card to pay the "pay and display" machine rather than coins is a "baby step" to move from one system to another.

Not really, no. For me the huge leap is the phone app. I don't drive regularly and all the other methods including pre-booking are familiar from other contexts. But I don't like having to install a separate app on my phone for every business I ever interact with however temporarily or trivially.

When you say that "we need to get used to the idea that everything is app based" something about "being app based" might also need to change to make it more usable.

But apps get hacked, and that is only going to increase. Don't use your debit card online. Don't use your debit card to pay for parking. Unless you have a separate account from your main current account. Just don't.

A lot of these "advances" do not have security advancing quickly enough alongside them sometimes.

Keeping up with small changes is fantastic with the benefit of hindsight. We know that the things listed have progressed through time. Betamax video didn't, OS2 rather than Dos in computing didn't, 3D tv..... you can't follow every tech change, you'd be bankrupt. Hindsight is marvellous.

The problem with trying to force older people to learn how to use the internet when they're not confident or cognitively flexible and able to do so, is that you'll probably succeed in giving them just enough skills to put themselves in a position to be scammed.

Frankly, I think it's safer for them to continue to pay their bills etc in a way that protects them from scammers.

My elderly aunt can send emails and use Facebook, but does not use online banking, and I think that's wise. I'd rather be helping her manage her present systems, than be constantly worrying about her being scammed.

But starting to use your debit card to pay the "pay and display" machine rather than coins is a "baby step" to move from one system to another.

Not really. Especially since it's been contactless, paying by card is about the easiest method possible.
Apps may be useful if you may need to pay for more time but if it's a pay on exit system you don't need that.

And actually it can be easier to jump straight from a very old technology to a very new one and miss out the intermediate steps. Nowadays banking through a well designed smartphone app is simpler and more intuitive than online through a browser because there's been so many years of effort put into making phone banking simple intuitive and well presented with minimal interaction to get the job done.

Then again, phone apps usually target a younger market and they don't necessarily take older people's needs, prior experience or abilities into account in their design. When you're an afterthought you often don't get design that works well for you.

Yes, very good advice to not use your main debit card on anything online or any apps, and certainly no QR code links, you don't want your main bank account compromised, either use a credit card or get a separate bank account for spending

I am 63.

In 1977 we had one of the first Commodore PETs thanks to my fathers occupation. That was replaced by the BBC PC literally as soon as it was released so I have been doing basic programming since my teens.

I still never worked out how to use the DVD player though and how our CCTV system works is a complete mystery to me. I don’t care enough to learn. We all have different interests.

Fair enough, but you can't complain when you find yourself excluded in years to come, once more and more is online and app only and you are "past" being able to learn how to do it.

It can be, yes, but only if your mind and body is capable of such a big leap. Smaller incremental changes are often better to cope with as people get older and their abilities start to decline.

I do agree with this. If you don't try to keep up with it, you're on a lost cause. I'm ancient and I've worked really hard to keeping up with what's out there.

To go from nothing, to what the world demands now is really difficult. I would imagine. I don't know how that is, because I am not that person

Ummm - what makes you think I'm not online? I am or I wouldn't be here now would I!

And I think I've already said my phone is full of apps! The CCTV works with an app and I can do what I need to. The nuts and bolts of how it works is of no interest and the alarm company takes care of all that anyway.

DVD is obsolete technology now so I've lost nothing there and I am more than capable of streaming when necessary.

I do love how people just make ridiculous assumptions on Mumsnet

@SalviaDivinorum, I think you're being misunderstood by people who can't see the difference between knowing how something works and how to work it.

People our age understand, to at least a rudimentary degree, how radio transmission and telephony work for example - also electricity, light bulbs, combustion engines and things like manufacturing processes. Every kid knew where food comes from. It was almost compulsory for children to build a radio and a dynamo. We were taught that it's really important to understand how the world works.

There's so much new stuff now, coming so quickly, that it feels impossible to keep up with how it all happens. I made a conscious choice to give it up after trying to get to grips with the workings of GPS! I don't really understand how electric cars do what they do or why LLMs still have such difficulty with natural speech.

I imagine there are a lot of people, especially younger ones, who've never wondered how a router turns phone signals into radio waves - there's little point in knowing; you just have to know what buttons to press. But it makes me uneasy: in the space of a generation, we've gone from "do your best to understand" to "learn which buttons to push". It feels like humans are being dumbed down, taught that survival depends on remotely operating machines while never asking who runs these machines, where they are or what they do.

Bit of a ramble there ... You weren't saying you can't work your CCTV, and you are right to wonder how it all works! More people should wonder.

Because they dont want wiring everywhere (DM)
Endless visits from the internet provider when the internet goes down
Which brings me to my next point. Its still not reliable enough
Digital Voice wont work in a power cut

I must say I’m determined I will keep up with changes in technology. Having seen how my mother really struggles, having never learned how to use it.

Yep, cannot believe we are switching to a "landline" system that works worse in an emergency situation. Going backwards in pursuit of progress.

Landlines can go down in emergency situations too! We lost our landline during storm Desmond a few years ago when the entire city lost electric for a few days due to the substation being flooded- a few telephone exchanges went down due to their back up power systems not working. It was two days before our landline started working!

Indees. Also in rural areas most landline wires are on overhead telegraph poles that are just as vulnerable to storms as electricity wires.