to think my parents are the most technically-useless out there?

[SileneOliveira]

My parents are mid-70s. Both had professional careers where they didn't have to use computers before they retired 15 or so years ago. (Primary teaching and dentistry). They are totally and utterly incompetent with anything technological.

I had a phone call at 11.59pm last night from Dad's mobile. (An old Motorola brick). Nobody spoke when I answered. So the obvious conclusion is that something is terribly wrong. Called back on the landline, a very grumpy Mum answered. She had no idea what was going on and why had I got her out of her bed? Fuck me, if you can't even "drive" a basic Motorola flip phone you've got problems and why are you tawtting about with it at midnight anyway?

They also think I'm being incredibly unreasonable in asking them to take their mobile when I collect them from the airport. As the airport has no free drop-off zone I've asked them to call me when they're physically walking out of hte airport so I can scoot into the 10 minutes for £2 zone and get them. This is apparently unreasonable as I can phone the airport and find out when the plane landed and make a guess as to how long it will take them to clear passport control and get their luggage. (If it wasn't a late night flight I'd be telling them to get the bus).

I have never sent or received a text from my parents. The would think Siri was a new Lebanese restaurant.

When I read about people's parents facetiming them, or a family WhatsApp group my face is like this . It's so very alien to me.

Anyome else got parents like this???

My DGM took herself to a free 'silver surfers' internet course in her late 70s. She's 86 now and entirely au fait with her laptop. She's struggling with her mobile now but that's because her sight is going and she's too obstinate to wear glasses. I always think if she can keep up with tech at her age then I'll have no excuse when I'm older. Even MIL, who is 70 and loves to claim she's too old for anything she can't be arsed doing, can work her iPad.

here also seems to be high levels of anxiety over nothing. Not sure I would have responded in that way to a missed call from parents at midnight

Eh? My parents NEVER call at midnight. Never. And certainly not on a landline. They are in their 70s. It is a reasonable assumption that something is wrong as why on earth would they be calling at that time otherwise?

This isn't anxiety. That's the reality of having parents who are getting on a bit and live 90 miles from me in the middle of nowhere.

My dad is 87 and still tries, bless him. He's always been a bit crap at practical things and so it's been a steep learning curve for him. He texted Vodaphone recently, to tell them he'd found his false teeth, and it took a long, long time to train him and my mum not to keep switching their mobiles off when they weren't actively making a call "in case the battery runs out."

YABU (says daughter of elderly mother)

My grandma is like this. She is in her 80's. She has a mobile, but only switches it on when she needs to call my grandpa for a lift home. She doesn't think about if people need to contact her. About 18months ago there was a lot of heavy rainfall and flooding in the area, she was out with her friend who drives. My grandpa was trying to ring her to tell her to get home but of course her phone wasn't switched on 🤦🏻‍♀️
My DH'a aunt saves up things for when we go to visit. My DH changes the timings on her outside lights and the thermostat (she at least knows how to turn the temperature up to boiling), and every month we get a call about how the TV has stopped working again. I had to set up her Facebook account for her.

My 70-something parents spend their days trolling politicians and their supporters on Twitter. I would be quite grateful for a bit of technological uselessness!

My parents are not even in their 70s and refuse to have a mobile organising airport pick ups is a 2 person mission

Yes: it's your mother's problem, and your father's problem. If they choose to make it difficult, that doesn't make it your problem. "Phone from the airport, I'll pick you up". "Oh, we don't have one of those portable telephones". shrug "OK, I'm sure you'll figure something out. Have a great holiday!"

I don't understand why people tolerate their parents (and, for reference, mine are in their eighties) externalising the consequences of their choices. They are perfectly entitled to choose the technology they use, but the consequences of those choices are also theirs to own. Any couple who are making flights on their own is financially and physically able to use a phone; if they choose not to, that's their problem.

My Dad was very interested in keeping up with technology in his 70s & 80s but now at 93 it all just confuses him. We have tried to give him a smartphone because it would be so useful when collecting him from the train, etc but he just waves it away. We have also offered to get him an iPad. He used to be OK with email but in the last year or so he no longer responds. Whenever we are at his house we try to sort out any computer issues he has but he just gets irritable. I think he's reached a point where he just can't be bothered with it all

I think you're being quite unsympathetic. Your parents grew up when there were two television channels, neither of which broadcast all day, and were in black and white. There was no way of seeing a television programme apart from watching it at the time it was broadcast. making a telephone call involved picking up the receiver, dialling for the operator and asking for the number you wanted. There were no automatic washing machines or microwave ovens, nobody had deepfreezes, many people didn't have fridges. They have already learnt to use a huge amount of technology.

If you're busy with your own life, you reach a stage where you no longer feel like chasing after novelty, and if a method works for you, you carry on using it. Then suddenly it's withdrawn and you're forced to play catch-up.

I was using computers daily from 1970, one of the earliest to have a home computer, using the internet from 1995. But I'm finding it intimidating to use all the facilities of a smartphone. Transferring documents from computer to phone to avoid printing them out for a meeting, fine, paying for parking, less so.

Since the pace of change of technology is increasing, I expect you will struggle when you reach your 70s or 80s. And then you may be more sympathetic to your parents.

My dad is the same. He has a Nokia. Fuck knows why as he never answers it.

My mum though is surprisingly good for one who always says how much she hates tech. She has a smartphone. Can take and send pics on WhatsApp, watches stuff on the iPad. For her, it only kicked off when she clearly saw the benefits of it (regular pics of her grandchildren being key).

All sounds very familiar OP. Having said that, my nearly 90 year old mum is on FB. She does do a fair bit of random button pressing which has to be cleared up by her grandchildren, but she gets a lot out of it. I think it's great.

Haha! My Mum does use a mobile, but it's a pretty basic flip phone, not a smart screen. If I show her photos on my phone she has to look but not touch otherwise she can in a matter of seconds delete various photos, change all manner of settings on my phone and then render it confused and unusable. I tried to teach her how to use a computer mouse and she got some sort of clicky tic and again I had to spend ages undoing all the damage she'd done. She can text now though, which is pretty good considering!

A missed call from my parents at midnight or ever would only ever be an emergency or tech failure, because it's absolutely not normal behaviour from them. They rarely ring me at all, (it's left up to me to ring them which I'm happy to do) and they once rang at 11pm because I had been out, and they needed to tell me my mum had cancer, so I would feel entitled to worry and assume the worst.

Small side note; my mum had a minor stroke and was in hospital. I was 500 miles away and they told me absolutely not to come, and that she was fine. I went in to work. My technophobe mum started sending my photo messages, of her feet in hospital bed, as she wasn't allowed to get up. I didn't even know her phone had a camera. Immediate panic from me as what the hell kind of weirdness has this stroke done to her that it's enhanced her tech ability but also made her think that people want to see photos of her feet in bed?! 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

I'm in my 70s, love my computer and the internet, use Skype a lot, refuse to use social media, ie facebook and could live happily without my £15 Tesco PAYG mobile which has had about £50 put on it in the last five years and is usually found languishing uncharged in the bottom of my handbag. I last used it two months ago.

I don't think you understand the enormous changes that have taken place in our lifetime. I started out using a manual typewriter and my first computer was DOS only with 4 Kb of RAM.

If you think you will be any different when you get to my age, you're kidding yourselves, but by then people will have lost the power of speech and babies will be plugged into a computer at birth. I'm glad I won't be around then.

If I show her photos on my phone she has to look but not touch otherwise she can in a matter of seconds delete various photos, change all manner of settings on my phone and then render it confused and unusable.

😂 brilliant! I should really insist my mum looks but not touch when I show her things on mine, she doesn't change the settings but I've got a cracked screen I'm too tight to spend £70 to replace (phone works fine) and she doesn't understand touching it lightly so every time she has a go on it more pixels from where she's pressed too hard on the crack, die 😂

My mum is the same. Last time we visited her she needed to go to the bank. We had to rearrange plans so she could get there will keep it was open. She wanted to use the ATM outside the bank. She only ever uses that one - and only when the bank is open in case anything goes wrong....

Grandmother also won't use an ATM. She insists on cash back at the supermarkets That's understandable. People tend to become more risk averse as they get older, and the problems with "skimming" at ATMs are well publicised. Also, an older person getting money out from an ATM in a public place is an easy target - she probably feels safer doing it at a supermarket.

Her alternative is to go cashless, but that still involves using a card which is easily mislaid, remembering a PIN which is less easy to do as you get older, and typing in numbers on a small keypad, which is more difficult as your fingers get stiff with age.

My bank wants us to pay in money by machine, just entering our account number. I'm less sure of my ability to type 8 numbers in the right order, and if I get it wrong, there'll be no alert that it's the wrong account name, and the bank will wash its hands of the problem, saying that I authorised the transaction. So that's a bit of technology I'm not happy to use.

It’s not age, it’s a state of mind. When I was in charge of IT at a junior school (I retired at 61) the worst technophobe was a 23 year old NQT who seemed to have no idea how anything worked, or how to use it, even when I showed her and left written instructions. Partly, I think it was just that it was easier to get me to do it. I often wonder how she copes now I’ve retired, because my three day a week job was replaced by a few extra hours for a TA to do the essential stuff after school, which doesn’t include showing teachers how to upload stuff to the website or edit a spreadsheet.

On the other hand, my dad got his first computer aged 85 and upgraded to Windows 7 with his new computer he got for his 100th birthday. Yes, he needed quite a lot of help from me with the changes, but he was willing to learn, and it wasn’t until he had a mini stroke at the age of 102 that he began to lose the ability to remember how to do stuff.

Back in the days of VHS recorders, and ‘Home Truths’ on Radio 4, this is the group that John Peel referred to as the “Blinking Twelve Hundreds”, who had a video player but had never got around to even setting the clock on it...

My parents are like this. My DF refuses to use a cash machine or a debit card, instead, going to the bank every week and withdrawing enough cash for the week. He has an ancient mobile phone but doesn't have it turned on- he only takes it with him on car journeys in case of emergencies. My mum also has the ancient non-smart phone- she turns it on when we are due to meet her in town for shopping in case I am late and can ring her, but as soon as we meet she gets it out of her bag and turns it off!!!! The don't have the internet, they don't even have a cordless phone- they have to stand in the hallway to speak on the phone at home! I can't send them photos. or texts, or email them- nothing! They won't even phone restaurants to make a reservation- they drive to it- go in and reserve a table for a weeks time! My mum likes to order from damart- but actually fills in an order form and posts it with a cheque- she won't even order over the phone!

If I'm picking someone up from the airport I check the flight times and estimate time through security. Never relied on a phone call or text.
The old fashioned way is fine. Take a step back and chill.
It's not that easy for them sometimes, it will happen to all of us.
And anyone can misdial.

My mother never had an automatic washing machine because "l don't understand it".
l don't understand the technicalities of the internal combustion engine, but it's never stopped me from driving the car.

I think YABU. I get that it is annoying. But learning new skills as you get older is not easy, so I can understand why someone may not want to spend hours and hours learning how to use something they very rarely use.

Your parents grew up when there were two television channels, neither of which broadcast all day, and were in black and white. There was no way of seeing a television programme apart from watching it at the time it was broadcast. making a telephone call involved picking up the receiver, dialling for the operator and asking for the number you wanted.

Sure. But by the time they were 25, none of that was true. It's completely unreasonable for people to say, at age 25, that "so far and no further".

My Mother took a picture of herself sitting on the toilet (accidentally) and posted it to Facebook advertising site & tagged me in the process.

I’ve banned her from everything!