To get frustrated with my mum and her refusal to use a mobile phone?

[SquishyBones]

My mum (early 60s) has had a mobile phone for years however, it has been “charging” for all those years. She just refuses to use it!! Says she doesn’t know how but won’t let anyone show her. It’s so frustrating. All my aunties (mums sisters) have mobiles and so my cousins are constantly texting and sending and receiving photos etc ... I can’t do any of that. Then she gets mad when I text my aunt or sent them photos as she gets jealous and says I’m leaving her out!!

My GRANDMA (mid 80s!!) has been using a mobile phone for years too and has now worked out how to send and receive photos. So why don’t my mum?? She’s just so reluctant to move with the times. Still refuses to use online banking incase her account gets hacked ffs

We all managed just fine without mobiles in the past. Surely you just wait until your friend arrives? Bring a book if you don't want to hang around waiting with nothing to do.

I actually think mobiles have made us worse at timekeeping because we know we can let people know if we are running late and there is less pressure to be punctual.

My parents are mid 70s and refuse to engage with technology. They won't have a tablet, even though we offered to get them one for Christmas. They do both have mobile phones, but the very old style where you can call and text and that's it. Never switched on. It's the flat refusal to engage and learn which frustrates me, it's not that they can't, it's that they WON'T. DM in particular has always been like this, she flat refused to use a cash machine for years, was in a job where she never had to use technology. Despite having children and now grandchildren who are fully engaged with tech she just refuses and takes this superior "I'm above all that sort of thing" attitude and sticks to writing her cheques, making landline calls and taking camera films to Boots for processing.

My inlaws are exactly the same age but totally different. They have an iPad, and when we upgraded our phones they got one of our old iPhones. So during lockdown they have been facetiming almost daily to speak with the kids, FIL has been helping my 11 year old with his maths, MIL talked DD through baking biscuits - it's been great.

My parents are totally missing out and it's down to their extreme stubbornness.

My FIL refuses a mobile phone. But he's a strange, pernickety bloke. He will NEVER do anything he doesn't want to do. That means the last time he was in a shop, a can of Coke probably cost 20p. MIL has to do everything from doing the shopping to making his cups of tea. Even if MIL was ill he wouldn't be doing the shopping for her. She'd has to organise it and get the shopping delivered. And when she goes away to stay at SILs she has to buy in all his meals ready for him to cook himself (which shows he CAN, but won't when there's someone else to do it).
We were actually astounded he even came to our wedding but to be fair, with him in mind we did hold it and the reception within 5 minutes of the IL's house. He has never visited our house one street away nor been to visit his daughter, even with the offer of lifts and him having to just come for the ride. She moved out 30 years ago.

He likes to go for walks in the middle of nowhere but as a guy now in his 70's this is far more risky. I can guess how this will end. A full scale mountain rescue search one day. MIL bought him a mobile which would have reception in the area he likes to walk in. He refused to take it. We bought him a GPS tracker that he could turn on and we would be notified of his location in the event of an emergency. He refused it.
His stubbornness is his choice but it may eventually end up other people's problem. I don't pander to him like his family do so he's not allowed to complain to me about not getting to see photos of the kids. I'm not fucking about printing shit to them put in and envelope and mail or hand delivering anything. He want to miss out then it's his choice.

Her choice not to use a mobile.
But she has no grounds to get annoyed at being left of out of things requiring a mobile.

She is being silly about the phone, particularly for someone so relatively young. It not like she is one of the generation for whom mobile phones & the internet were invented after she retired.

Her position on online banking is a very different matter. Plenty of financially savvy people of all ages don’t use it and have no intention of using it for exactly the same reasons as your mum. Banks use online services to shift a huge amount of fraud risk from themselves onto their customers. When users fall victim to ‘push payment fraud’ banks blame the victim. Until that changes, I will not use online banking.

My mother is still convinced that switching a mobile phone on will cost her thousands of pounds, more if somebody has the temerity to call her on it. She has been given several over the years and they all get carefully switched off and put in a drawer and she denies ever having been given them.

She knows perfectly well how to use them. But it doesn't matter what anybody says or if it's linked to somebody's bank account, it will cost thousands of pounds if it's switched on.

Same with cable or satellite TV. If the signal comes through the air and goes through an aerial, it's fine. If it comes through the air and has to go through a dish, it's witchcraft. If it comes through a cable, it's going to mean her whole garden is excavated and the house will fall through the trench into the underworld whilst simultaneously emptying her bank accounts.

I get the refusal to use a cash machine as she's physically vulnerable and too short to use the standard height ones whilst balancing without a walking stick. She's happy to make automated telephone payments, but internet payments? No chance.

The only solution I could see for somebody miffed about missing out on photos is to use those postcard companies. They're not hugely expensive (many call plans don't include photo messages in their allowance, so it's about the same cost for two photos as one postcard).

If she doesn’t want one she doesn’t want one. She can’t complain about missing out though. Unless there is a mental or physical reason she can’t use a mobile then I’d leave her to get on with it. It’s a shame and I do feel that using one has a lot of advantages and increasingly so as you get older, but I don’t think you are going to persuade her otherwise.

My Mums in her mid 70s and is way more tech savvy than me. She had a smart phone long before I did and uses WhatsApp and Facebook. I use neither and she actually moans at me for it!

As others have said a person shouldn’t be forced into something because it’s easier for someone else.

I understand the frustrations with some current situations re trying to order stuff online and people wanting you to use cash etc as they don’t want to do on line. You can’t just make a person use something though when they possibly never came across this type of tech before and now they are considerably older.

My Gran is 90, does have a mobile which is never on 🤷‍♀️ I order photos off Snapfish and get them posted directly to her, she likes looking at them and the surprise package, plus it hardly costs anything. The older generation would probably prefer the more tactile photos than on WhatsApp or whatever.

I also agree with another pp who said the phrases about ‘what would you do in an emergency’ etc as absolute none sense as a reason for trying to persuade someone to have a mobile. What happened prior to mobiles - completely anarchic in an emergency !? No 🙄

My dad is like that. Very proud of the fact that his phone is never switched on.

Conversely, I wish my mother would put her bloody phone down, never stops with it!

Can’t win, and it’s their personal choice isn’t is

Good for her. Mobile phones are a drag, and the government/advertisers track you.

I also agree with another pp who said the phrases about ‘what would you do in an emergency’ etc as absolute none sense as a reason for trying to persuade someone to have a mobile. What happened prior to mobiles - completely anarchic in an emergency !? No 🙄

I would also suggest that in pre mobile days the definition of an emergency was a bit different!

it's entirely up to them but they have to accept that if they refuse to participate in the use of modern tech they cannot have the benefits that other people get by participating.
I would tell them that I accept their choices but I will not be inconvenienced by their choices, so if they lose out it's their fault.

My dad is like this too. I find it hugely frustrating and while I do understand that it will never be second nature to an 80 year old there’s a point where it tips over into selfishness.

For example he is disabled and can’t drive. He occasionally visits us by train and it’s a huge rigmarole because he has to get support getting on and off trains etc. It’s always stressful for me wondering if he’s made it ok but because he refuses to take or use a mobile phone it’s impossible for me to contact him to find out if he’s safe.

I do think there’s an obligation on people to learn technologies where they are built into the fabric of how society works and particularly if your refusal to do so significantly inconveniences or worries other people.

By not having a mobile phone these people get extra 'fuss' and extra attention, this may or may not be conscious and deliberate but still when you go out of your way to accommodate you are rewarding them because they are getting special treatment.
Then again they may well be genuinely unable to get their heads around it so they have plausible deniability 🤷🏼‍♀️

(e.g. he got lost due to a diversion on the way to visit us and had to drive around for over an hour and eventually head back home rather than use a map app or even just calling us for help)

Or even just using a map map. I have a road atlas in my car for precisely this reason. The lower the tech, the less that can go wrong with it. Plus on a map it's easier to get a sense of the direction you need to travel and the intermediate places, so you can head for them.

I've been shopping for a neighbour in her 80s since we've been in lockdown. She can email but has no internet banking and can't work out how to do an online order. She writes shopping lists and when I'm going to the local shop I drop them in. The shop then either delivers or I pick the shopping up later and drop it round to her. She phones up the shop and pays over the phone. OK, yes it's long-winded. However, it works for everyone concerned. She uses the tech she can use and the rest of us help out the old-fashioned way.

I've found the same thing with my parents, in their late 70s. I try to understand what it is they are worried about. They have been scammed so I get that they're worried about internet banking. My mum was daft enough to give away passwords to a scammer. So I help with the bits I can help with and find a work round for the rest. I'll just email a photo - it's no big deal to me. They're my parents, why wouldn't I go to that small effort?

But I do agree with pp that it isn't all about age. We've had mobile phones for over 20 years so anyone in their 60s refusing to use them has had a long time with many gradual changes they could have got used to. But I'd rather adapt to the people than expect them to use tech they don't like or trust.

it's entirely up to them but they have to accept that if they refuse to participate in the use of modern tech they cannot have the benefits that other people get by participating. Moot point about how beneficial it is at times.

I do think there’s an obligation on people to learn technologies where they are built into the fabric of how society works and particularly if your refusal to do so significantly inconveniences or worries other people. One could argue that the fabric of society is moving in a direction that we will see isn't to our benefit in the long run. I was at a committee meeting once when a new member (an American) was horrified that we sent out info by email..why waste time she cheerfully chirruped when 'everyone' is on Facebook? She was told that due to the nature of the jobs of our spouses, putting stuff on FB wasn't precisely a clever idea, and that email was BCC only, so the security risk was reduced. She was also told that some of us in the group (usually Brits) didn't use FB, as the advice was not to do so, and that some of us didn't want to be data mined for Zuckerberg's benefit.

With all these 'advances' 'cui bono' has to be asked and examined very carefully. Why is a cashless society being pushed? Why move everything on line? It's not always consistent; dh got a letter saying he would no longer receive a paper SA tax return and now has to file online, yet my normal huge paper return arrived two days later for me to complete.

Reading this it seems lots of people are very, very dependent on their mobile phones. How would you all cope if you were travelling rurally with no phone signal if you were relying on an app on your phone to tell you where to go? How would you go about calling someone if you were in a mobile blackspot?

I don't think relying on your mobile to save you if you get into trouble is a particularly clever way of going about your life.

I think a few posters have missed the point.

The OPs mum doesn't want to learn/use a mobile phone - this is fine.

But she also gets jealous and complains to OP if she sends pictures to other family members as she feels left out - that's not ok.

It's like saying "oh I'm not eating this cake I don't want it BUT OH NONONO DON'T OFFER A SLICE TO AUNT MABEL I'LL BE JEALOUS AND LEFT OUT!"

There doesn't need to be a debate for/against having a mobile phone.

YANBU @SquishyBones If she doesn't want to use her mobile or learn to use it she can't complain she feels left out when others who do use them get pictures sent.

The problem for a lot of us is that our relatives who choose not to get on board with mobiles, FaceTime, online ordering/banking or whatever actually do look to us to pick up the slack! It can be a bit irritating at the best of times but the current coronavirus situation has really highlighted for me just how set in their ways my parents are.

Since March they’ve needed me to order stuff online probably once per week. Books, gardening stuff, skincare, birthday presents, cards, the list goes on. Because they won’t do online banking I’ve had to pay their home insurance online and transfer a reasonable sum of money to a sibling in another country this week. All from my bank account after which they’ll leave an envelope of bloody cash at their door for me to pick up when I’m dropping off their grocery shopping 🙄. I don’t use cash a lot ordinarily and at the moment I certainly don’t want to have to use €900 in cash to do the grocery shopping for weeks on end, handling change in supermarkets from staff who aren’t wearing gloves! My other option is to take a half day leave from work to go queue at the bank to lodge it...

My dad’s a lost cause at this stage but my mother has and uses a smartphone and an iPad. But only for the things she feels like using them for . She’s not incapable she just cba because it’s easier for her to ask me to do it than sit down and take the time to do it herself (despite being bored and having endless hours on her hands currently).

I love them and want to keep them safe but this shit is all on top of doing their grocery shopping as well as my own and for an elderly neighbour, working full time office hours from home and trying to keep two dc on track with school work. I’ve heavily hinted to her that when we’re able to be in the same house together I’m going to go through some of these things with her (again!) and she’ll need to get on board with it because I really don’t want to have all this again if a second wave of coronavirus hits.

There doesn't need to be a debate for/against having a mobile phone.

Well, so far people have called her stubborn, lazy and inconsiderate for not having a mobile.

Of course she shouldn't get stroppy if she chooses not to use one, but equally it's not that hard to get some photos e-mailed over or printed out for the sake of good relations.

Someone shouldn't be forced into having a mobile if they don't want one.

I think a few posters have missed the point.

Wouldn't it be boring if we just stuck to the point? It could be seen as broadening the discussion as well; dumb phones versus smartphones; having some non tech resilience built in etc.

Of course she shouldn't get stroppy if she chooses not to use one, but equally it's not that hard to get some photos e-mailed over or printed out for the sake of good relations
It depends what it is though.
Some of the photos in our family group chat are funny ones in the moment and not the sort of thing that needs printing or framing.

I send prints to some relatives of nice photos to relatives who don't have email and smart phones, but I'd be irritated if they got annoyed that the family group chat is more up to date.

They do it because they know it puts you in a position where you feel obliged to take up the slack, it's a way of taking up more of your time and attention to make themselves feel important