To ban my parents from using mobile phones

[AndromedaGal]

I am fed up instructing my parents (in late 60's) how to use their mobiles. They don't even know how to turn the volume up properly, so all you hear when you call them is "Hello? Hello?...." Followed by an inevitable pause then, "Oh. Er, it doesn't appear to be working Pam. How do I........." and then lots of intermittent sounds as they randomly press buttons, followed by me being inevitably cut off. This has been going on for years. It's just painful.

They ring people inadvertently when they've stashed their phones in their back pockets because they don't know how to lock the keypads.
They send text messages to landlines.

They delete contacts, forget to turn them on when they're out and about (so what's the effing point having one) and lose them ALL.THE.TIME. And accessing the internet on their phones just causes a whole new level of trauma.

Why can't they learn the basic principles of mobile phone usage? They're intelligent and manage very well independently. But it's so exasperating as they don't always take their phones with them, and when they do, they have them turned off.

I think they should just stick to their landline TBH. Anyone else experience similar??

Gosh! Two late 60s here who manage just fine. DH has had a mobile phone for 34 years, though the early ones were fairly useless. I have had one for about 17 years and apart from the odd pocket dial I’m pretty good. I’m not sure how you could ban them, tho I imagine that was tongue in cheek 😄

@PuppyMonkey

My MIL is forever forgetting passwords to everything. She's got about six Facebook profiles because she's always getting locked out of her old account and has to start new ones. When it's her birthday, I get a notification "Sheila and five other people have their birthday today" - the five other people are all her.

@PuppyMonkey

You have just reduced me to tears of laughter.

My mother is not allowed FB and her and her use of a smartphone is not a thing of beauty.

I was most unpopular when she got her first smartphone and I said it was akin to giving the nuclear codes to Donald Trump.

My dad was given a printer and was trying to connect it to his computer. Cue swearing and cursing, peering at the instructions, more swearing.
Eventually (after hours and hours) my mum rang me. The land line was in the hall, so she's sat on the stairs shouting questions from him and responses from me, you get the picture.
Anyway, I'm asking questions and not getting far, and then I asked if dad had the printer on his desktop. Mum toddled off to look, came back and said " no, he's got it on the windowsill". I had to put the phone down.

Block their mobile numbers and then forget about it.

I wish my parents hadn't got one. My dad isn't interested in it, but my mother can't stop texting pointless shit. Very soon their number will be blocked.

My parents, in their late 80s, were very good at mobile phones and the internet, although we did have a few laughs at some of Dad's text messages initially.
My brother-in-law, late 40s, was totally useless at technology.
Horses for courses.

Doro specialises in phones for the elderly - and have features like being extra loud for the hard of hearing, and are fairly idiot proof for the hard of thinking

www.doro.com/en-gb/products/mobile-phones/

My mother can't text, the grandchildren have tried, I have tried, my sister has tried,.

My brother said he valued his relationship with my mother so refused to try.

She asked my nephew the other day to show her again, he refused, she challenged him as to why not, he replied you have six grandchildren we have all given up hours on end and you get the idea and then refuse to practice, Mum has tried, FF has tried, everyone has tried, you need to pay someone to show you how, you might value their time more.

She rang me and my sister and brother and was in high dudgeon and then we all said we agreed with him, we were all public enemy no 1 for about a week.

This has been going on for a good twenty years, enough is enough.

My dn had a phone for older people. Buttons, no Internet, just calls and texts

DH has had a mobile phone for 34 years, though the early ones were fairly useless.

And he probably has shoulders the size of Popeye if it was one with the shoulder strap. Those buggers were heavy!!!

God, my Mum is a nightmare with hers.

She’s pretty computer savvy - her and my dad run their own business so she’s a whizz with corporation tax and VAT and all that stuff, but no clue with a mobile phone

This morning she’s managed to create a group chat on FB messenger with me and about 6 others and send a photo of, what looks like, her knee.

When I called her, she didn’t have a clue and said her phone had done it itself

Fortunately, my brother is a computer engineer and lives closer than I do, so he gets all the requests to reset passwords and sort out the weird stuff she’s done to it.

They're in their late 60s and "manage very well independently"? Fuck me. I'm 10 years shy of that and it ISN'T OLD. They are just crap with mobile phones probably because they aren't that interested. That IS allowed, you know.

My parents are in their 70s and are fine with mobiles.

My DM was always fantastic with technology, but DF completely incompetent. We tried to do a test call with him on an iPhone, it rang, he picked it up, and I watched him study screen and then power the phone off. Wanted to hit my head against a wall.

My mum used to be tech savvy. Sadly she has lost it at 80. It's all an endless round of passwords and needing help.

Can you suggest they write a 'how to' list down on a small card? With sketches of where buttons are etc. Then they can refer to this.

Can I suggest that everyone checks parent’s recovery email addresses - my FIL died and MIL somehow changed the password to her google account and signed out when the BT expert was trying to configure the router.

Sadly FIL had not known what to put as a recovery email address so entered a random made up string of text. All the coroners letters, life assurance etc etc all went to the google address for someone already strung out with grief and covid (March last year) it was the final straw. We were trying to ‘fix it’ from afar, but obviously being google there was no-one to speak to and as the account hadn’t been accessed from our ip address we got locked out for that too. Luckily after 4hrs of stressful phone calls she remembered she found the password , but was adamant it was the one for her router !

It made a very stressful situation 10x worse , so please, please check those recovery email addresses !

My sisters and I got the parents a smart phone for Christmas. Despite moaning about it, Dad hasn't let it out of his sight, so I have no idea if mum can use it. He has discovered Whatsapp. Non stop updates now, thanks, Dad. And recently emojis. I still have no idea what the emoji that looks like Jim's dad out of America Pie is supposed to portray. At least he hasn't found the aubergine one.

My mother is 84 and uses her mobile, ipad and Facebook. She's pretty cool! Also Zoom meetings with her similarly aged mates.

We have customers in their early 60’s that say they don’t use any type of phones/computer etc. I can’t understand it. Computers have been common place in homes for 30 years when they would of been early 30’s. Why don’t people keep up with things, it makes them very reliant on others.

I don’t like mobiles! I have to put glasses on to read/txt which is a nuisance; also I wish phones were a bit smaller, as I can’t get one hand comfortably round the phone. And on my current phone the ability to listen to a message is like hacking into the Pentagon. A lot of phones just aren’t intuitive - the sound went off on mine and even teen dd couldn’t find how to get it back so I have a Quietphone as opposed to a Smartphone!

I came to tech very late, in my 50s. Was an absolute clown with it! after much practice and weary advice from DC, I manage fine now, at 67. Only need advice when weird shit happens.

😂😂🤣

Late sixties?! They would only have been forty odd when mobiles started to become popular!

How infuriating!

As the family's IT bod, I understand your plight.

However, to have them give up trying altogether is likely to leave them even more cut off from the modern world.

IME it's not just about attitude. There is a theory behind technology programming and you either 'get it' or you don't. If your brain is used to working in ways that don't match up with how tech is developed, it makes it really hard (impossible) for you to ever really grasp the tech - because so much of it is about intuitive usage. i.e. if you intuit in a different way than the way the tech assumes all people intuit then you will always be behind.

If you intuit in a similar way then your learning is much easier, even if you've never used that tech before iyswim.