To find people who refuse to embrace technology irritating?

[Sophiehoney]

I don't mean people who genuinely struggle

I am irritated with people who absolutely refuse to even try.
I am sure a lot of the time they do it on purpose. They use the whole "I don't do technology" thing as a personality trait, to be quirky and "not like all you young people" when simply being a bit older is not a reason in itself, as Mumsnet proves!!

People at my work are moaning like hell because the system of filling in patients notes at the end of the shift in a book with a pen has been replaced by handheld devices (basically phones) that are more secure and can be completed on the go. They are so simple but some people are refusing to learn so others are filling their notes in for them.

A lady at the doctor's today point blank refused to even try to sign herself in on the machine. It was literally just a case of pressing a button and then filling in a form with her name and DOB using a keyboard. She declared proudly "I'm not doing this, I don't do technology, I don't even have a mobile phone!" And made he poor stressed receptionist with a line of people waiting come out and do it for her.

My mum will pop round a million times a week with "something she needs me to on her iPad" and it's usually just something trivial like reading an email and sending a one line reply that I know she is capable of. I've stated getting my 13 year old to do and she pays him £1 every time so every cloud 🤷

But these people do irritate me when they expect others to pick up their slack by refusing to try.

AIBU?

I think it depends if technology makes things easier or not.

In many cases it hasn't. And it gets more and more difficult to use it because of all the security measures. Or it just doesn't work.

Picking up the phone and talking to someone in a call centre is more efficient than exchanging loads of messages with a bot, for example.

I won't use parking apps. Why the hell should I when cash and cards exist?

It's like electric cars, too. If I go to the petrol station, I drive up, dispense petrol and either pay at the pump or inside. Then I drive off. Assuming no queues, all done within 5 minutes. To get electricity I apparently need an app. Why?

In what world is an app easier than waving your card at the machine?

Also my hairdressers used to have a card which they stamped and when you had x stamps you got a free gift like a treatment or a discounted cut etc. Now you need the app, which again I refuse to do. My phone isn't that new and I don't want to overload it with loads of apps I don't actually need, I just want the ones I do need, or more to the point, want.

yes indeed, especially those who say, “my son/daughter/husband is very good and does it for me”
these are often people who still send Christmas cards long after you have moved,
tell you John is upstairs watching sport on his laptop with his headphones on so he won’t disturb us but she has to knock on the door before ‘barging in’
people who have OH who keep them off laptops or other internet access devices,
as some wives who don’t drive, for the same reasons, but still irritating.

I have emailed friend and acquaintances in the past with no reply, only to hear
“Oh I hardly ever/never check my emails” pointless having one then isn’t it?

My grandad would have been 100 this year, had a mobile phone, texted,
sent emails, used the internet as his own private visual encyclopaedia, looked
up old music (he had a crush on Kathy Kirby) ha ha wheras Mum never even mastered the answer phone or setting the oven timer.

But then, she didn’t need to when she could rely on Dad or whoever was there.

Technology is a tool to aid our modern lives.

You only need to use parking apps when there is no other method of paying. Obviously.

I've gone from not really liking the tech takeover to being the person who pays for everything using their phone. So certainly no technophobe here.

That said, though, you would not get me signing in on any screen at a GP's surgery. God only knows how filthy that thing is! So on that point YABU.

Another issue often overlooked is manual dexterity when aging and that this can make using touchscreens more difficult.
Eyesight failing can also make it trickier to read text on small phone screens.
So the same people might be OK with using a keyboard on a computer for online shopping and banking but really struggle with apps and phones, eg to pay for parking.

This type of person might be seen to 'not embrace technology' because they don't want to use an app. But the real issue is that the technology is not easily accessible for them.

I've noticed this, I'm 60, and taught myself Photoshop. I know women my own age who can't even send an email. I don't get it, you need to know at least the basics! I had a friend complain about not being able to use Ebay ( Ebay, ffs!) so i offered to help her, but she refused. I couldn't wait to get online and learn, it's so liberating. It's been a godsend for me, being able to buy & sell online, create my own designs to sell, etc.

I get that not everyone wants to do that, but at least be in a position to send an email if needed, book a gp appointment, and order a food shop. There's no excuse not to.

This is what a Matalan self checkout looks like, except the one I had to use the other day had the screen set way back behind where the box for putting a basket on was.

I had to type in all my details while leaning far over to reach.

Once they had my details I was sent an email. There was no opt out that I could see but maybe that was because I was struggling to reach the screen.

I then had the extra admin of unsubscribing from their emails. Again, not a huge job but they all add up.

I could have gone to an actual person and they usually check some details using my postcode, but I know it's someone's job to press gang people into doing it themself and I really didn't want to cause her day to be more awkward when she asked me to use the self check-in.

So you don't think people had the same issue with cars when they were once the new technology? Now driving is an exlected life skill

My mother in law is 69 and can easily use the internet buying and selling online no problems. She worked in an administrative role and saw the evolution of tech over the years working with computers and mobile phones.
My mother is 68 and I have to do pretty much everything online for her. She has worked only in practical jobs in a factory in her youth and then as a care assistant. Pretty much zero interact with computers and technology.

My mum's dyslexic was only picked up when she was in her last year of school. She left school at 14 and wasn't literate until we were children and she taught herself to read.

She has a reading and comprehension level of a 7 year old. There are many people who were failed by the education system and did good jobs of adapting to the world the best they could and this leap to tech for them can be almost like having to relearn to read all over again.

My mum is afraid of opening a fake eBay website. She probably wouldn't notice if she opened ebay.co.uk or a fake website faking say e-bay.co.uk.
She wouldn't feel confident looking and appreciating measurements - she very easily could be the person that accidentally bought a chest of drawers for a dolls house instead of for humans having missed that they they were 10 cm tall instead of 100 cm as to her drawers at 3ft tall and she isn't the greatest at converting cm in the feet. When you walk into a physical shop you know you are walking in the an Argos, when you are looking at a set of drawers you can see and appreciate the size of them.

I think many of the conversations around "I am this age and can do this" misses that there are people failed by the education system of their youth and don't have a frame of reference. It also misses the variation in life experiences, for some people technology has been a slow drip and they have seen it evolve and the leap to using it is less. Others haven't had that forced exposure and have the legacy thoughts of "I can't learn new things" and this means that they are starting 3 steps behind as they don't have that computer literacy that people have been acquiring over the last 30 years

I get what you're saying, I didn't have a great education, when I was in school in 1982 computers were just starting to be used, but only a select few boys were picked to use them. I didn't use a computer until tge year 2000, when I was made redundant from my factory job, when we were all offered free computer classes. I was 35 at the time. There were women younger than me then who refused to even try out the classes. They weren't dyslexic, maybe they were lacking in confidence, I was, after years of snide put downs from my parents. But I couldn't understand someone not willing to try, when we had so few chances. I realise everyone's different, but the friends I'm talking about, who didn't even want to try, weren't old by any stretch. I suppose there could be other reasons, but I think definitely one of them had her mum do everything for her and had got into the habit of not trying to do anything new for herself.

This!

I’m in my seventies, but back in my uni days, I was on the bleeding edge of technology. We learned to use computers before they were everywhere. I've relied on computers ever since. At the time, very few people used computers and I've spent my whole life relying on IT, but things have moved so fast that I've gone from the vanguard to being a total Luddite.

I have Tourette's and coordination problems so mobile phones were always difficult for me to use, even when they were just bricks. Now I also have bad eyesight so I can't use them most of the time. Yet so many things require them. I feel locked out of a lot of society because I can't use a mobile phone. Even some apps on my computer - including some disability apps - require me to get texts, which I can't do.

I find it much harder to learn new things these days, and I'm far more reluctant to give it a go. I think it’s a build-up of lots of little things that have crept up on me over the years almost without noticing: I'm less coordinated, my memory and eyesight are worse, my attention span is shorter, I'm more distracted by pain, I can't be arsed with things that annoy me. None of it happened overnight. There's not a specific point in time when it became overwhelming.

I know my limitations annoy younger people and I do feel awful about not being able to manage on my own. But it's also incredibly frustrating being locked out of so much of modern life.

I'm giving an example of how it can be difficult. If the only way you can get into your email account is via and old mobile number, you can't get into that account to change the number. Sometimes you're turning in circles like this.

How do you know they weren't dyslexic?
My mum never tells anyone she's dyslexic, nor does my dad or sister although they aren't as severely affected as my mum is.

My mum was at school through the 60s and left barely able to read, she was given scrap paper and crayons to occupy herself with whilst the rest of the class did their 11 plus. School kept her occupied more than it educated her, as long as she stayed quiet at the back of the class the teachers were happy. She left with a deep need to not let anyone realise that she couldn't read the instructions never mind follow what they said. She was taught she wasn't worthy of being taught which then makes it a lot harder to engage with training when you get a combination of poor confidence and isolation. It took my mum until the age of 45 to go to college and to do a course. It was seeing me and my sister's going through the education system in the 90s and 00s that she saw how it had changed and she dared to hope that it would be different

In England 1 in 6 adults have poor literacy, defined as meeting the expectations of a typical child as they leave primary school. Similar levels are seen across Scotland (1 in 4), Wales (1 in 8) and Northern Ireland (1 in 5). People with poor literacy typically have poorer levels of digital inclusion. There is so much adaptive digital software which could improve so many lives and hopefully as generations adapt they will but there are still many adults who didn't have adequate education and they are suffering most by the switch to digital.

@SuperscientistIt sounds like your mum had it tough, girls were often written off in school in those days, if you had any sort of condition that hindered learning. When I was in school in the 70s/ early 80s we had a career advisor, I told him I wanted to be an artist, he was dismissive and said I should improve my Maths and become a teacher. I didn't want to be a teacher. It's taken me a while but I've got where I want to be, and it's thanks to the Internet that artists can sell their work more easily and without being represented in galleries etc.

I suppose I feel strongly about older women ( I mean 50s/60s) being able to use technology at even a basic level because it gives you freedom and independence. In your mum's case of being dyslexic of course that's different, but that wasn't the case with my friends, it was a combination of fear and apathy.

Yes, but there is an easy solution, well two easy solutions, as I posted. Why make life difficult when it can be made easier?

Mobile numbers and email accounts can pretty easily be moved from phone to phone.

Even better, some phones allow you to have two sim cards in the same phone (either physical cards or s-sims) so you can use the same phone for two different phone numbers. And you can have multiple email addresses on any one device. So even if you want different phone numbers or different email addresses, it's bonkers to have them on different devices!

I don't have a smartphone. It does my head in how everyone's always head down, staring at the damn things. I do still have a PC (not a laptop, had one previously, they don't last.) I can do everything I need to on there. Thank goodness I don't drive & don't need all the damn apps. I swear all this stuff takes so much TIME.. I like to get ON with things!

I use my smartphone for:

Train tickets
Checking train times (it got me out of trouble when I went to Cardiff recently and loads of trains were cancelled. I was notified by Trainline through their app and managed to get an earlier train)
cinema tickets
theatre tickets
Tickets for other one off events like last year's RHS flower show
Google maps to find my way around a strange city centre
When staying in a new city to find out when places of interest are open and how much entry is, and where they are and how to get there
When staying in a new city to find out what restaurants there are and to book them
Keeping in touch with student DD, who uses Messenger and WhatsApp to keep in touch
All the hobby groups and the charity I volunteer with use WhatsApp for updates

As I have a car I use it for parking and as a satnav

I guess if you don't have children, never travel by train and have friends who don't need to contact you by anything other than phone or email then you don't need a smartphone.

I'm pretty OK with the tech that I need and I'm in my late 60s.

But some innovations are a pain in the neck. I once went to pay for parking and couldn't work out how to do so at the machine (usually I'm fine). Asked a man behind me and neither could he.

So then we saw the traffic warden coming round to check the car park and asked him. He couldn't work it out either!!!

I think they've changed the system there, but really, how difficult can it be to devise a machine which is easy for everyone to use??

I blame the tech designers here, not me or other elderly people - epic fail on their part.

The 'stare at your phone all the time' culture makes life difficult on the tube. When i was a commuter you might read someone's paper or novel...naughty, but you wouldn't be reading anything private.

Now every bloody person has their phone out you don't know where to rest your eyes!!!

@Wishmyhousewasbigger

https://youtube.com/shorts/StEUEkXvlds?is=PsWh0yUtPdYLtdJT

"Mobile numbers and email accounts can pretty easily be moved from phone to phone"

Well, no, they can't if you can't get into your account!

I am very sorry things are difficult for you in this way. But like I said in my OP, I'm not talking about people with genuine problems. I'm talking about people who refuse to try.

Thank you. I appreciate you sharing your perspective.

I know you said that and I'm sure you mean it but, unless I'm actively ticcing, how would you know? I look like an ordinary older woman. My tics are usually well managed but I still have problems because of hidden disabilities. As others have said, many people "refuse to try" because they know they can't do it.

I agree that some people who could do it with a bit of effort don't bother, but many have tried time and time again and just can't manage it, for all sorts of reasons. Often, they don't want people to know why. I'm usually happy to tell people if they ask, but not everyone wants to explain—or they don't know, only that it's too difficult for them—and many don't ask why. If they do, sometimes it's clear they're exasperated, which discourages me from elaborating.

I think if you know a person well, you can usually tell if they're having a genuine issue, but otherwise, you can't tell if they're not doing it because of genuine problems or if they just can't be arsed.

SIL is a refuse to try person. When she turned 70 she had to reapply for her driving licence. DH and I said it was really easy to do online and that you just follow the instructions. It was as easy as paying for car tax. Her stock response was "I'll get my son to do it". I then said "I'll show you if you like". "No, I'll get my son to to it for me"

When she did ask him "he said "mam, you sometimes need to learn to do things outside your comfort zone", and then did it. We call it weaponised incompetence.