Complete refusal to use technology

[Senttotestus]

My mum is 79 & a completely technophobic
In her mid 50s she resigned from her job as a Drs receptionist because they introduced computers. She worked for a few more years on a helpline then retired at 60
She has never sent a text message or WhatsApp
She has never sent an email
She cannot google anything
She has never purchased or booked anything online

A man from a tech charity for the elderly spent 2 sessions with her with no improvement

Over covid I told her she must learn to FaceTime & she has £1k worth of iPad for this purpose, she can also log onto her Halifax app to look at her balance - she cannot make any payments.

i do all her online banking, food shopping &
booking of appointments, she eagerly gives out my email address as if I am her PA

She has just rung to see where her Waitrose delivery is & she was unable to open the Waitrose app on her iPad - ITS 3 CLICKS - she presses everything with such force that most times the IPad thinks she is trying to move the apps around

I am accepting of this most days but today it just feels wilful that she has rejected all technology for over 20 years and thinks it’s acceptable to shrug and get me to do everything , laughing at any suggestion that she should be able to do some of these very basic things.

Rant over - deep breaths!! Anyone else in a similar position?

@soupyspoon
It's definitely the modern great divide.

In my DM's case, she never had to embrace any tech or even simple diy, and couldn't ever understand the advantage of changing her ways (but now complains bitterly about having to pay 'a man' to come and do simple jobs in the house and garden). She always tended to get stuck in the here and now, and was always very passive, an attitude that came from make do and mend - which to her translated as a lifelong motto of 'put up with inconvenience and do things the long and slow way if the alternative looks complicated'. Her response to having no TV for a few days is to listen to the radio.

Even the radio is problematic though. She once had half a dozen dead battery-operated radios that she was holding onto because she didn't know what bin to put them into - when the batteries ran out she didn't know what sort to buy to replace them or how to take out the old ones and put in the new. I showed her the battery selection in her local supermarket, the different kinds of batteries, and what to buy. Then I showed her how to open the battery compartment, take out the old ones, and put in the replacement (pointed out pos and neg sides). She had never noticed the battery section. There are lots of other sections she never really looks at. She's astonished that I know stuff like changing batteries or how to go about painting a wood front door, or replacing windshield wipers, windshield fluid, etc.

Otoh, she is a superb seamstress and was able to tell me over the phone where I was going wrong with the bobbin of my sewing machine.

With luck, all of you on here expressing annoyance, disbelief, anger and despair at your elder relatives (usually their mothers) and their lack of modern IT skills will live to be at least as old as those relatives, if not older. Then you will be in a position to mock the lack of technological skills because you will be living it.
As we age it’s not just our bodies that decline - it’s often our ability to retain information, to learn new skills, to remember how to use old skills. The fact that many of you think it’s just awkwardness, or learned helplessness or even a way of pissing you off is really saddening.

I think that is wonderful and I am pleased you feel able to help your parents. Unfortunately, not everyone has the same experience as you and therefore may not feel able or willing to help their parents. Speaking personally, my parents chose a long time ago to not learn computer skills and I help them (I have children and a FT job).

I think the poster is frustrated and that is ok too.

I’ll just reiterate that my mother has been rejecting technology for 25 years - it has been a wilful refusal and now I am paying the price

Would be different if she had recently had a decline in her skllls - this is not the case

It is totally okay to be frustrated. Helping someone who helps themselves is a very different thing from helping someone who won’t help themself and feels entitled to someone else’s time and energy (like the OP’s mother). Even more infuriating when, as so often happens, the thing they themselves do not have the ability to do is denigrated as ‘stupid’ etc.

I don’t tend to think that’s true - my mum can use a computer better than I can. My dad knows his way round his iPad at 73, he just can’t be bothered to try and figure things out. A lot of it is willing refusal. iPads, iPhones, laptops etc are not new technology.

I agree. This is what really bugs me. Computers were commonplace in the 90s as was telephone banking. Technology isn't something that's happened overnight. Like the OP's mother who gave up work in her 50s because they introduced computers at work. Just a modern version of Luddites. Did these people really think that computers/tech etc wouldn't become even more commonplace? We've had internet banking for over 20 years, online shopping for 20 years. 20 years ago, most of today's elderly were still in the workplace or otherwise perfectly capable of keeping up to date with mobile phone apps, laptop computers, the internet, etc.

Do your parents see your children regularly and do they know them well, play with them, enjoy meals and family times with them?

My DM lives in another country and even the prospect of being able to make video calls and receive regular photos of or from her grandchildren on her phone didn't motivate her to learn (despite seeing photos and videos of her friends' grandchildren on their phones). She just put up with losing the chance to really know the GCs and shrugged. They've connected now that they're adults and can buy a plane ticket and fly over to see her, but she really missed out on huge chunks of their childhoods, their interests, friends, and activities. I've moved on from the hurt I felt that she was prepared to just not do something simple that would have been so life enhancing for us all. She is who she is, and she has some really good points after all. But at the time I was bewildered and felt a lot of pain.

mathanxiety
This is my experience and, like you, you feel hurt and try to move on 💐

My parents actually never had to care for their own parents - they had a really fabulous time age 40 -60

my children miss out on lots of things beciase I am occupied with elderly care

i do not feel privileged

I sympathise OP. Maybe a stylus would help if she can’t feel how hard to tap the iPad? Worth a shot perhaps?

Im staggered councils still let people pay in cash - though it did make me think of Margot in the Good Life (50 odd years ago!)

My mum is the same age as your mum. She was a cleaner then a care assistant. She never worked in any office job that would require use of technology and we were poor growing up so no computers or mobiile for us in the 80s/90s. She still goes to the post office to pay her bills. She does not trust online payments or banking. She lives next door to a supermarket and goes every day to buy food and the newspapers.

Nevertheless she has persisted with technology (despite the ribbing of her children and grandchildren). She can email and keeps in regular contact with her family overseas and has a new network through Ancestry.com. During lockdown we trained her to use zoom and facetime. She has a facebook account. She looks up things on YouTube and buys things online occasionally. I do not think age is the issue. People either are open to learning new things, or they are not.

I see that in myself. I acknowledge my brain cells are fully occupied with work skills and I can be really slow with everything else- like the tv and the tv side of the internet. However it’s a choice I’ve made and I don’t ask other people to organise it for me. I just do something else.

When people are really frustrated, it’s rarely with someone who is trying hard and or doing their best. It’s more often with someone who is deliberately preferring to inconvenience others instead of making a change themselves. My mum will micromanage me, insist we go to 3 different shops to get her food, rather than let me get everything from one shop in a third of the time. She’ll then complain about how busy and short of time she is.

I am pushing 60 and I definitely find that I don't remember things as easily as I did when I was 50.

Which has made me even more determined to keep abreast of the ever-changing tech. I don't want to limit my old age by being stubborn now, and I also don't want to be a pain in the arse to my DCs.

I suspect that I will be a bit of a pain in the arse regardless, because I can be quite a bolshy mare, but I'd like to do what I can to make myself easier on them.

Reading some of thes posts and thinking of my own experience* I think for a lot of us, this isn't just about 'old people refusing to learn new tech'. It's that lots of folk can't or won't learn new anything at any stage of their lives, for whatever reason. But because of the pace of change, and because so many things in the modern world rely on tech, it's exacerbated the issue.
*Leaving detailed instructions for the video recorder in 1993 and still having to go over it on the phone.

No I wouldn’t refuse but does she have anything like Wiltshire Farm Foods? They do a ring up and order service.

From an accessibility point of view, if she was familiar with using a typewriter, she might struggle with the lack of feedback from an iPad - many older people who were used to typewriter keyboards, then the "stronger" Cherry type IBM keyboards of earlier computers find the lack of haptic feedback difficult. A magic keyboard might make it easier for her to use the iPad, as it will provide the tactile sensations that make it easier to judge what she's doing.

My mum is 81 and my goodness, she loves her tech! Always gets latest iPhone, surgically attached to her tablet... it peaked when DS complained it was difficult to have a conversation with her because she's constantly scrolling

My Mum is 85 and I think I deserve a medal for helping her do things with her iPad. She is the best Mum in the whole world but I have to admit it can be challenging when we have to do something such as open a new account or change a password long distance. I have to be so patient. I can relate to the issues you have with your Mum bashing the screen😅
My Mum lives a few hours away and having her able to use her IPad so convenient and helps her stay independent. However, even with my help, it is difficult as so many companies refuse to accommodate for customers who have poor vision and poor dexterity. Sites like Amazon are extremely annoying as are companies that two part authorization stuff (my Mum doesn’t have a smart phone)

OP, have you a good understanding of all the accessibility features on the iPad? They are amazing. You can tweak the settings to allow for how hard your Mum presses the screen annd there are loads of other tweaks you can do. You can really simplify the iPad so that your Mum might have a better chance of using it. My Mum uses SIRI and that’s really helpful. She’s recently started to use Gemini AI chat and I’m hoping that will be useful for her when she gets more used to it. Her sight is already poor and it’s only going to get worse so we are trying to make sure she is comfortable using things that will be useful to her when her eyesight gets worse.

You and your mum sound so positive. It’s lovely.

@NonCommThank you. It’s easy to be positive with her as she is such a nice person. I’ve been very lucky.

My 81yr old dm tries, she really does, and it's taken a good few years to get her to send text /WhatsApp messages and ring on WhatsApp. But that's it!
We live in different parts of the country so it can be frustrating.

She's been shown loads of times how to send a photo but for some reason it's too much. Same for email.

She can do her banking though, just shows her priorities!

She accesses Google cards which is mainly cat videos and royal family news, with the odd random celeb like Hugh Grant or Torvill and Dean 😅

My mum used to do a lot on the internet. Now her dementia means that if the battery is flat she thinks the device is broken and throws it away.

I would find it infuriating. My mum was older and embraced it, needed help with some things but that was fine.

Why would you spend £1k on an iPad for someone that isn't interested, it must be one of the top of the range Pro ones, you can get iPads for about £300