The elderly and PCs, an impossible combination?

When I was recently at a family member’s birthday, the conversation turned to computers at a certain point. Two elderly people (aged 72 and 74) informed us in the most terrible detail about their abhorrence of PCs. For example, one spoke with clear disgust about his neighbor who talks about computers quite often, in connection with his work as a system administrator. Unbelievable how those two rejected the best man’s way of life. “It’s just an addiction” and “I absolutely don’t care what he does with those stupid devices anyway”. I wisely kept my mouth shut…

While this example above clearly illustrates the point of view of many older people regarding computers, it can be done differently. My own grandparents, for example, always listen very interested when I talk about my work on the Internet, and sometimes they bring it up themselves. Okay, of course they understand practically nothing about what I do, but that doesn’t matter. At least they show interest and try to understand things. Sometimes they even ask a nice question on the subject. “Is that like a postcard?” was asked when I mentioned that I had bought a new sound card. Isn’t that beautiful?

Some elderly people even go a little further and purchase a PC themselves (read: let the family buy one). Logically do not expect excellent programming skills, but they do their best to keep up with the rest of the world. Word processing, E-Mailing, chatting or a game; everything is also done by 65+ people.

Still, I think society should take more account of older people. Computer courses for the elderly often receive little or no funding, resulting in long waiting lists . And of course it shouldn’t.

With good information, the older generation could enjoy the device a lot. In particular, people who hardly ever leave the house could find a lot of distraction at the computer. For example, by chatting pleasantly, you still have the idea of ​​belonging to society. Unfortunately, very few elderly people use it. Only about 8% have internet.

Furthermore, there would be less of a generation gap in case of better information. However, some elderly people already behave quite similarly to the young versions of the human being. For example, recently a number of elderly people copied the file-sharing principle of Napster and devised their own (or slightly simpler) system based on E-Mail with which embroidery patterns were exchanged.

That’s how I see it, that’s how I want to grow old (well, without the embroidery of course). Computers unsuitable for elderly people? Nonsense!