It’s unfair to expect the elderly to do everything online. Photo: Pexels.
“Just use the app,” a mobile phone carrier employee told my 80-year-old father when he asked to cancel his plan in the store.
Downloading, operating and updating an app may seem simple to most, but not for elderly people with declining cognitive capacity unfamiliar with modern technology.
Our rush to digitise the world and push everything online has left a generation of senior citizens confused and frustrated, often depriving them of the opportunity to relax and enjoy a well-deserved retirement.
Consider how difficult we’ve made basic life tasks for those who spent half a century raising us, paying taxes and, in some cases, risking their lives on battlefields to defend our freedom.
When they go to the supermarket, they’ll often find all the human registers closed and are forced to navigate the self-serve checkout, clumsily scrolling their way through lists of fruits and vegetables to figure out what they’ve bought.
Their local bank branch may have closed, so to change their account they’re forced to phone up an automated service, told to press the number “1” then “4” then “2” before being put on hold for an hour and eventually getting connected to an overseas call centre.
If they need assistance from a government department, they sometimes don’t even have the option of phoning a human and instead must figure out how to use complex, user-unfriendly online forms.
Paying a bill also means going to a website and then having to get codes sent to their mobile phone, sending them back and forth between two devices they’re not comfortable using.
On the weekend, if they want to watch the footy or cricket, it’s no longer a matter of just turning on the TV – they now have to go on an expedition of various streaming services, then login and search through confusing menus to find the game they want to see.
There are even cafes that are phasing out the old-fashioned method of asking waitstaff to bring you an order – they force customers to scan a QR code and type in their email address just to get a coffee.
A week full of stressful interactions with technology is hardly a worthy retirement.
Most older people rely on their children and grandkids to help them get through these daily tasks, but not everyone has that support.
It’s no wonder an increasing number of elderly who are pushed online and forced to learn new ways of doing everything are falling victim to financial scams, in some cases losing their life savings.
It’s true that, in many ways, technological advancement has made our lives easier and more convenient. But the pace and the extent of change are not always in our interest – particularly for those who have lived most of their lives without ever having to use electronic devices.
American comedian Bill Maher has argued that our tech overlords in Silicon Valley often upgrade and innovate to amuse themselves, inventing new ways of doing things that don’t benefit the wider public.
“Nobody ever looked at a car and said, ‘If only the doors didn’t have handles’,” he joked.
“What an improvement now that they pop out as you approach the car.”
There comes a point where phasing out the familiar and face-to-face service in favour of total digitisation becomes counter-productive.
A world of apps, QR codes and logins is leaving our most vulnerable residents behind when they need and want human support after a lifetime of working and paying taxes.
It’s time to put the brakes on the nerd revolution and give our parents and grandparents time to catch up.
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