SeniorTech: Nothing to Fear but Fear …
Many of us find ourselves helping senior parents with technology. These days it goes hand-in-hand with even the most moderate caregiving assistance.
Read Seniors Have Nothing to Fear but Fear Itself, a post by Jamie Carracher over at the Aging Online blog. Carracher points out that most seniors want to learn as much as they can about technology, but their fear and anxiety often get in the way. I agree.
When I teach senior tech classes, the anxiety is often palpable. I’ve learned to bring along a detailed handout to each class so my elder students do not spend so much time taking notes — a skill most were trained to do throughout their lives whenever they learned something new. I’ve also learned to narrow the scope of classes. No more, “learn MS Word in three sessions…”
Friends or Friends of Friends: What’s the Difference?
Many of our senior parents use Facebook, and they are having great fun. However it’s important to help them understand the importance of carefully accepting friends. Seniors need to understand that strangers should never be accepted as electronic friends, and understanding the difference between “friends” and “friends of friends” is critical. The potential for privacy problems exists when a person interacts with unfamiliar social media friends. A good blog post to use is Real Friends Verses Social Media Friends.
Read Would You ‘Friend’ a Total Stranger by Bob Sullivan over at the MSNBC Red Tape Chronicles blog. The article discusses how males and females view the friending process differently and describes problems that can occur, especially the potential for stealing personal information, when we accept strangers as friends. The post also includes a link to a Mashable post, Facebook Privacy: 10 Settings Every User Needs to Know.
iPad for Dad, #17: Who’s Managing Dad’s iPad?
Last April, when I purchased Dad’s birthday iPad, I set it up to download and sync on my computer. For the past ten months I have updated the iPad and kept track of apps they might like, downloading applications when I visit. Things have been just peachy. Until now.
This past Saturday when I was visiting my parents, age 87 and 83, they asked, out of the blue, if they can download apps and how they might go about it. I explained how I have the iPad set up. That’s when they both looked me in the eye and asked me to make changes that will allow them to manage the iPad. Read more »
Facebook Privacy Settings Guide from Techlicious
Check out the Techlicious Facebook Privacy Guide, posted by Josh Kirschner on February 8, 2011 over at the Techlicious website.
Maintaining control over privacy settings is a required and critical technology task for each Facebook user. Since sharing information is one of Facebook’s primary missions, the company wants to collect and share as much personal information as possible with its advertisers. Facebook sets most new features to share data then when they first debut on the site, and to be fair, social networking is all about sharing information. Thus it is up to each individual to determine just how much information to put out there, making conscious decisions about what the world can see, what close friends can view, and what to keep private. Read more »
Lots of Seniors on Social Networks!
According to a December 15, 2010 USA Today article, people over age 65 are the fastest growing group of social networking users. Seniors Surge on Social Networks, by Janis Lloyd, described Generations 2010 by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, a report that examines the variation in Internet and social networking experiences among various age groups.
For adult children whose parents are older seniors, the Pew report presents fascinating data. “While the youngest generations are still significantly more likely to use social network sites, the fastest growth has come from internet users 74 and older: social network site usage for this oldest cohort has quadrupled since 2008, from 4% to 16%.” This change occurred between 2008 and 2010.
The USA Today article also points out that the U.S. Administration on Aging has released a guide to help older people learn about life online, from joining social networks to hooking up to Skype and exploring Google.
Below are links to several As Our Parents Age posts about seniors’ activities in the digital world.
Holiday Gifts: Buying an iPad for Your Senior Parent?
If you like this post, read some of the other descriptions of our Father/Daughter iPad adventure. iPad for Dad, #1, iPad for Dad, #2, iPad for Dad, #3, iPad for Dad, #4, iPad for Dad, #5, iPad for Dad, #6, iPad for Dad, #7, iPad for Dad, #8, iPad for Dad, #9, iPad for Dad, #10, iPad for Dad, #11, iPad for Dad, #12, iPad for Dad, #13, iPad for Dad, #14, iPad for Dad, #15, and iPad for Dad, #16.
The Perfect Holiday Present — iPad for an Aging Parent
Last April I had a silly idea of purchasing an iPad for my Father’s 87th birthday. Without talking to him much about it, I bought the iPad and showed up at my parents’ house with the nifty little gadget in a an Apple shopping bag. It took about 20 minutes for my dad to be really in love, but he was intrigued and intellectually curious from the moment the iPad came out of the box. My gift idea was not at all silly.
I’ve had a blast helping him, watching him figure out things, and reading his regular missives — he rarely misses a day — posted from his iPad by merely tapping on the picture of the envelope. I gave him the iPad with addresses entered so that he did not need to enter addresses at the beginning. And suddenly I was writing the iPad for Dad series for this blog.
Senior Parents: Maintaining a Bit of Their Privacy in a Digital World
If the seniors who I have as friends on Facebook are any indication, they are giving away too much personal information. However, it’s not just Facebook. Lots of things we do on our computers and cell phones require us to give away a bit of personal information.
To learn more about helping your parents put on the brakes read 10 Ways to Protect Your Privacy Online in the October 22, 2010 edition of Newsweek. Written by Michael Fertik, the CEO of Reputation Defender, the article has ten really good and doable suggestions.
You can read all ten at Newsweek, but here are the three suggestions that I like the best.
- Don’t put your full birth date on your social-networking profiles.
- Max out your privacy settings on social networks.
- Close [delete] old online accounts.
iPad for Dad, #16: Maps
Last weekend I visited my dad, and we had only a bit of time to enjoy the iPad together. However, quite by accident we started playing with the map application.
I turned on the location part of the map program and then showed my father how look over maps of his neighborhood and town. Next we put in a few favorite places from the — Carnegie Hall in New York City, Branch Brook Park in New Jersey, Rochester, New York, Ocean Grove, New Jersey, a town where he went to college and more. We even visited the Library of Congress.
Each time I showed Dad how he could enlarge the map to a point that allowed him see actual neighborhoods and streets that he remembered. He was just delighted to connect with so many familiar places. As we played together, we probably looked up eight or ten locations where Dad had visited, lived, or worked. Now I know that we can also do this on Google Earth, which not only gets to the street but also to a picture of the actual house or building – but a year ago, pre-iPad — when I demonstrated Google Earth to my parents, it required way too many steps.
Becoming A Grown-up Child
One day in April 2007 my husband and I were the adult kids in our families — we are the only adult children
— and the next day we became what we laughingly call “real grown-ups,” helping first one, then two, and increasingly all three of our parents. It’s time to give back, and we do so willingly and happily. However the process is not easy, and it is not free from anxiety and tension. Check out the As Our Parents Age About page to learn more about the mission of this blog.
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As Our Parents Age by Marti Weston is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
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