Believe it or not, but some people actually refuse to go online! (I say we salute these people for being so brave.) This news comes to us from that Digital Britain report that I’ve mentioned in the past. It’s sort of a Doomesday Book vis-à-vis the UK’s participation in the digital world/economy, if that makes any sense. And today’s big number: 43 percent of adults in the UK who have no Internet access, either by choice or because of financial restraints, would turn down a free or heavily subsidized Internet connection. Like Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino, these people simply have no time for that Internet crap. I mean really, what is this old lady going to do with Twitter?
While on one hand you can say it’s not really a big deal—again, why would a retiree, who was in the war, mind you, want to spend all day on Mashable and YouTube?—on the other hand there’s some legitimate use for the Internet. That Underground delay, caused by an “industrial action,” was all over the Internet yesterday; an independent report found that the average household can save up to £70 per month by shopping online; newspapers are becoming online-only; etc. So, while the Internet, I feel, is largely nonsense and pornography, there’s some utility to it.
Now the problem becomes convincing the hold-outs to go online. Of the people who outright refuse to go online, 61 percent have never owned a computer. Schemes such as half-price computers and subsidized Internet connections may never convince these people to change their mind.
That old lady would be Ivy Bean, a 104 year old woman living in a nursing home in yorkshire, england.
And, she uses twitter for the same thing everyone else does – to talk about utterly nothing of worth in 140 characters or less.
That’s a shame.
I bet she wouldn’t be bloviating naive ageist crap like this story.
Sounds like Roger Daltry singing, “I hope I die before I get old.”
Ask him now about that.
There is definitely real value in elders to use the Internet. The Internet can ease so many aspects of their lives. For example, instead of waiting for the forecast to be announced in the radio/TV, they can just get it online. Same for news, hospital information, medical information, and even the yellow and white pages.
The Internet has a vast amount of useful information other than “nonsense and pornography”, you just have to know where to look. This is the problem for everybody, not only for elders.
I think the Internet can help many different generations and cultures come together by sharing information amongst each other. On YoutTube, you see all sorts of videos from different generations and different cultures. This is how you expand your mind, by learning about things you didn’t even know existed. The more people collaborate to the content of YouTube, the more interesting it becomes. If this is possible in only one website, imagine the potential there is with all the websites out there. I believe that the presence of elders in the Internet community is as important to them as it is to us, and we have to help them get there.
One of the main reasons why elders do not want to use the Internet is because they don’t know the potential of it. Not many elders have that somebody that will connect with them and help them visualize the things they can do on the Internet.
Another reason is because they do not want change. They do not want to feel overwhelmed by technology. Many people do not give technology a chance. It is up to us to lead the way.
Sent to us from my youngest son to me and wife, probably intended for this particular elderly couple!!
MY ANSWER TO ALL:
Don’t bother, tell the dumbasses that are too young to understand, Part of reaching the elderly age is the privilege of doing what the hell you want when you want to do it OR NOT!