My stepfather died a few months ago, after a long decade dealing with Parkinson’s disease.
He started buying sketchy apps probably without even realizing it and sending disjointed, sometimes inappropriate emails and texts.
The thing is, Doug had been an IT guy.
At work, he installed enterprise servers and helped maintain a citywide web connection.
Doug had, I am saying, a technical mind.
He just wasn’t able to.
Getting older doesn’t necessarily come with the kind of extreme disability Doug dealt with.
But it inevitably brings to us all a bit of mental inflexibility and physical limitation.
And meanwhile, every sector of society is scrambling to trade storefronts for websites andhuman staff for AI chatbots.
Americans, meanwhile, are theoldest we’ve ever been.
Technology is designed by, and for, the young.
So what happens when an unprecedented number of us are old?
Debaleena Chattopadhyay is a primary caregiver for her parents her mom is 66, her dad is 73.
“When my dad was still working, computerized banking was introduced, and he was very proud.
He helped everyone,” Chattopadhyay says.
“Now he can’t do anything.”
Still, strong dad energy will always prevail.
But the guy on the phone told him he’d get a discount if he used the app.
Chattopadhyay says that kind of technological madness is coming for all of us.
And they want to use the same, or similar, tools everyone does.
But it’s also true that with age, our eyesight and hearing get worse.
Texting thumbs get arthritic.
Plus, older people kind of stop wanting to bother.
That’s the core problem that even sophisticated digital natives face as they age.
Innovative features, updated apps, and entirely new products are how tech companies grow and make money.
They’re also exactly what older adults have trouble metabolizing.
“People assume that if you grew up with AOL, you will be good with Gemini.
But it’s not the same.”
Tech companies know what they’re facing here.
In response, Google introduced something called Simple View for its phone software.
These kinds of apps are just universally useful, and my parents had no idea they were available."
One recent journal article warned of “theharm in conflating aging with accessibility.”
Anything outside that category is viewed as a disability they grudgingly accommodate.
“It’s not: How can we develop technology for things that older adults would want?”
says Karyn Moffatt, a researcher in human-computer interaction at McGill University.
“Mobile banking, we’re assuming a lot of responsibility for errors,” Moffatt says.
That preserves the older customer’s independence, while making it easier for caregivers to provide a much-needed backstop.
But for older adults, the options are thin.
Even something as basic as instruction manuals could stand improvement.
“But for the most part, we’re not building those today.”
My mom’s healthy, but she’s in her 80s, and I live hundreds of miles away.
She has friendly neighbors, but if she fell, it could be hours before anyone figured it out.
So she recently bought an Apple Watch, which provides shareable location tracking and fall monitoring.
I wasn’t itching to have surveillance data on my mom.
But I didn’t know what else to do.
It was, I’ll admit, a little frustrating for both of us.
I went too fast; she was worried she’d somehow mess up the watch.
I told her she should add her left index finger to the security configs.
Turned out she hadn’t known that was even possible.
Mom kept moving off the scanner too soon, and she’d have to start over.
Finally, I took her hand and helped her hold her finger on the button.
It wasn’t the most comfortable way for us to face the future, honestly.
But we didn’t really have a choice.
Adam Rogersis a senior correspondent at Business Insider.
