Giving ouma wings by teaching her to use a cellphone – The Wall Street Journal
I am sure we all have stories of how our elderly parents or grandparents are dealing with the digital age. My mother was an early adopter, a very tech word for her and she was coping rather well until we upgraded her to a smartphone, which probably had too many functions. It did not help when the ring tone was changed to a rather soft recording of her favourite birdie tweeting near her bedroom window. Ouma Mien was not able to hear the phone unless she was about a metre from it. Adding hundreds of apps to the phone was also confusing; she basically needed to be able to phone, SMS and take pictures and only started coping when we managed to remove the other applications or shift them to another window. The cellphone had literally given her wings and a fantastic means to stay in touch with her children and grandchildren even those who live overseas as calls became so much cheaper and she could Facetime to comment on my latest hairstyle or tell me that I looked tired. I miss her too much to tell her that it would help if she remembers the time difference between South Africa and the UK and who is ahead of whom. Some of my other aunts are regular users of Facebook and other social media platforms, which is a wonderful way of staying connected. And for those that have a bit of finger trouble, voice-activated devices are even more suited to elderly people. I had quite an amusing morning with my elderly French neighbour with her guttural Rs, shouting at Amazon's Alexa "who does not understand me". But there are still a lot of lonely elderly people who do not have access to the tools of the digital age or the knowledge on how to use them. The Wall Street Journal writes in this article about a non-profit organisation in Manhattan that are giving lessons to elderly people on "how to push the buttons", which is a good idea that we could export to South Africa. – Linda van Tilburg