Why do older people have to dislike change.

I did a 6 week computer course when I retired. That's as far as I need. I don't want a mobile phone. I don't need one .I don't have a smart TV, I don't need that either. I refuse to have something I don't need. It's nothing to do with my age.

Froglady
Forgive me if this comes across as teaching your grandmother how to suck eggs but do you use YouTube for info.
Just incase you don’t, here is an example of how to load an App.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYZzxpFMytg

I like change too, I'm 71. Although I don't like ULEZ expansion and I don't like cashless society. Which are the two most annoying changes being peddled at present.

Froglady

I think I give up too easily and panic myself into believing J can't do something. I'm 70 and technology does worry me and I don't have family that can give me a hand with new things that you have to download apps for.
Having said that, I am going to put my doubts aside today and try and register my new Tom Tom and then my Google. Going to grasp the nettle and have a go!

ARGH!!

I would like things to be both ways - equal numbers of human checkout operators/ticket sellers and automated ones.

Having said that, I also love technology. I can remember learning to programme a BBC B computer using a cassette tape recorder (!) as part of training to be a teacher in the early 1980s and the excitement about changing from using DOS commands to Windows systems.

It seems to me that this is the best time to date, to learn how to use computer tech. It's so much easier - you don't need to understand, just know what buttons to click.

When our ticket office is closed and the platform machines don't work, or you just don't have time to use them (bus connections not being good), we just get on the train anyway. There's always someone to take your fare at the other end. It has never been elevated into an actual problem.

I agree. Just being elderly is no excuse for not moving with the times (speaking as the person who spent half an hour on the phone last night trying to explain to my dad where the home button is on his iPad. Frustration does not begin to cover it.) Mum would exclaim proudly that she’d never touched a computer in her life, then be very frustrated when she was in hospital and didn’t know how to use a mobile phone or a tablet.

I don’t like the idea of ticket offices closing and having to use machines. I did not have good eyesight before getting cataract surgery and avoided them completely as there was always someone behind you who was in a hurry. Also sometimes when there are groups of rowdy teenagers on station platforms in summer I think it’s important to have staff on hand. Have seen police having to get involved more than once

I find it a little sad that a site for people who obviously all belong to "the older generation" bothers to publish this kind of generalisation.

Not all "old people" dislike change, just because it is change. Most of us have good, well-considered reasons for not liking the changes we dislike, or not using some technological option.

I have used computers since the early 1980s and am usually happy to do so, and a mobile phone since the early 1990s.

I admit that my use of Facebook is strictly limited and that I do not use twitter, instagram or snapchat at all, as I find it perfectly possible to keep up with family, friends and the news without any of these platforms.

Nor do I have my entire Internet access on my smartphone for the good and sufficient reason that my eyesight no longer really makes using such a small screen enjoyable.

I think I give up too easily and panic myself into believing J can't do something. I'm 70 and technology does worry me and I don't have family that can give me a hand with new things that you have to download apps for.
Having said that, I am going to put my doubts aside today and try and register my new Tom Tom and then my Google. Going to grasp the nettle and have a go!

If we don't adapt to using technology, pretty soon we will be unable to even park our car and go shopping.

Our local town car parks only accept payment by app or phone.

Hmm. My paternal grandma, born in 1892 (so 22 when WW1 began (and in which her fiancé was killed in short order) never used a washing-machine even though she did the church laundry for her RC parish; she did it in her kitchen sink – she had started work at age 12 in a laundry, paid only enough to get her to work and back and make a small contribution to her parents.

She also never quite got the hang of a telephone, partly because until her widowhood and onset of dementia, she had never needed one. My dad hoped she would get the idea that she could call him any time if she was in a fix. She never did.

Grandma was "uneducated" in the formal sense but not in common sense, which I sometimes think modern 'education' forgets about. She could cope with huge amounts of privation and 'make do' where more modern people can't.

My stories about Grandma have made enough impression on DD3 that she has adopted Grandma's maiden name as part of her identity.

Why is change being limited to considering technology. that really is a small part of anyone's life.

The big changes have been in the composition of society, the importance of education, to have any chances in life, the immense opportunities now open to women, the huge changes in work, all the new professions that exist, the changes in health care etc etc.

Technology is a mere bagatelle.

Technology is ' fluid, moving with generations.

I have just this morning watched the funeral of a very dear friend online, this to me is technology at its best.
Unable to attend due to circumstances and distance, I felt part of the proceedings and had witnessed my friends last journey, all be it virtually.

However still feel that certain technology requires backup, so still print off tickets insurance details etc .

The older I get, the more willing I am to embrace change. This is because I now look back over nearly 80 years of life and so much change has happened and I have lived and adapted to it without problem.

I am also a member of the '60s generation, who threw their toys out of the pram with a vengeance, so I feel I have no right to oppose any change younger generations want to ring in.

Franbern As volunteer secretary to our own Management Company (for our flats), I have saved us a lot of money by scanning into my laptop (and then saving onto a Memory Stick), all the very many thick documents that are requred by Solicitors each time a flat gets sold. No more having to pay for (or spend the time) on the extensive photocopying on these (paper and printer ink), and postage costs. Now sent at clicks of a button electronically.

Really miraculous innt?

I scan, copy, save - Everything required for a very large complicated business - we save masses of paper, filing space, costs to mailing.

Brilliant and basically free.

I do like technology and try to embrace it but it is the speed of change that is worrying. Nothing seems to last more than a few months before you have to relearn it. If you haven't had occasion to use something for a while it seems to be quietly replaced by a "better" version which then takes you by surprise when you need it. I feel as if I am constantly spinning so many plates!

True, it was 10 or so years ago, but I was surprised even then that much younger people were asking for help to e.g. set up an email a/c, which they needed in order to apply for a job. And I once sat with a chap only in his 20s, who wanted to apply for a job as a fireman and didn’t know where to start.
I never did hear whether he was successful - I really hoped so.

Having already been computer-literate myself for decades it still amazed me how many people still weren’t, regardless of age.
I dare say things have improved a lot now - especially since Smartphones have become almost ubiquitous.

How long ago was that WITZEND?
Most of us have been dealing with modern technology in one form or another for 30+ years now. I know I have and I am in my 60's now.

I used to work in a library where now and then they ran ‘Silver Surfers’ classes, to help older people get online.

However the young bloke who usually ran them was not at all a good fit for the job. He completely failed to understand how nervous many of the learners were, and didn’t put them at ease. It was very frustrating to witness and he wasn’t the type to listen to gentle hints.

If we had time, now and then we’d help someone who needed e.g. an email account, but hadn’t a clue. I once sat for ages with a woman who wanted email and insisted on a very complicated password (‘My husband said we must, so nobody can guess it’) but refused to write it down (husband’s rule again) despite my telling her that if she didn’t enter it exactly, it wouldn’t work.

And guess what, she couldn’t remember it so all that time was wasted, and I had to get back to my usual jobs.

OTOH there was once an old bloke of maybe 80, who’d seen something in the paper with a link to something he was interested in. I showed him the basics, he got it immediately, eventually went home saying how wonderful it was, he was off to buy a computer immediately! Very rewarding, but v few like that, alas.

I don't think old people HAVE to dislike change. Some do and some don't.
If you are the tech expert amongst members of your family or social group and you get exasperated at those less competent, you don't have to help them out. Just steer them in the direction of adult learning classes rather than poking fun at them for their perceived stupidity.

I'm 72, I'm tech savvy. All of my family and friends are too. My only failing appears to be that I don't have a smartphone. My old museum piece of a mobile does what I need it to do. It cost me £4.50 about 10 years ago. It's a pay as you go which costs me around £8 a month. All my online stuff is done on my tablet or desktop.
I'm well aware that at some point I will have to get a smartphone but at present I don't feel need to.

Like others on here, I started off using word processers back in the 80's with Amstrad, and have been through many incarnations until the present day, most, but not all, 'Word'.

I do love how easy and comfortable technology has made my life, everything from Washing machines along to Alexa. Can still remember, back in the 70's, my wonderment when I went to friends house (babysitting circle), and discovered that there was a long wire from her television with a gadget at the end which allowed me to change channels.!!

I am very much a 'user' of modern technology - do not try to understand it. Rather like I used to drive a car - never understood what happened under the bonnet.

In my 80's now I fully appreciate my Smartphone and get exasperated with other people who proudly show those silly little Nokia's telling me it is all they need, and then having to ask me to do things for them.

As volunteer secretary to our own Management Company (for our flats), I have saved us a lot of money by scanning into my laptop (and then saving onto a Memory Stick), all the very many thick documents that are requred by Solicitors each time a flat gets sold. No more having to pay for (or spend the time) on the extensive photocopying on these (paper and printer ink), and postage costs. Now sent at clicks of a button electronically.

OKay, sometimes the sheer speed of change can be a little frightening, but would really hate to be left far behind in the understanding of those things I use. I can far to ell remember back inthe 50's and 60's, not very old Aunts ho ere too scared tohave and use telephones!!!!!

Each to their own, why be so critical. Surely the loss of banks,post offices , where people have a choice to get cash out if so wished. Two of my family refuse to bank over the Internet, don't trust it, and who is to say they are wrong. How many on here have lost money because their bank card has been cloned at the machine, or been scammed by an email. My DS nearly lost 2,000 due to this. So maybe they have a point. By the way , I'm computer and tech savvy, self taught, basic taught at work, but I'm also for choice, of which much is being removed from us.

Isn’t it just that the majority of those reluctant to use ‘new’ technology are elderly, leading to the label being stuck on all of us. Also older people may be reluctant to invest in costly new equipment, be slower at railway stations etc.

Baggs

Besides which, not all change is good.

That’s very true. The way we get our repeat prescriptions has changed. Previously, we either dropped off the paper form at the surgery or filled in the equivalent, received an email to say the order was being processed then picked up the meds three days later at the chemist.

Now, we go on a website and click a button that presumably sends a message to who-knows-where. There may or may not be a response. If no response in three days we have to phone the chemist and ask what’s happening. If they’ve no record of the request, we then have to phone the surgery and ask them to action it.

We then repeat the above until such time as the chemist says the surgery has sent the request to them. After two/three days I phone the chemist to ask if the prescription has been filled. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t. Last time I got my meds I phoned up, they said it was ready and by the time I went in 20 minutes later they’d lost them! They searched the shop high and low, consulted the computer three times and eventually found them in the second place they’d looked. 🙄

To top it all, six days later, I had a message from them to say they’d put in a new order for the meds I had been supplied with just a few days beforehand.

Safe to say that’s one change I am hating. It’s so inefficient.