Seniors don't tweet

We're always hearing about the technology divide. Seniors, apparently, are lost and fearful in the unfamiliar world of the internet and mobile devices. After all, we didn't grow up with the internet, we're not native speakers, and so what we need is a kind of technology ESL course, taught by kindly, patient instructors at the library, or caring grandchildren. Some of this is true, especially for seniors in their late seventies, eighties and beyond, who had no chance to use computers at work. But I don't think unfamiliarity alone explains why many seniors approach electronic technology differently than younger people.

What do we do differently? Many of us are leery of Facebook, but we're often driven to it to stay in touch with younger, far-flung family members, catch their news and see their pictures and videos. We are fine with desktop workstations, but not crazy about laptops and tablets. They're just not ergonomic enough; we can't tilt the keyboard or adjust the height of the monitor, so they're too hard on our arthritic hands, weak eyesight, and aching backs. Same problem with cellphones, though we like having them for emergencies, so we learn a few basic routines and skip the rest. We tend to hang on to our landlines, because they never go down. We do like email, because it's so convenient and easy to use. We like ereaders too, because they make books light to carry around, and we can increase the font size for easy reading. We don't tweet, we don't text, and we don't hit all those like and recommend buttons, because we'd rather just tell you about whatever it is the next time we see you or talk on the phone.

So there's no simple explanation for the technology gap. Certainly it's true that a lot of it is not intuitive, not familiar, and we have nothing in our experience to compare it to, so we have to slog through a lot of new learning. But in our lifetime we've had to do a lot of adapting already. We've gone from dip pens to ballpoints to manual typewriters to electric typewriters to word processors to computers. We can do it, but it's exhausting, and if we're being asked to do it again, it had better be worth our while. But the industry doesn't help: the unergonomic design of most handheld devices has booted seniors right out of the market. We're also more concerned about privacy than younger people. Maybe that's because we've lived long enough to know how our younger self looks to our older self, and how lucky we are that cellphone cameras and Facebook posts weren't around to catch all our missteps back in the day. But most of all, I think we seniors have long-established patterns of communicating with each other that now seem specific to our generation. We like to talk to each other face-to-face or voice-to-voice. We like to take our time about it too, without a lot of interruptions. It works very well for us, and we don't want to give it up.