Tech Happy or Harried?
5 minute read
We’re told technology will keep us young as we age, so how is it that I feel about 90 years old every time I’m faced with a phone upgrade, software update or hardware shutdown? I’m an old-school midlife cliché – Smartphones make me feel stupid and the term ‘code’ has no context for me outside of the words dress and conduct. Buzzwords like Metaverse and Augmented Reality just make me want to immerse myself in Bridgerton reruns. But that’s the nature of my personality; I’m more comfortable looking back than forward.
I rarely read agony aunt columns, but a letter from a retiree to The Guardian’s Philippa Perry caught my eye during the week, probably because I saw myself reflected in her unhappy plight. She felt alone and isolated and dependent on technology she didn’t understand, or fully know how to use, to connect with people. On this particular day my mother had gone on a day trip with 20 other women from the local ‘Ladies’ Club’, an organisation she’s been part of since she was younger than I am. The difference between both their situations struck me. My mother doesn’t need technology to stay connected with her friends; they live next door, down the street and around the corner. They’re the women she talked colic with as a new mum, the women whose teens hung out with her own, the women she’s chatted with across garden walls and church pews for the past 50 years.
I’m not part of any local network of women as my mother has always been. I live a very different life. I don’t have children. I’ve moved countries and communities several times over the past couple of decades. My friends live far and wide and are of different generations. Will I wind up like this Guardian reader? Wistful and resentful…raging against every digital and technological advancement I have to negotiate so as not to end up isolated and alone?
And this is part of the problem isn’t it? New tech appears and disappears as frequently as April showers. As soon as you’re up to speed with one upgrade, another update is fast tracked.
Yet, I may be alone in my frustrations because according to a 2019 study by American software company Lenovo, the midlife stereotype I reflect is becoming less and less of a trope. The digital divide that’s assumed to exist between generations is shrinking. The study found that of the 15,000 individuals surveyed from around the world, 40% felt more youthful thanks to technology. The survey spanned all ages and genders, but the research generally revealed that older generations feel livelier thanks to technology.
It appears tech is making more individuals happy than harried, and according to a 2019 article in Forbes, this isn’t just about older people buying a smartphone or having a laptop to hand. In America, the over 50s are embracing everything from wearable tech to social media and video games, and are likely to spend $84 billion a year on tech products over the next 10 years. Staying relevant in the technological and digital space looks likely to be even more important in the next couple of decades if you subscribe to author and tech investor Sergey Young’s theories espoused in his 2021 book The Science and Technology of Growing Young, which explains how living to 150 or even 200 is within humanity’s grasp. Given that the oldest woman in the world died in Japan this week at the age of 119, his claims seem almost modest. The oldest woman in the world now is a 118-year-old French nun, while a 103-year-old Irish woman was on the phone to Joe Duffy on Liveline during the week, and although she’s older than the state itself, she sounded at least 20 years younger.
The New York Times reported on the death of Japan’s Kane Tanaka, and while there was no mention of any agility with technology having lengthened her lifespan, the article did refer to how she remained mentally sharp by reading newspapers, solving maths problems and playing board games. I suppose the digital and tech worlds provide the same kind of brain training or mental exercise that tabletop games and traditional puzzles once did.
Maybe, like physical exercise, there’s a pain threshold that must be broken before suffering turns into satisfaction, and perhaps, unlike with running, I’ve never persisted with tech for long enough to fully transition. I navigate what I have to and leave it at that.
If you’re a midlife caricature like me, apparently one way to move forward is to humanise your devices by naming your phone or tablet, for instance. Maybe this way, I’d develop an affection for them and treat them more like pets than pet peeves. I wonder if there’s a book for this as there is for baby names? It’s worth a try because nothing is certain in life except death, taxes and advancing tech. An article on theconversation.com, meanwhile, suggests a competitive spirit is a great help when dealing with tech. “Many see digital technology as a challenge to be conquered [while] some may view the challenge as a personal goal”. My competitive spirit never extended much beyond sartorial one-up-manship and that’s become as pointless to me in midlife as heels I can’t walk in.
The good news is that the American Psychological Association reported last year that psychologists are now helping to study, design and adapt tech to make it more intuitively understandable for older adults. It explains: “Thanks to extensive training and knowledge in areas like aging, cognitive psychology, human factors, neuropsychology, and more, psychologists are helping to ensure that technology will be useful for all of us in our later years.” It continues, “Engineers and roboticists and computer scientists can do the building, but [psychologists] bring that needed human perspective.”
Tech with a human perspective? Yes please. Perhaps I should name my Smartphone after all.
Marie Kelly, April 2022
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