The New Old Age - Caring and Coping
December 21, 2010, 12:28 pm
Elder Tech: What’s Important
By KAREN STABINER
James Estrin/The New York Times Many older people will learn new technology if it helps them do something simple and important to them, like chatting with a grandchild.

Conversations about elderly parents and technology usually center on safety, in particular on devices designed to alert a call center in case of trouble. But our parents are more than the sum of their maladies. Instead of keeping them safe, can’t some of these devices help keep them happy?

Experts say the key to making tech work for Mom and Dad is not to buy the newest cool thing, but to look for a device or software that fulfills a basic need, that does something they particularly want to do. And it’s helpful if the learning curve involves an element or two already familiar to them.

“The question is, what’s the carrot at the other end, what’s the motivation?” said Dr. Gary Small, director of the Center on Aging at the University of California, Los Angeles, and author of “iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind.”

“For technology to become ‘sticky’ with the older generation, we have to get into their heads and understand what would make them think this is fun,” he added. “The bells and whistles that might attract us are too often counterintuitive.”

Dr. Small says that device for the elderly should answer three criteria, in this order: simplicity of use, availability of phone assistance and hardware that’s easy to manipulate. Once installation and set-up are complete — likely the responsibility of a tech-savvy adult child — enjoyment has to outweigh effort.

Beyond that, it’s important to evaluate how large a technology leap an aging parent will be willing to take. Those who know their way around a VCR or DVD player will be likelier to embrace a device that requires new equipment or an occasional call to a help number.

Dr. Small likes single-application devices that meet a personal need for the technological newcomer — like ones that send and receive e-mail, making it easier to stay in touch with family and see those digital photos of a new grandchild. Reading devices like the Kindle are also popular with older users, because they make an enjoyable, lifelong activity easier by replacing a heavy book with a lightweight tablet. A reader can be ideal for a parent who travels and wants to take more than one book along.

The right motivation can overcome a parent’s doubt or anxiety about adopting new technology, and Dr. Small has firsthand proof: His father, a practicing physician in his 80s, avoided technology until the hospital where he worked switched to electronic records. Suddenly he had no choice. If he wanted to continue to work, he had to wade in.

“Within a week, he was using a computer,” said Dr. Small.

But there’s no need to take a dramatic plunge into the e-pool. Laura Cartensen, director of the Stanford University Center on Longevity, finds herself avoiding new technologies unless they provide a solution to one of life’s “inefficiencies,” she said, “and then I’m in.” So she suggests starting an elderly parent off more slowly, with a device like an electronic photo frame, which requires no expertise; a relative or friend with a computer can download photographs to the device, and all the recipient need do is enjoy the changing slide show.

Dr. Cartensen says that electronics manufacturers have failed to develop products for older users “because of stereotypes which suggest that older people aren’t interested, even when they might be,” and because marketers think “they can simply wait until younger cohorts grow old, knowing the problem will be solved.”

But there are signs of change on the horizon, several of them involving that most familiar of technologies, the television set.

Laurie Orlov, founder of a marketing firm called Aging in Place Technology Watch, likes televisions with Internet capability along with software programs that “hide the complexity of using a browser,” which the viewer uses to look at photographs or e-mails on the big screen. Samsung’s Web site, for example, offers step-by-step instructions for setting up simple links to whatever the viewer wants to access — weather, sports, classic movies on instant download.

For a more personal connection, Skype offers a video-calling service that is simple to use. An older parent may not want to solve the mysteries of Web surfing, but if she has a computer with video and sound capabilities, she can select a person from a personal list and see if that person’s available for a talk. Set up the conversation in advance and availability isn’t even a question.

“Someone I know just told me that he had his grandma chatting at the dining room table,” said Ms. Orlov. They were at two different dining room tables, separated by several states: “You give her a camera connected to the Internet, she sits at her table, you’re at yours with a PC, and you connect with Skype.”

To those of us accustomed to holiday gatherings, this might seem a rather distant version of togetherness. But Ms. Orlov has a particular perspective: she commutes frequently from Florida to Boston, and on a recent holiday watched airline employees scramble to fill 22 wheelchair requests on a single flight. If an elderly parent cannot accommodate family members for a visit and travel has become difficult, an on-screen dinner party might seem like more fun than no dinner party at all.

“Happy matters,” said Ms. Orlov, who was her mother’s primary caretaker. “Engaged matters.”

Dr. Small agrees. He has studied brain activity among people who are tech-savvy and those who aren’t, and the results suggest that online activity — in his study, a simulated Web search — enhances the brain’s ability to be stimulated. In addition to devices that improve communication or ease isolation, Dr. Small also recommends games.

“If you activate one neurocircuit or another, it may not make you any smarter,” he said. “But the enjoyment matters.”

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 21, 2010

An earlier version of this post misidentified the founder of Aging in Place Technology Watch. She is Laurie Orlov, not Laura Ostrov.