While mobile technology has surely made life easier, everyone, particularly the elderly, needs to be groomed into adapting to newer devices.
Mobile revolution, coupled with ever-reducing costs of smartphones and the ever-widening presence of internet has literally taken the world by storm. Many tasks which were considered impossible, can now be easily performed using a smartphone.
Another change in our lives has been our gifting choices. Many working children who stay away from their parents, buy them upgraded and expensive mobile phones or tablets. This is usually done with an intent to upgrade their digital lives, enable them to stay connected or to simply perform tasks using their smartphones.
This article is prompted by my personal life and tries to answer a key question about whether all technological advancements are useful for the elderly or whether one needs to apply some caveats before upgrading digital devices indiscriminately.
My job required me to stay away from my elderly parents for most of their ageing life. My wife and I would often discuss about how my parents’ life could be made easier as they stayed alone.
My father, who lived till a ripe age of 93 years, was a pragmatic and enthusiastic lawyer. He would call me every morning using his senior touch-button mobile phone. It was like a regular alarm in my life. This was till I disrupted this routine!
This was also the phase when mobile technology was getting smart. My father was often impressed by the frequency with which I would upgrade my mobile phone. He was also enamored by the possibility of reading a newspaper, conduct banking transactions or ordering groceries through a mobile phone. Though he never demanded it, I could sense that he would love to get a smartphone as a gift. A genuine desire to make his life easier coupled with a bit of guilt about using the an upgraded smart phone while my father continued to use an ancient “unsmart” phone made me gift him a new touchscreen smartphone for his 85th birthday. I still remember his pride and excitement at possessing a new and powerful technological device. I quickly charged the phone and inserted his old SIM card into the new phone.
Next was his learning session. He wanted me to download all possible apps, including ones for his banking needs, news and online delivery requirements. I spent the next few hours teaching him everything I could about his new “toy” and the immense possibilities it had to offer. Since my leave ended shortly thereafter, I returned to my duty-station, very proud abouthaving upgraded my parents’ digital life. I was soon to realize that this was a folly!
Over the next few days, I stopped receiving morning calls from my father. Though I did speak to my parents on their landline at noon every day, his calls had stopped. I never really enquired about the reason the same. And like many elderly parents, he too didn’t complain. He just presumed that it would hurt me to know that his new device was actually proving to be useless for him.
After about a week, I asked my mother about my father’s new phone and whether he was happy with it. I was surprised to learn that he had tried using it for a few hours after I left, but soon realised that the touch screen thoroughly confused him. It needed a tactile finesse that he lacked at his age. It took him a long time to understand that there was no home button and he had to scroll up to close any apps. This was something which his hand coordination did not permit. He was incapable of re-inserting his old SIM card into the old touch-button phone. Despite his tenacity and enthusiasm to embrace new situations and learn new things, he gave up and placed the new phone back in its box, and started using the landline.
On my next visit to my parents’ home, I changed my father’s SIM card to his previous unsmart phone and placed his new phone in the original packing box, where it still rests in peace. My father passed away peacefully in 2019—having survived 8 additional years with his old phone.
At the end of it all, my emotions had gone through a diverse range starting from a desire to upgrade my parents’ life, to pride at having presented my father a useful gift and finally to remorse at not having been patient enough in tutoring him about how to use this new device.
I often analyze this incident on three parameters- intent, execution and follow through. Retrospectively, I realize that my intent was right. I wanted to improve the ease of my parents’ living. The execution was partially correct. However, I went horribly wrong in the follow through of my action on two accounts. Firstly, I did not factor in changes in the finer coordinated movement skills, sensory inputs and overall cognitive skills of an elderly person. I just presumed that they will grasp newer technology with the same rapidity as a person 3-4 decades younger. Secondly, I did not spend enough time and effort on trying to teach him what, to him, would have been an entirely new skill set.
As we move down the paths of our lives, ageing slowly but surely, it might be good to remember that each new skill can only be honed with effort and time. One might have the latest and most intuitive appliances but using them needs learning. Easy, in life, is a misconception.
Prof Hemant Madan is an Interventional Cardiologist and Programme Head, Cardiac Sciences for Narayana Health.