Yoohoo, Mommies!

Maybe Webkinz aren't as in in urban areas.

Cheryl

You're wasting your breath, Sheena. Once Karen gets it in her head that the world is a certain way, it's useless to argue with her. And it's not just her picture of seniors that's warped.

Elizabeth

Since you decided to insult me by intimating that some seniors "play" at the computer I'll keep this up. You seem to know people who are satisfied just to garden and drive to therapy appointments and that is enough for them. Some other seniors I know aren't satisfied with just that and look for activities that will keep them busy and active with more intellectual pursuits and/or less housefrau activities, and a computer is one way to provide that kind of stimulation.

In my case my husband died so it's unlikely I'll be driving him anywhere and fortunately most of my friends drive so we can share that chore. If your family gets its jollies by doing what I consider to be everyday chores, more power to them but most of the people I know aren't happy with doing the same thing now that they have more leisure time and want to do something different and more stimulating. There's also the fact that if you live alone it's easy to keep your home neat and clean, unlike when you live with an active group.

There's also the fact that I can't imagine how spending time driving someone to a doctors appointment can possibly take up that much time. Even when my friend broke her wrist last month and needed me to drive her all over the place, including even the supermarket, it didn't take up enough time to make it interesting and meaningful. The only saving grace was that we both caught up on some reading while waiting at the doctors office. I even saw people sitting around with their laptops to use the time in an interesting fashion.

Since you quoted your statistic and I think it's not 100% accurate, here's another article that shows another senior use of computers.

know that numbers can be manipulated and if we dig further we can surely find studies that will show whatever we decide we want them to show.

I stay with AOL because too much advertising for my business is out there with my AOL e-mail address. I don't want to lose customers because I've changed addresses. I recently had a client come back to me after 2 years, which he would not have done if I had a new address.

Furthermore, as I have said repeatedly, I need my internet connection to be fully portable. Having cable at home will not do me a damn bit of good when I need to go take care of my parents; they don't have any form of internet, therefore, I need a company that I can dial into from their house as needed. Or from the home of the elderly/single/childless relative who is also likely to need someone to look after her for a while. This house has stairs and is not wheelchair-accessible, so I can't bring them back here to care for them.

I have seen you go on vacation and not get online for days or weeks on end. I'm running a business; I have to get online every day regardless of whether I'm at home or vacationing at the South Pole. Even if I tell the clients to send current work to my backup, there are often questions about what I did last week or last month, which my backup could not handle because she's not the one who did that job.

Your use of the internet and easy disposability of your e-mail address is vastly different from my use of the internet for business purposes. You know who is likely to e-mail you and can give them your new address; I don't know which new customer might see old advertising, and I can't go back and have old magazines reprinted. It is bad enough that I lost my former websites when my webhosts got divorced and the husband spitefully shut down the sites that the wife had worked on; best I can hope for is that I can buy them back when the current URL registration expires, and integrate them into my new website. Meanwhile, anyone who sees the advertising from that era is a customer lost to me because they can't contact me with the outdated information.

I *have* handled the internet first-hand; I'm not too stupid to do it. I choose to stay with AOL for continuity of my business, for the same reason that many businesses keep the same telephone number for decades, even when they have to pay extra because they've moved from one town to another.

However, no matter how many times I've explained it to you, you stubbornly continue to insist that I have no reason other than imaginary fear of the real internet to stick with AOL regardless of the valid business reasons I've expressed.

Tell you what -- you track down every single person who has any old copy of the various publications, every website that has my contact information (they don't all come up on google ... I've tried, and do see some glaring omissions from the list), and make sure that all of them are updated with my new address, and then I'll make the change to some other ISP. I don't have time to locate and update all of those people/websites and I don't have the money to buy old mailing lists and send postcards to catch those people who have an old magazine but have let their subscription lapse because they don't have time to read the magazine every month, but keep the old ones for the ads.

I understand that the NY Times says that internet users among the over-65 set are a minority, and that my relatives almost exactly reflect the percentage found by the Times.

What's so difficult to understand that 22% is a minority? And not just a "quibbling about margin of error" minority, either.

The statistics quoted by Lucille in attempting to support HER argument have, in fact, proven that her stance is wrong and that the statistics that I see among my friends and relatives are in line with what research shows, that the vast majority -- 4/5 -- of elderly people are not online.

I never said "all seniors are stupid". I said that in my experience, the majority of those I know and on my parents' block are not online and have no interest in going online.

The statistics bear me out that 4/5 are not online. Kudos to those who are, but that doesn't change the fact that if 22% of seniors are online,

78% are not, and that 78% is a pretty sizeable majority.

I'm sorry if you feel that the Times and the authors of that study think that seniors who are not online are stupid. I personally think the issue is not stupidity but lack of interest, or, in my mother's words "I don't have time to waste playing on the computer" because she has too many other things to do in real life.

My elderly friend who was given a computer and never used it was extremely active, performing with local musical groups, attending classes, volunteering with the library, putting out newsletters and publicity for his musical groups ... he could get the newsletter out on his manual typewriter without the learning curve required to do it on the computer, which to him seemed more efficient, and therefore, no real reason to use the computer. His elderly friends didn't e-mail, no grandkids to e-mail, not the type to sit around and just surf the Net to fill empty hours, because he didn't have any empty hours. Just why exactly do you think someone who is out of the house from 10 AM to 10 PM every single day, running from meeting to meeting, needs the internet in order to socialize?

As the lawyers in my court cases always say, "please just answer the question that he asked! Don't answer questions that weren't asked."

If I'm asking about the reliability of a Ford vs. a Honda, that doesn't mean that I want to hear about a goat cart. Which may be cheaper and user-repairable, but I can't take it on the freeway.

That could be. Mom certainly gets out enough to different malls, and although the "sold out" sign in their area was on the door of the card shop, the stores where I buy my greeting cards don't carry them.

Okay--I give up. I admit defeat and I will throw in the towel. You win!!!

Here's my concession speech. More power to you and your boring family and friends.

I'm quite sure if you try you'll find someone else to use as an example of older people who know nothing except how to be barefoot and pregnant or sitting on the couch with a beer and a football game on TV and are happy to stay home and/or drive to a doctors office.

Your quotation saying: in my mother's words "I don't have time to waste playing on the computer" because she has too

So, there's no way to convince you my way is right or for you to convince me that my way is wrong.

Incidentally, that article was dated 2004. It's now 4 years later and if you have enough time on your hands to keep looking find me proper statistics from 2008. I would love to see them.

Lucille

How convincing depends on what quantity you are taking 47% of! 47% of a small number still isn't very much! And if you look at the article, you'll see that *after* that increase, the percentage of users in the age group is about 22%! I didn't see any cite at to the source of those figures (I didn't have time) but they are more or less in line with the recent ones from Canada I posted.

Cheryl

I know people (of all ages, but especially including the elderly) who use computers and those who don't. Some who learn fast and some who are a bit slower.

Cheryl

Wasn't my statistic. You're the one who provided the NYT article that absolutely backed up what I've been saying based on personal observation, that 4/5 of my relatives and 4/5 of my parents neighbors are not online, which is precisely in line with the statistic that you provided, that 78% of seniors (i.e., roughly 4/5) are not online.

Sorry you don't like your own statistic now that you've realized that it supports my argument that a minority of only 1-in-5 seniors are online, and not, as you'd like it to say, that a tiny minority of holdouts are not online.

You are going by anecdotal evidence. Both the US and the Canadian statistics that were posted show clearly that a majority of over

65-year-olds in the respective countries do not use computers. That's not to say that there are not groups of 65+ year olds for which the computer use is much higher - but there must be enough groups in which it is much lower to bring the overall usage down to the 20-30% range.

I also do not think it is insulting to state facts - or an accusation of stupidity to note that some people don't use computers. People don't use computers for a whole range of reasons.

Cheryl

They're not boring. They're out and about and doing things, not sitting home in front of a computer wishing for companionship. They've got real people to talk to, they don't need to rely on internet friends.

Like with my elderly friend who never learned to use the computer he was given, if you don't catch them before 10 AM, good luck, they could be anywhere within 25 miles.

Pot calling the kettle black here (and I readily admit that), I note that you have been on the computer arguing with me since 3 hours ago, which means that you're home rather than out doing something active. I'm on the computer arguing with you because I called Mom and she wasn't home for me to talk to, and I'm also home sitting on my butt in front of the computer. They don't have a doctor appointment today (that I know of), so here's the map -- you head to points east (that mall and the restaurant near it), I'll head to points west (the other mall and the other restaurant), and let's see if we can figure out where they got off to, other than sitting home like us "wasting time playing on the computer".

Why? Because she goes out to concerts and lectures, instead of sitting home? Because she chooses to play in the garden that's been her pride and joy for 50 years instead of sitting in the living room stitching?

Now you're making a value judgment that the things she does IRL are less interesting than the things you do because she doesn't do what you do. I never said she spent the whole day doing housework; you assumed she's only into "hausfrau activities" (your words). She prefers gardening to playing bridge or stitching. It's a more active activity, and I'm glad at her age she's healthy enough to do that much physical activity (more than I can do).

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My mom is 72 or 73, I forget, but she is a psychiatric social worker, so is a professional and still works full time. She's been online since the old days when an Adam was their first computer. Then they had a Commador, then they moved up and up and now she has the ordinary computer we all have. She's probably ready to buy a new one as hers is about five years old and obsolete for many reasons.

I have done everything including stand on my head begging her to stop working and move down here to TX. While she thinks the idea is very romantic to live closer to me, she adores her job and will probably work until she absolutely can't drive any more.

I belong to a garden club and I am one of the younger people there. Mostly widows ro widowers and all seniors. We have one woman who is in her 90s and she does her hair, full makeup, and always looks beautiful when I see her. Spry as anyone else there and she's been online since Prodigy days, which is about when I was online...about 18 years ago...I think we used Genie and it was not the Internet, not by a long shot.

I forgot my point! Better stop since I lost the plot!

v

I'll tell you what Karen--you come here and blow the storm and tornadoes we're prepared for away with your hot air and I'll go out and do something active in the heat, humidity, wind and pouring rain we're having. I'm sure the cops will love that I'm on the road when people need to get home and get ready.

Please Karen, just go away.

I have yet to see any statistical table that actually says something specific. Show me!

And I don't want to see something like what I posted that's an abstract. I want to see a properly done study, by a really good source. Perhaps one of our universities would be interested in doing a proper study?

And some who have interest in learning how to do something and some who have no interest in it. That someone has no interest in doing something doesn't mean they're stupid, just that they don't see the point in surviving the learning curve for something that they don't picture themselves needing to do in the future.

I can think back to when I was insulted BECAUSE I was spending time learning to use a computer. What a geeky thing to waste time on. Now the pendulum has swung, and it's those who are not using computers who get insulted as being "too stupid" when, in fact, they are extremely intelligent people who simply don't see the relevance to their own lives because they are getting along just fine without it. I have yet to come up with any convincing argument for WHY they need to spend time on the computer; if Mom wants to know something, she looks it up in a book. Instead of reading a two-paragraph Wikipedia, she'll read a 300-page book and learn more about it than I know from my web-surfing.

I've never learned to do surgery, which doesn't mean that I'm "too stupid to learn" -- I'm sure my embroidery skills and years of doing jigsaw puzzles would make me a whiz at putting the pieces back together

-- it's just something that I'm not interested in spending 10 years in school to learn how to do something that I have no desire to pursue as a profession. Yeah, some day when I'm home alone and the meat cleaver attacks my finger it might be nice to know how to stitch my own wound shut, but it's not something that I "need" to know how to do on a daily basis, so I haven't taken the time to study it.

Just because my parents and their friends do other things with their lives instead of e-mailing their non-existent grandchildren doesn't make them stupid ... just different from you.

And the statistics Lucille provided that only 22% of seniors are online show exactly who is the minority -- the ladies here, not the people in my parents' neighborhood. So, take your self-righteous "what I do always puts me in the majority, and those who don't do what I do are always in the minority", and listen to the statistics that prove who's really the minority.

If you look upthread a bit, you'll see a link to the Statistics Canada report. Otherwise, you can search on their site and turn it up that way. That was a summary report, but they usually have piles of other linked stuff giving methodology etc. for all their reports.

I don't know what the US equivalent to Statistics Canada is, but there must be one.

I strongly suspect this issue has been studied at the university level, as well as by government agencies wanting to know how computer literate the population is. A visit to a university library and a look through one of the online guides to the research literature should produce something - I don't know which would be most relevant to this issue - something in the social sciences, perhaps - but a university librarian could certainly point you in the right direction.

Cheryl