Why are old people so bad at using technology?

Pretty much anything. I'll tell him to click something in Skype, then he'll tell me he's actually in his browser. I tell him to click a plus icon, and he'll think that I "really meant" something else.

I'll ask him a yes or no question about something on his computer, and he'll tell me yes when the real answer is no, or something like that.

I'll ask him a question or give him an instruction for how to proceed with something, then he'll get stressed out and change the subject.

I told him to copy and paste something and send it to me, and then he talked about how he decided to try something on his own and how it didn't work.

Basic communication failure here.

Also I checked the skype help forum and he didn't even post there. I practically spoonfed him. I gave him the link, told him exactly what to do, and he couldn't even do that.

At work, we put the oldest person in the office (probably 70+yo) into a VR walkaround and he was teleporting around like second nature. Absolute champ. They used to fly a lot of model remote-control planes so they think that may be why they are used to adopting an alternate perspective and controller.
we also put someone a bit younger in VR and she was yelling in shock almost the entire time like it was a rollercoaster.
It's variable. Age may have some impact due to computers being corporate only for most of an older persons entire life and from then on not much of a need or want, while some of us were using non-castrated computers before teenage years. Of course there will be a general difference in experience.
My parents and siblings are decent since they all use computers at work. One grandparent is alright as they learned to use Windows during the XP days and used it for email and browsing, another can't understand Windows Explorer.

thisthisthis
I actually read the instruction manuals for my video games (not before completing the tutorial levels, of course. those were enough to learn the game just as effectively) and one game manually actually gave you a secret hint that you could get bonus points by looking at a certain decoration for three seconds. They explicitly say something like "we know no-one reads these manuals so here's a cheat to reward you".

here

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My hairy daddy worked at the original Bell Labs and I like it when he creams my tight twinkie Python IoT hole with his 10 inch magnetic drum and I can feel his slow but strong kilohertz pulse deep inside me.
Now get out.

wow you're so edgy, cool

Good god I haven't played that game in years, thanks for the feels user, I loved Rayman as a kid.

Boomers have somehow managed to become even more crotchety than their parents' generation in their old age. And that's saying a fucking lot, considering that they're the "sixty is the new forty! *BOOMER BLOVIATING*" crowd.

They're hopeless. Just fucking abandon them to their fates.

Because a lot of modern technology is made by retards who design an intuitive UI or develop stable software that just does what its supposed to. On the flip side, neural plasticity also decreases with age. So for older people, even those who worked in tech back in the 70s and 80s, learning new systems can be difficult.

I don't like to say this, but just get him a Mac, and then write up a cheatsheet for common things like taking screenshots or copy and pasting text.

Narcissist hypocrite parasite detected. In my opinion, abandonment and/or an answer of "I will not tolerate any more of your bullshit. Stop this now." work.
Stop tolerating him passively. Action is necessary.

can't*

this is b8. it sounds like you just make all kinds of assumptions, for example about what terminology he knows.

It's not just old people, though. Like 90% of people are bad at using technology.

Also, are you sure the problem here isn't that you're terrible at explaining things?

Dude, that story makes you look like an asshole. You should use some sort of remote desktop software to help your dad instead of sperging about his computer skills.

thats really hot user

Implying only old people are bad.
Question yourself user, How do you process your thoughts ? And how do the people you try to help (aka your dad) process their thoughts.
Pedagogy is hard you need to try and understand how people process information and it's not simple to explain either. From my experience most extreme case are because people are forced to use a computer. But there's also people who don't project themselves into the functions they need to do digitally, they still process what they need to do onto a physical level of action.
Example:
Now a digital example.
Then there's all the shortcuts and gizmos that you don't have when you wright physically like center text, copy/paste etcetera.
Do you want your dad to be spied on ?

True but it's very variable for tons of reasons, one of the most prominent ones are not reading/working/thinking and having too much distraction.
Old habits die hard.
ABSOLUTELY PROPRIETARY
I do this for all the people that I service and guess what, 3/4 don't read them and they phone me for something that is printed on paper next to them.
I remember the time when one of them told me that their password didin't work while it was written on a piece of paper next to them, but they didin't remember that it was there, that I added it specially for this case scenario.

This is how you get feuds between families and people in general.
Yes but not by imposing shit on his dad otherwise his dad will either respond aggressively or think that he's being treated like a baby.

I would say 99%.

This can be helpful
Let him vent his frustration out.

You will be the same once you're old. Mark my words, your kids will shitpost about you being unable to use whatever tech they will have by then.

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And this apparently includes not fucking reading? Literally 50% of support calls would go away if people would just read their goddamn screens. We're not talking about Java stack traces here, we're talking about "This button clearly explains that it does the thing you want".

Old people aren't shit at technology, they're just done with dicking around with it. Growing up they followed all the tech trends, they were excited to see all the new shit coming out. But there's only so many times you can do that before it gets old. Oh hey it's NEW TECH which does something SLIGHTLY BETTER! Exicitin.. well not really. They learned the tech of their youth and then lost interest in it.

You get old, you get sick of dicking around. You don't have the same energy you used to have, you're not quite as sharp in the mind and you're just all round pissed off with how nothing just works. Instead of spending 3 hours trying to figure out why your printer doesn't work (and it never fucking works) you ask the snot nosed brat to do it instead. You paid to raise the fucker, the least he can do is fix your printer for you.

Old people aren't dumb. They're as smart if not smarter than you are. They're just wiser so don't want to deal with bullshit. They have their era, they know THEIR tech and when you get old you will have the same experience.

Old people are very wise.

Yes.
Yes I know about this. For what I experienced it's can be some people who don't yet visualize themselves using the said digital tool. Perceptions/interpretation changes with each people, for me it's like visualizing lists, for someone else it might be trying to visualize where you are going in the forest. People need to know where they are in a computer/software and they don't know that because now one teaches that.
People need examples to mimic that example.

your dad might be an npc

...

My dad's 65 and can handle himself just fine. He doesn't have a background in tech.
Your dad's just retarded or has started developing senile dementia

Eat my ass, faggot. I am allowed to do my job and talk about how that job sucks at the same time.

for autists like OP yes

reddit is two blocks down, sir >>>/reddit/

Sorry not everyone was like you who had parents willing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars of today's money for their son to have a PDP 11. The only people who would have access would be at universities or at large business.

Why are young people so bad at everything else but using computers?

Yes, that was implied: I was referring to students. Maybe something more mainstream like the C64 would've had been a better example. It's old enough (released in the early 80s).
The point is that computing technology is no longer something *new and novel*, but rather something that's integrated in the lives of both young and old people alike, so the "old" and "young" people distinction is kinda pointless.
Those who care: learn; those who don't: just acquire a very vague understanding of their computers, and then have to pay for technical support from those who did care in the first place (this is not dismissive, it also applies to cars, graphic design, etc.).

Some people just refuse to learn anything new. New things are scary and intimidating and require a modicum of effort to understand, and many people need to be told what to do on a daily basis because thinking on their own is simply too demanding.
Like with diets, I was handed a piece of paper today that this boomer lady got in the mail, which listed off I think 11 SUPER FOODS, now basic nutrition should not be a hard concept for anyone to grasp. This paper listed two things that immediately contradicted each other, one being (0% fat) unsweetened greek yogurt and how it's so good because it has twice the protein and a tart (shit) flavor that mixes well with fruit (which adds sugar god damn it), while also listing Leafy greens (not exactly a specific super food but listed off a few in small print), but to benefit from any of the vitamins you get from leafy greens requires FAT because those vitamins are FAT SOLUBLE, and practically nothing has fat any more because retards were lead to believe that fat in foods is what makes them fat, and since nobody is getting enough fat in their diets they're told to take fish oil supplements. A smart person would realize that if fat were bad, they wouldn't be taking fish oil to supplement the fat that's been removed from practically everything, and that most of the diet advice they see is a load of bullshit.
But it's easier to get by when someone else is doing the thinking for you. Thinking, remembering, inferring and abstracting information is a laboring task to most people, and if they can find anyone or anything to ease that burden they will usually go that route.
Your dad may be one of those kinds of people, who need their hand held through everything. I could argue against the all the logical fallacies my own grandparents subscribed to, day in and day out but it would not change their minds in the least, my grandmother has been afraid to touch a computer since the the mid 90's because the instructor ignored her in the night class she took. Now she uses everything she hears on tv about technology gone wrong as justification for not even learning to type.

Calm down a bit dude. 20-30 years ago, all the MD's were saying a low-fat diet is the only right way to eat. It's no wonder people believed it. Pretty much everything the doctors said, or you saw on TV, or in print was saying: low-fat. And there wasn't much opposition, because no Internet for plebs back then.

My parents are like that too. At least my father doesn't care about most of them newfangled electric gizmos, so besides occasionally helping him with the TV he causes no problems. My mother on the other hand both wants to use modern technology and is adamant about not wanting to learn how to use it. She regularly needs help navigating Netflix (for those here who don't watch PozTV, believe me, the user interface is extremely easy to use), she simply will not comprehend that her Windows user account, her facebook account and her email account are different things that can have different passwords, will always assume that the poorly worded email from [email protected] is legit, can't move files from her phone to her computer, can't sort files into folders, etc. The thing is, she doesn't need to learn anything because she can always scream at me to solve it for her.

I think there are several reasons why some old people like OP's father are so bad at handling computers and similar technologies:
-Entitlement. They think they should be able to use any gadget or program without having to learn how to use it. Learning is something people aged 5-25 are supposed to do, not them. They were done with school long ago, they paid their dues, they shouldn't be expected to learn anything else ever again. This would be more likely to affect people who are highly credentialized, since they might feel more threatened by accepting they are beginners on some important subjects.
-Looking down on those who know. Somebody who thinks knowing how to use computers is for gross nerds or poorly paid code monkeys is not going to be very excited about learning about the subject, and will resent having one of those nerds trying to explain things to them. If OP's father sees OP as a worthless little shit he's not going to be paying much attention to what he says, why should he pay any attention to what this brat is saying? Just make this thing work already!
-Like and said, modern tech uses some forms of abstraction that they just can't wrap their heads around. They don't think "The screen is too bright, I'll minimize the program I'm using, open Screen Settings, go to the appropriate menu within it and turn brightness down," they think "the screen is too bright, so I have to click on this, then on this, then on this, then on that thing, then move this slider." Somebody who thinks in the former manner can get feedback about what he's doing from the screen, the person who thinks the latter will be completely lost if anything changes or they forget a step.

Reminds me of this blogpost making fun of the whole "oh, kids these days are digital natives, they know so much." It talks about adults who can't figure stuff out too.
coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-computers/

Are we the problem? Are we just enabling them?
You think they'd learn if we stopped being family tech support, or nah?

Maybe my family and friends suck at using tech because they know they can always get me to help them. Maybe their thought process is "I've encountered a problem, time to contact user" instead of "I've encountered a problem, time to look up how to fix it"

It's probably old people autism... dementia, aka Alzheimer's or Lewy Body

DELET THIS
sadcat.tiff

makes sense, most of what "superusers"/sysadmins/etc know isnt very precious or hard to obtain skill. OPs complaint is basically like complaining that his dad doesn't knw who Lil Pump or Gucci Gang are

Some old greybeard out there doesn't know why you're bad at .

Also, people back in the 60s and earlier already theorized and formulated advanced graphics concepts like tesselation and everything, but simply didn't have the hardware for it.
They knew tech shit half a century before there was hardware strong enough to handle it.

Your dad is just a normie.

...

Have you considered that maybe your dad isn't a nigger? What kind of machine did he used to use? Set him up with a window manager, or fucking DOS even.

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Have you never heard of a trojan virus?

Neuro-plasticity declines as you age, faggot.
Up until a certain age, you absorb information like a sponge, but the older you get, the harder it is to learn new things.
It's one of (but not the only) reason I don't use smartphones, nor any of that "metro" crap.
Show, don't tell, faggot.

Sigh... if it's that bad, you should have him checked for Alzheimers. It happens. It's not pleasant for any involved. Still, don't blame old people for being old. They're always going to be as is. How much, and whether you put up with him, is entirely up to you.
Have him use a single, strong password, and have him write it down on a private notebook.
You don't solve for complexity by adding more of it. Unless you put yourself in his shoes, and his crumudgeony perception of the world, you won't be able to do anything for him.

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My 90 year old grandmother fell for a Pajeet "Microsoft" tech support phone call scam and gave them remote access to her machine along with $300. After canceling the charge I wiped her laptop and installed Linux mint on it. She adapted perfectly well and used it every single day for all the same things she did on Windows, which admittedly wasn't much more than online banking, email, and facebook.

I showed her a bookmark to some internet radio station that was nothing but solo piano music, and she constantly told me how happy she was that I "downloaded all that music" onto her computer. Bless her soul. Of all my family members she was the only one who kept her hardware clean and neat and never got viruses or filled her disk with crap.

This. RTFM should always be the first step. Then, and only then, should people ask for help, either because the manual is poorly written or beyond their capacity for understanding.

The first technical skill that should be taught after "Hello world!" is "how do I look up shit in the documentation". I really wish that classes and text books incorporated this as well. Teach a man an API he will program for one project. Teach a man how to read manuals and he will be able to program any project.

In part yes. I don't expect my 50+ year old parents to dig through manuals, but when my 20 year old brother sends me an image so that I can lower its opacity because he cannot be bothered to learn the minimum about GIMP, the fault is entirely my own for enabling him.

But this sort of thing goes both ways. Any normal person will learn how to cook while still living with their parents, at least learn some basic stuff so you don't starve when your parents leave over the weekend and forget to stuff the fridge with Hot Pockets. But then there is the kind who will simply be like "mooooom, I'm hungry, feed me", they lack the fundamental drive to better themselves.

Proven to be false. Never been touted as last instance truth to start with.

It's quite evident that children don't even learn things as quickly as dedicated adults do, they just have more time and aren't bothered by mistakes.

Maybe it's less that they're children and more than they're not pre-educated. Something something zen tea cup analogy.

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holy fuck this board is literally just a carbon copy of cuckchan now what the fuck is this garbage thread

I already have. If children do learn faster, I don't think it's to any meaningful degree. When children learn to speak, it takes them a long time to speak as well as an adult, it's the same for when they learn to read, or write, or draw, or whatever. And what I gauge from this is, children spend a lot of time on things, but they learn them passively, because they aren't concerned with mastering these skills most of the time. A child speaks to communicate, they draw to have fun, they aren't worried about their free time, and there's no pressure or expectations, but a dedicated adult could be proficient in everything a child learns before adulthood in a fraction of the years if they were afforded the same luxuries.

Dementia is why Long Term Care Insurance > Life Insurance. Long Term Care will cost just as much as a mortgage on a house. If you have to choose, choose Long Term Care insurance, because your kids can sell your stupid house for the equity. Long Term Care will suck your assets dry at $60k/year or more!

thats an interesting way to spell 'dumb'

Can't blame your dad for this. GUI was mistake.

imagine writing like this unironically

Dumb people exist no matter the age.
Also, if they're grandparents, that means they were the absolute lowest form of normie, because they either are women or the kind of retard who would indulge in 3DPD.

bitch

I've told my dad to never use remote access software before because he's fallen for logmein-related tech support scams, and the only way I know he won't fall for it again is by telling him to never EVER install logmein, teamviewer, RDP, tightVNC, etc.

this is someone who struggles to understand how to click a button, you overestimate his abilities to not fuck things up, especially with remote access software

i want to set up a honeypot vm filed with bait and switch shock material and put one of those fuckers in.
I though things would have gotten better since 2010. apparently not.

nope, not at all
this bullshit argument comes up again and again, most people don't understand that you can do port scanning on entire ranges of IP addresses, or use scripts to mass-mail people the same exact scam message, or that malvertising or a hacked site can deliver the same browser locker payload to tons of people, not just targeting an individual person

they really think scamming, hacking, and data collection/spying is 100% manual, as if automation doesn't exist

saged

People of all ages are bad at tech, 99% of people at my work don't know what a vpn is, most just use iPhones, for my family I sort out their android phones ipads etc of there are any problems.

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You want possiblities why?
Your dad has a wealth of experiences and skills, but non of them related to computers. More info in the brain the more your brain has to go thru its databases.
He might have Alzheimer?
He wants to spend more time with you, and is using this as a proxy user, spend more time with your dad while he is still here.

Just say you're going out of the country for a vacay and ghost them.

In their defense, they only understand this tech through their own eyess. no offense, but thinking most people have the introspection to consider things differentlyl is asking for too much.

Nigger cattle have hooves. You try hen-pecking with nigger cattle hooves.

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Well i help my dad, when he has problems too but he dosen't seem that bad.

He almost never complain or have problems about his computer anymore ever since I put Linux mint on it, which I did because I was tired of spending hours every month trying to fix windows. So now if he has a problem I can just ssh in and fix it.

He still has some trouble with his smart TV though so I guess it has something to do with them not adopting to new technology very fast

Dammit user you made me LOL for realsies. I'm glad no one asked "what are you laughing at" here at my work. Sheesh. Nevertheless, 100 intarwebz to you.

Interesting perspective. You may have figured it out. I'm old enough and smart enough to know that my parents were very smart, but no, they never really "got" computers and what they are good for, except in very general "they are useful for keeping the books" sense. My dad even took a class, but it was filled with retired govt. morons who asked dumb questions and pissed him off, so he didn't stick with it. He made lots of money using and repairing tech from his era he did understand, so he didn't really have to have more.

WOW! HOW CAN SOMEONE NOT KNOW WHAT A VPN IS? THAT'S LIKE NOT KNOWING WHAT GSYNC, UMATRIX, OR NOSCRIPT ARE!!!!!!!

boot into Windows and use Microsoft Quick Assist

also stop shaming your dad for this. people's brains stop learning new things after a certain age. this will happen to you one day. in fact, I'm sure it already has. can you navigate the TikTok and Snapchat apps as well as a 14 yo zoomer can?

At the very least it's pretty bad that most people don't know what an operating system is.

Most boomers never had to do anything complicated to live a good life because economy was booming. They are simply not used to using their brains.

Check out the big brains itt.

SJWs are not boomers, by and large. I'm not at all convinced boomers are any dumber than later generations. They simply had less access to information, since the MSM had almost complete control. Today with the Internet there is no excuse. Of course they're trying their best to censor, so that little window may disappear.

HELP I CANNOT FIND ANY KEY

You're not a true OG Tech until you got that kind of customer.

It's just him being him. It's pretty much proven at this point that while there are some medical truths in age meaning deterioration of mental faculties, outside of things that are outright diseases it barely matters. If you're an alcoholic for a few years you do more damage. People who are good with computers now and open to learn new things will be the same when they're 75. There are some people in tech that still do serious programming work that were already in their twenties when most people itt weren't even born.

Age doesn't really play a relevant factor at all. Some people just kinda give up and coast through life on autopilot, the older the more likely. Imagine you in a place where you probably only have 5-10 years left at best with questionable quality of life and everything on your body is noticeably slowly giving out and all your friends and actors/artists/journalists/politicians etc. you've known are dead. It takes a special kind of attitude to not just completely give up at that point. Tompson and Pike are in their mid-60s and mid-70s respectively and whipped up the language Go. People finish university and college degrees in their 70s and 80s. It's all up how you carry yourself through life, plain and simple. Oh and don't drink and/or do drugs. The PSAs were right after all, they literally rot your brain. Most of all alcohol. Stuff's brain-poison.

Our society is very bad at handling old people and it shows. There's an obsession with youth and it somehow magically making up for all. People in their 30s are "middle aged" now. It's horrifying.

Don't cut him crap because he's old. Treat him like an adult and talk to him like an adult who makes no effort to do something.

do people who have been using computers for at least the last 10 years but don't know what ctrl/shift click does count?

WHAT HAPPENED WITH (((THE ECONOMY)))?

why decades ago it was booming, you could easily buy house with salary, but now people work in shit jobs without being able to afford rent? even though there is more wealth in world than ever, more technology etc? who really profits from this and takes all that wealth?

it's almost like if capitalism doesn't work... or works, but not as you people think. it's pretty good at taking all wealth and concentrating it in small amount of individuals.

Fuck off, commie shit. You deserve a bullet through your skull.

...

What a waste of educational resources. I'm sure there's the rare exception that lives, remains healthy, and does something with their degree into their late 90s or early 100s, but most people in their 70s and 80s are entering senescence.
Someone who is 30 this year was born in 1988. The life expectancy for a white male born in the United States in 1988 is 72.2 years. So yeah, age 35-36 is literally middle age. Black males born in 1988 only have an average life expectancy of 64.4.

>WHAT HAPPENED WITH (((THE ECONOMY)))?
Lots of people died in WWII. Less competition for jobs.

Now, it's like the opposite: no one dying from war, but lots of people coming into the country. More and more competition.

Don't forget the entrance of women in the workforce. Again, more labor available = lower wages for everyone.

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middle age doesn't mean literally "middle of life" you retard

Heh.

I wish I was underage, like you though

Lots of boomer are actually able to use technology, your parents are retarded. This level of ineptitude was kind of acceptable in the 90s, early 00s.

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fake & gay

This.
Self-sufficiency is the keyword.
He's an adult, yes? So you might love him and all, but he has to know how to take care of himself, do whatever he wants to do, or not do it at all, if he can't read UI.

Older people are actually good at it especially those who know what a typewriter is. Those who don't? They're just overwhelmed.