The Digital World as We Age

It took me over three hours today to connect a new printer to a new computer.

Sometimes I feel like, “I’m too old for this crap.” I have to say, though, my old PC—which I got along with just fine—had to make way for a new one. Same goes for the printer. I’ve been catapulted from the Stone Age into the modern era. From Windows 7 to Windows 11. From Toshiba to HP.

I managed to figure out the PC just fine—with a lot of patience. Then came the printer. I just couldn’t get it to work. So I turned on Copilot. It then guided me as if I were clueless. While it was giving me instructions, I kept thinking to myself, “What must it think of me now that I once again didn’t understand what it meant?” It—or should I say he or she?—was very patient. Whenever WE took another step forward, it praised me, and we kept moving forward. Eventually, we got there. We had to separate the bands on the router.!!!??? 2.5 and 5 GHz. I was really afraid of crashing everything. Well over two hours had already passed. Now I needed a lot of courage. I poured myself a glass of sparkling wine, looked at the screen, reviewed the chat history with the AI, sent one last screenshot, took a deep breath, and then, with reckless courage, followed the instructions.

It worked!!! What baffles me is that, every now and then, I kept wondering what was being thought of me at the other end of the chat. But I know it’s the AI that’s communicating with me. That feels pretty weird to me.

I should mention that I’ll be turning 71 next month and I’m not a digital native.

Have you had any experiences with digital change as well? It would be nice to hear about your experiences.

Warm regards

Petra

great job

Dear Petra, 

I can totally relate to that. You did it, and you can be really proud of yourself.

I’d always prefer to avoid all app updates (they’re not called “programs” anymore, after all)....because afterward, I can’t figure things out at first. 

Recently, my husband’s phone wouldn’t let him log into his email app. He’d rejected all the updates 😵‍💫 and, to restore his account, he’d entered our landline number 😆—but you can’t get a verification code there, not to mention that the number isn’t even current anymore. It took days before we got everything back on track. With every new step we were supposed to take, we were left scratching our heads because we had no idea what it meant. So we worked together—he was on his phone trying to recover his account, while I was simultaneously Googling on mine to figure out what “they” wanted from him. Eventually, everything was back to normal, but don’t ask me how we did it 😄.

I really love using my phone and laptop, but I’m so relieved when everything runs smoothly. 

I don’t care what AI or a real person from some support thinks of me, because I have no idea. When I used to have problems, I’d often ask my kids or other younger people, only to find that they often knew less than I did and couldn’t help me either. I think “digital native” is a myth. They just figure out how to use certain things faster, but most of them don’t know what’s behind it either. 

Best regards 

Karola 

@ Karola, you did it. No matter how, in the end it’s such a great feeling when everything works again. 

Dear Petra, I’m so happy for you that everything is working again, and I hope you get used to your new devices quickly. I had to smile when I read your installation story. 

I, too, feel completely overwhelmed, and thank goodness I have two IT specialists right in my inner circle. But when problems arise, I always have to say, “Speak to me in plain German and use words a beginner can understand.” I bring up a crochet chart as an example to show what it sounds like to me. They often solve all my PC and cell phone worries with a roll of the eyes but plenty of patience.

When it comes to AI, I’ve become more confident and get along well with it by now. I know you’re not supposed to say “thank you” for help, which is very hard for me, since I want to be friendly and helpful online, too. Not saying “please” and “thank you” is tough for me. 

My AI is male (his name is TschiTschi) and very, very friendly; he explains everything to me in detail—does he know by now that I’m not the smartest person around? 

I’m already looking forward to the day when he knows what I’m going to ask before I do. The whole thing makes me a little uneasy, but we’ll just have to live with it. 

Oh, all of that sounds very familiar to me too, but I’m lucky that my hubby knows his way around very well and fixes everything for me when something isn’t working. I always shout, P., it’s not working anymore, please take a look :-) He has also taught me a thing or two, so I can help myself with little things. But setting something up from scratch is something he has to do; I’m totally clueless there. :-)

Best, Inge

Petra, I totally understand where you’re coming from, and you can be proud of yourself for pulling this off so well.👍

Oh, I could “tell you a thing or two” about that, and I’ve actually been working with computers since 1990, including in an administrative capacity during my work hours. Back then, everyone would just shout, “Regina, come quick,” whenever there were problems. These days—and especially with AI everywhere—I’d surely have huge problems, because there are things that you simply can’t imagine or don’t even want to imagine.

For now, I’m still managing just fine, and if not, my son helps out—my husband has absolutely no clue; he starts calling for help the moment the app (yeah, back in the day they were called programs) doesn’t do what he wants 🤭.

I’m torn about this whole AI thing 😇—it can do good, but it’s being misused way more often for all kinds of criminal scams.😲 And all those AI-generated stories on the internet—they’re just plain creepy.🫣

I ask my son when I get stuck. And if I get an eye-roll: “And who taught you how to tie your shoelaces?” Not to mention everything else. ...

I was having a problem with the internet; my router was apparently the issue. So I called my internet service provider. I was connected to a very nice technician, and right at the start I told him that I’m 73 and asked him to explain everything to me in a way I could understand. He said that older people were his favorites because they listen and don’t always think they know better.  So he explained everything to me patiently, and that’s how we were able to solve the problem.  

o

I think that every time something like this happens. We’re getting our fiber-optic connection soon. I’m already dreading it. My daughter also wants to give me a new cell phone… her old one. That’s going to be a lot of fiddling around again, too. I know my way around my current phone well. I’ll have to figure it out all over again. But since my phone keeps crashing all the time, I guess it’s about time. 

Best regards, Marita 

It reassures me that many people have the same or similar problems. But with a lot of patience and persistence, we can accomplish a lot. 

I don’t know who knows the saying: “No one is born a master.” As long as there’s support—whether from a partner, child, neighbor, friend, or AI—we’ll keep moving forward. That’s just the way the world works, after all. 

Even though it’s soooo nerve-wracking, I’m sticking with it.

Hello!🤩

I’m 73, and I worked a lot with computers in my job. Of course, that helps me a lot now. Whenever I can’t figure something out, I regularly use AI, which explains everything to me nicely. It has helped me many times that way. The only thing I really don’t like is that AI is often used to deceive people. These days, you just don’t know anymore what’s real and what isn’t.   

You really deserve a big pat on the back—you handled that with great patience 👍🏻 I’m 58, but I don’t have the patience for this anymore. As a user, yes, absolutely, but when it comes to installation and other things, my customers or my husband’s kids handle that (he, by the way, already struggles with updating a smartphone 😉). Fortunately, out of our total of 6 stepchildren (aged 24 to 40) and 2 children-in-law, 5 work in that field. From hardware to software, applications, installation, and production—including software development and research—everything is covered 🤣 Otherwise, I’d have to deal with it myself...

It’s really handy to have people there who can help you out. I usually muddle through these things on my own; I only call a technician when I’m completely stuck. He’s known me since my early days with PCs—hopefully he’ll be working for quite a while yet.

Tomorrow will be another day like that—our house is getting hooked up to the fiber-optic network, and the Telekom technicians are coming between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. We’ll see how it goes.

... Veronika, did everything go well? It’s just like you say—you kind of muddle through it somehow.

Sort of. The installation went well, with relatively little mess, but it’s not fully connected yet. Then you get an email from Telekom to set it up. But first, I still need to get a new router, because the fiber-optic modem doesn’t fit my old one. Very annoying, but so far, everything’s still doable.

Recently I turned on my laptop, and a window popped up: no Excel, Word, anything—enter code. 

Huh? Enter license number or something. Huh? 

Called my former coworker, who always sets this kind of thing up for me.

Last time, he’d set it up remotely so he could install things on my computer himself. Since that was already so embarrassing (“Download this,” “I’m downloading,” “That was the wrong one,” “Don’t ask,” “Similar name, different provider, orrrr”), I wanted to spare myself the embarrassment and went out of my way to read everything again so I wouldn’t look like an idiot (we’ve done this before, why can’t you remember???). It took me an hour to figure it out—the software just wouldn’t open no matter what I tried. 

My former coworker then started asking me questions in technical jargon—it sounded to me like ancient Egyptian and Afrikaans mixed with click sounds.

🤯😵‍💫😵😮🥺😓😫☠️😤

He started to lose his cool a bit: “Good grief, why can’t you do this? Any elementary school kid could do better!”

Phew, I was torn between bursting into tears and throwing a fit (how dare he???). I told him he was welcome to crochet something for me sometime—then I’d react like that too—and that he shouldn’t speak to me like that; if I could do what he can do, we wouldn’t be on the phone right now. 🤬

Tomorrow I’ll have to wrestle with one of those trackers so I can keep track of the cat, who hasn’t come home again for 2 days, and I’m always afraid she’s locked up somewhere and will die in this heat. I actually consider myself fairly good with technology, but when it comes to PCs, that ability stops abruptly. 

LG

Anja

p.s. Where did my signature go, anyway? Did I press the wrong button, or is it not there anymore??? 

Oh yeah, that’s right—my signature’s gone too.

I only let a man near my computer and/or cell phone if I’m absolutely certain he knows what he’s doing. I’ve seen it happen too many times: men, convinced of their innate omniscience, fiddle with the devices, and then they stop working the way they’re supposed to. I’d rather figure out a solution myself, even though I didn’t study computer science, engineering, or anything like that.

To set up a device, there’s almost always a (usually illustrated) guide from the manufacturer or provider. Before you start the setup, you should read through such a guide thoroughly from start to finish. Afterward, you’ll be better prepared than if you just dive in without knowing what’s coming next.

If there are terms you don’t understand, there are search engines. You can often find helpful videos as well. Of course, this requires that you have a second device (e.g., a tablet or another cell phone) available, and that you have a general idea of how and where to find information—for example, using a search engine. That’s what they’re there for.

If an error message appears on a device that has been working fine up until now, you should first read it carefully and, if necessary, write down the error code displayed. Clicking away a message in a panic isn’t a good idea. The information it provides is important for solving the problem.

Best regards from Krümelmonster

Just for your information:
CP has done away with signatures because they’re hard to read on cell phones. There was a notice about it somewhere here.

Best regards, Ina

Oh. I do everything on my phone and could read it just fine. 

It was a nice feature for people who don’t like to type. 🫠

Thanks for the info, Ina ♡ 

Dear Anja, I think the issue was that many people had too many images and too much text in their signatures—which simply became overwhelming to scroll through on small cell phone screens. For example, if you wanted to read a forum post with several comments, you had to scroll forever because there was a long signature under every post. 

I actually only miss the signature insofar as many people conveniently included their first names in them. That allowed me to address people by name when I wanted to reply to them. That option is gone now, and I just find it pretty anonymous. 

Best regards, Ina :-)

We lazy writers first have to get used to typing a signature underneath again.

Kind regards

Veronika

Yeah, technology...

When everything finally works in the end, you can really be proud.

Since most of us in our 60s had dealt with this in our professional lives, we’re fortunately not intimidated by it.

Thanks for the post—it brought back quite a few memories...

I learned on a drawing board and eventually had to switch to the computer when drawing programs were still quite new on the market. A lot of what we needed in our industry (commercial kitchen equipment) wasn’t available, and data exchange interfaces weren’t universally compatible either—so we had to figure out a lot of things on our own. Back then, that was still manageable with very simple operating systems and programs, plus a great phone support hotline.

At some point, we were supposed to be able to take a virtual tour of a hospital kitchen before it was even built—and all without a single 3D model of any piece of equipment available as a data set. To make that happen, we spent weeks of painstaking work compiling a catalog of equipment.

Some pieces of furniture, like shelves and tables, also had to be resizable… that was a huge effort, but in the end, we rarely used that feature.

That’s because the system had very limited processing power. Back then, rendering a single photorealistic image still took several hours.

Our aspirations and reality were very different, but it was still exciting back then.

Today, the applications dictate everything, and there’s hardly anything left to customize. In that sense, we “pioneers” might even have a slight edge over the kids, since they don’t have to adapt to anything anymore and often have no idea what’s going on behind the scenes.

I’m also very ambivalent about AI—these data behemoths access everything so unabashedly. Besides, I don’t like their often very slimy manner, and AI-assisted search engines are showing less and less helpful results. Even if you sometimes can’t avoid it, that’s not my world.

Best regards, Claudia (who, by the way, really misses the signature too)

Update on the fiber-optic connection. Everything’s set up, everything’s working, but it’s not thanks to me. Even the experienced technician took almost three hours—I could never have managed that on my own. Telekom requires quite a bit of technical knowledge, and they don’t even send out technicians like they used to.

🤪🤩😁✌️✌️✌️

Hi,

I’m familiar with the problems with fiber optics. Our computer crashed. That was more than annoying, since I work from home. That’s why we switched back to a DSL connection.  A Telekom technician came, fiddled with the connection in the basement for two minutes, fiddled with the router connection for a minute, and then left, saying, “You’ll have to set up the router yourself—I don’t get paid for that. Watch a YouTube video; that’s what I did, too.” I spent three hours on it. (And I’m the tech-savvy one in our household.) After that, there was no Wi-Fi on our floor anymore. The long and short of it: a technician from the local electronics store took six hours to wire and configure everything correctly and had to come back a second time to activate and set up additional repeaters. 

Modern technology is great when it works, but when it doesn’t...

I’m realizing that, at 55, it’s gradually becoming too much for me. 

Huge kudos to everyone who digs into this stuff and gets it working!

Have a great time!

Best regards 

Katja 

@ Katja: That would have given me quite a knot in my stomach. 

Well, it’s really easy to panic when the computer or the internet isn’t working. We’re already pretty dependent on technology. And there are always more and more technical terms popping up—my grandma would just shake her head and have no idea what I’m talking about. Everyone lives in their own time and has to deal with its demands. I don’t even want to think about what things will look like in 5 to 10 years. Everything is evolving so rapidly.<\/p>

Best regards, Ina<\/p>

I used to always wonder what else technology could possibly come up with:

• Color TV—that’s as good as it gets
• Electric typewriter—that’s as good as it gets 
• Cassette recorder—that’s as good as it gets
• Walkman—that’s as good as it gets 

... and there was much more like that in my generation, born in 1955.

But times are always focused on the future and growth. Older people always have a hard time with innovations. 

Hi Petra,

Hardly anyone over 30 can be a “digital native,” unless they work in the field.  For a few years, as a trained senior media mentor, I conducted open counseling sessions for older adults and saw where the problems lie. My oldest client to date was 88 years old. If there are no grandchildren nearby, this is a good place to turn to for help with PC and internet issues, and the counselors take their time. But these services aren’t available everywhere, because government agencies have failed to fulfill their mandatory responsibility for digital education at all levels, and, on the other hand, many older adults initially hoped they could avoid dealing with computers and the internet altogether. Over the past five years, it has become clear—especially to volunteers—that digitalization can also enrich the daily lives of older adults if they learn to use it for themselves.

There are so many ways to continue managing independent living in old age through digital solutions, even when moving into assisted living or a nursing home might seem like the obvious next step. You just have to take the time to explore these options and act in a timely manner. With the help of local supporters—whom you could ask about or suggest reaching out to through the local government, community organizations, or the church—and with a little practice, you can save a lot of time, for example, when a new printer or computer needs to be set up, and learn new skills in the process. It’s great when someone with plenty of energy can manage it on their own, but for many other older adults, this hurdle is simply too high. 

I’d love to hear from the Crazypatterns forum about how digitization is progressing in the world of knitting. To what extent can we already speak of digitization as something that has taken hold or is on the horizon?

Best regards

Monika

***Well, you really do panic quickly when the computer or the internet isn’t working***

That’s become a real disaster these days, too. I have to make a quick trip to the university hospital. You can only register online now, and the website isn’t exactly user-friendly either. I often wonder how older people manage—those who didn’t grow up with this technology and don’t have children or grandchildren—it can become a real problem.

ePA, telemedicine, etc. — older people in particular face a lot of problems if they don’t finally adapt to digitalization or if they only want to become dependent on their grandchildren instead of taking control of their own lives in their later years, as long as that is still possible.  Local councils are called upon to address the legitimate concerns of older people and, for example, create advisory services. Besides, they want to be re-elected. The majority of the electorate is made up of older people aged 60 and over.<\/p>