computers, broadband, and social networking

Online -- the bad, the worse, and the ugly.  We want 100% of older adults to have access to the Internet.  It's a big place with lots of useful information, educational materials, loaded with discounts, pictures of family members from far away, and on and on.  But who keeps up with recent, uh, upgrades? Please, to those of you helping folks with these tools, training and caution is required:

Software is smarter – maybe piecemeal hardware will be just a memory. What if devices were marketed just like paint color palettes? You know, those strips of colors that go well together, samples you can easily assemble as examples of how the trim will look with the walls and the color of the doors? What if you had the same experience buying a device in the store or online – and the items that went together were presented as selectable – beyond just memory and storage?

Smartphones – no buyers left?   In February, the lack of 'innovation in the Samsung Galaxy S5' revealed to a Forbes writer that this points to saturation of the smartphone market.  What is 'saturation'?  Turns out it doesn’t mean that everyone has bought a smartphone, just that the era of double-digit growth rates may have ended.  (Now we know that bank savings interest rates must be 'saturated.') Or not, a few months later, sales of the S5 are good and globally helping Samsung 'regain momentum'.  Did they ever lose market share?  Only IDC knows for sure.

The Internet is crawling with tech training programs. But as the latest Pew study spells out, fewer than half of those aged 75+ are online. Ironically for the half that are not online, bank branches are closing – with the biggest decline in Florida. The explanation?  So say the banks: "mobile and online banking has eliminated the need for branches."  The Bank of America example: 9% of all check deposits in the fourth quarter came from mobile devices. And I wonder what percentage of those check deposits were made by people aged 75+?  Oh, I wonder if they know that only 18% of that age group owns a smart phone or tablet? But forward motion is inexorable – we know how badly Social Security wanted out of the paper-check business. We also know how worrisome it can be to manage privacy and security on tablets and smart phones.  Which brings us to the topic of training older adults about smart use of technology – where is the training and what does it cover?