[chillingeffect]

Yep. Spend an hour with an elderly person trying to do things like change a password, unsub from a mailing list, connect a Roku, look at a digital photo album, etc. Will blow your mind wide open. We basically need an entire tier of easy internet for the elderly.

[defrost]

It's more than just a "tier of easy internet for the elderly" as that alone won't ease the suspicion that something might be going wrong.

There's demand for trusted verified handling of regular financial life interactions, bill paying, hiccups from cards being changed and regular direct debits needing resetting, etc.

Much like, Chubb (for example) remote monitor home security with liability should one of their employees start feeding "they're not home and they have valuables" infomation to thieves.

My own father was born in 1935 and he's still pretty sharp, handles his accounts etc but he still worries (quite rightly) about social engineering and scammers .. the very "ease" of something doesn't reassure, it's the fact that interactions have been double checked by a trusted party (me, I guess) that does the trick.

It's also an area that demands reputation, liability, and transparent auditing - conservatorships for the elderly, as for Britney Spears, are ripe with opportunities for graft and abuse.

[toomuchtodo]

https://www.truelinkfinancial.com/

Found them here long ago (YC S13), used them with an alcoholic parent I was acting in a guardian capacity for.

https://hn.algolia.com/?q=truelink

[defrost]

That appears to be a useful solution to part of the challenges in the domain.

I'm not sure what countries that spans (I'm in Australia) so there's perhaps scope for others to expand across other geographic locations.

There's also the "don't babysit me" aspect, a good number of elders are often slowly diminishing in capability and have no desire to be immediately shifted to a full guardianship when what they want is incrementally increasing trusted oversight that they are in control of.

[toomuchtodo]

I agree. I’m also looking for the equivalent of a social worker CRM/platform if anyone has any recommendations. I would prefer to not have to roll my own with a contractor if at all possible.

[lazyasciiart]

For what context? One person keeping track of all the social workers they are in contact with for personal use?

[toomuchtodo]

No, to keep track of consumers of social work for social workers. Think EHR system for social work, for shared provider access for each person in need of care and services, and central tracking for each person of service, care, and resources available and provided.

I’m currently tracking with spreadsheets, which is less than ideal.

[blackbaze]

A private network? Separate from the internet? A dedicated device for said network

[dghlsakjg]

Holy cow, yes.

I just spent an hour yesterday untangling my in-laws shared, paid, Spotify account.

What had transpired is that they needed to confirm FILs physical address. So they sent him a link to an old email address, but no notification in app. He, reasonably didn’t see it within the 1 week deadline. So they removed him from his own shared account. Once he was removed there was no way to confirm his address and self service to get himself back into his own paid service.

To get back on the account I had to find the very hidden “contact a real person” link buried very deep in useless help articles, and gated behind a bot that didn’t even get close to understanding the issue. Then, to verify identity he had us login via the app, not the website, create a playlist, make it private using a secondary menu and message him the name. Only then was he able to be added back onto the shared account. The shared account that he was paying for, mind you.

I have no idea how anyone who hasn’t seen the inside of a tech company is supposed to navigate these systems.

[kjkjadksj]

We abstracted ourselves into this. Imagine how the spotify app would have been as an early 2000s website. Loads an informationally dense page in a fraction of bandwidth. User and password box probably immediately visible. Forgot username and forgot password button immediately visible. Customer support email and phone number probably there on the bottom of the page.

Somewhere in the years since we decided basic utility were unsightly.

[CJefferson]

Honestly, I think for some of these types of things we probably need laws, providing minimal levels of support for paid services.

Yes, there are probably a whole bunch of paid services which simply can't function if they have to actually provide useful, easy-to-access support to their paying customers. However, I'm not sure it's a net benefit to let them exist.

[pzo]

Wouldn’t tech illiteracy eventually die out? Millenials are good with tech and gen z even better. It’s probably still a good niche for the next 20 years. On the other hand poor fitness and mental wellbeing seems affects all age groups.

[dghlsakjg]

Tech literacy seems to be dropping with newer generations.

I taught a basic after school coding class, and the first thing I had to teach was the concept of a file, a folder, saving and loading.

These are things that everyone I went to school with understood in primary school.

Apps have abstracted it all away, and now kids just go for the search bar.

[kjkjadksj]

Gen z is more tech illiterate than you would think. I work with a few student interns in this cohort sometimes. “Copy and paste that into notepad and save it as a text file then email it to me” “uhhhh”

These kids grew up on the iphone or gsuite. They have little concept of a filesystem much less how the OS works. Its a black box. Teaching command line or writing scripts takes a lot of effort just to break out from their own wrong internal worldview of how a computer works. It’s kind of disappointing seeing what tech companies have done to dumbify this generation in terms of tech literacy.

[asveikau]

I think normies (not hn reading outliers) in Gen Z and alpha may have regressed. Younger people come up in the era of devices and apps hiding the existence of a filesystem from you.

[asynchronous]

I’d say the gap is going back to being a large canyon. Just like in the before times, nerds are hyper aware and then everything else is abstracted away for the common person. Anecdotal evidence but my take.

[tcmart14]

I don't think there is any regression. I think if anything, really overestimating how much people understood. Being a millennial and knowing a lot of other millennials and gen-xers, They can drag and drop, but they really don't understand much more than a folder is something files can go in. Files, you can tell them its fairy dust in a box and they'd believe it. Its just magic. I also work on a point of sale system with many users and clients who are gen-x and millenials, and seeing what customer support tackles, I don't think most normies ever really understood.

[tcmart14]

I think so. My only data point though is probably my grandpa. He is nearing 80 and as far as interfacing with consumer tech devices, he is just as proficient as me. The only thing I beat him on is, well, I am a software engineer, so I know how do a little bit more with the guts. I attribute it to, he worked for 'the telephone company' (AT&T) most of his life as a technician and in sales. So he for him, keeping up and learning how to work with new devices is a no brainier for him. My guess is that those of us who are younger, it'll be the same as him.

I think its more about, stuff iterates today to your much more experienced and maybe open to adapting to new iterations faster. Or like my grandfather, he work with lots of new tech continuously over his 30-40 year career. So adapting to new tech is just second nature.

[lolinder]

Tech illiteracy will only die out if technology finally plateaus. The elderly were great with the technology that was popular when they were in their forties too, the problem is that technology didn't stand still from there.

[Duanemclemore]

What constituted tech literacy 20 years ago won't get you very far today. I'm in my 40's and I see it - people my own age who ... like, they have used computers for 30 years. We were the original online generation, etc etc etc. But the number of things with family, friends, and coworkers - again my same age - which seem absolutely ridiculously simple for the terminal tech-tinkerer like myself but which trip them up is just shocking.

Tech literacy is a moving target.

[nunez]

Not at all! People are increasing _consuming_ tech, not _understanding_ it.

[CJefferson]

Companies just get better at being abusive.

I'm a professor in AI, I still wasted two days of my life disentangling a mess caused by a family member ending up with two amazon accounts attached to the same e-mail address.

[Mayzie]

There have been and are attempts at addressing the usability gap of tech by the more tech illiterate over the years. Particularly, Linux projects such as Ordissimo[1], Eldy[2], and Endless OS[3]. I am sure there are plenty of other projects, as well (including Apple's new iPhone Assistive Access mode[4]. As sad as it may be, the market would probably be non-existent in a decade or two as newer generations enter aged care having already been somewhat familiar with computers and phone technology.

[1] https://www.ordissimo.com/en/why-ordissimo

[2] http://www.eldy.eu/

[3] https://www.endlessos.org/

[4] https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/assistive-access-iphon...

[kjkjadksj]

I think the easy internet is the exact issue. We try and solve friction by abstraction that serves to misunderstand what is fundamentally happening with the computer, adding more confusion that could be avoided. All because we haven’t solves the onboarding problem, merely beat around the bush of it.

[k310]

Indeed, I saw some simplified computers over time but everything "behind" them got crazy complex. I did tech for a living and it's still infuriating at times.

Ex got passwords altered. My credit union got ransomwared. For mysterious reasons the "bank by touchtone" worked so I could pay my credit card, but I can't get balances and access via web or app. The point being that problems are wildly varied and changing, let alone basic stuff that Apple and others change every so often. I know how to get answers by web search, but it's tricky, and impossible for others. Worse, fraudulent sites get top SEO rank, pose as authorized support and get you to drop RAC apps on your device. First question she had was "What is this remote app?" Like, delete immediately and restart the phone. Apple does not ask you to do that.

So, I think that personal attention is often needed. To the extent that AI can replace some of the tedious lookup, fine.

Another thing I have noted over time is that in helping people, I often run through lots of menu items and settings that people are unaware of (and sometimes I am not aware of) and the same function doable in two different places.

Of course, they want me to explain what I did, but since a lot was just looking for trouble and finding settings, it's 10x faster just to do it than explain it, especially since the solution is likely one-shot or useful once every 3 years. And then everything changes.

Well, I'll stop here for now. I love that this matter is getting a thread here.

[nasmorn]

When you can just open an applications menu and click every possibly interesting option you are already more proficient in the use of any software than 90% of its daily users. That is the only explanation why I can fix any office worker’s software problems while using a code editor and terminal for 95% of my workday

[Ccecil]

Just went through this with my 80 year old father this week. He was attempting to switch his cell service. They kept telling him they sent him a verification code via text...problem is he does not text. He actually turns his phone off completely when he is not making a call. He had no idea how to check the message...nor did he understand that swiping down (android) would show the messages at the top...and the concept of "swipe to answer" was eluding him too...he kept tapping the answer button and getting mad that it wouldn't respond.

This is a person who spent half of his life driving trucks...after he retired he took a class called "overcoming computer phobia" which began quite literally with "this is the power button, this is the mouse". He refuses to get GPS in the car and does not use the internet at all. No email, no social media.

These people are out there and as they age they only get more confused by things that they do not understand. Customer service is getting more and more difficult to get in touch with a real person (even more rare for the agent to be fluent and coherent in the necessary language, it is frustrating to not understand the topic and not able to comprehend spoken instructions at the same time). Not totally sure what the fix here is since automated systems and outsourcing service seem to be where everything is headed. In the case described above my father drove to the local office and was told he needed to call the number. The person in the office claimed they could do nothing...

My county is over 35% retired people. Cost of living is way above what caregivers can afford (just in the last 5 years or so). Most businesses have "now hiring" signs. I am not sure who is going to be taking care of these people since it seems to be a growing population...and those who would be able to take care of them are leaving the area.

So yeah...I agree with the OP. This field is going to grow in the next few years...but as others have said it may drop off a bit after the boomers.