Age Concern

A fifth of the adult UK pop­u­la­tion has never used a computer or been online, says the new government-​​funded body UKOnlineCentres. According to the press release I received, one-​​in-​​ten of over 55s would rather do a bungee jump than use the Internet. They’re launching an ini­ti­ative to try to overcome this.

I know about this, a little. My won­derful mum (71) is one of the dis­en­fran­chised.  She has had poten­tial access to the Internet for years, but she doesn’t use it for banking, shopping, enter­tain­ment, inform­a­tion, com­mu­nic­a­tion or news. Largely, she uses it because other people (me and my sister) want her to. I recall her telling me last year:

I go on the Internet once a week, just so I can remember how to do it. But once I’m there, I’ve no idea what I might want to do.

When it comes to the ‘fear factor’, she’s def­in­itely worried about what it might do to her phone bill*. It took her 10 years to use an ATM, so I can’t see Internet banking on the cards in the near future. But more per­tin­ently, she hasn’t really seen the point. She gets online; gets to MSN or whatever it is and there’s nothing there for her. I get that.

More recently, she’s joined a local library pro­gramme to learn more about com­puters and the Internet. She’s actually a lot happier about using their com­puters than the one she’s got at home: she can’t break anything and she can’t run-​​up a massive phone bill. The lessons have been a bit dis­ap­pointing, though: appar­ently, copy-​​and-​​paste has been on the agenda three weeks running, without any indic­a­tion why anyone would want to copy and paste anything. No one did that before, you see.

She sends me an email once a week on Wednesdays at 10am. I love that and always reply imme­di­ately, but by that point her allotted hour is finished.

And I’m sorry, but I do wonder what’s the point?

No shiny media campaign will make people like mum love the Web. Oh, I know there’s a gazil­lion silver surfers and online com­munities for the elderly and bingo and everything. But she’s happier with what she’s got and has always had. Our society is utterly selfish, self-​​serving and hateful to try to make her feel inad­equate for not using the Web. Even more so when it makes it harder for her to access inform­a­tion and services because she doesn’t.

* she still says thing like ‘I know this is running up your bill, so I won’t be long’.

image credit: Ricky

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