
“Old age” is made up–and this concept is hurting everyone - andyjohnson0
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/614155/old-age-is-made-upand-this-concept-is-hurting-everyone/
======
blunte
This is a complex topic with many (not-so-related) facets.

From the employment perspective, there certainly are some companies where the
benefits a more senior/experienced employee provide are wasted or ignored. In
those cases, it makes sense for the company to replace the older worker with
younger (cheaper and less opinionated) employee. Granted, I'm on the older
side, so I'm not being ageist here.

From a consumer/user perspective, it's more about understanding your user than
their age specifically. But generally speaking, much older users have very
different backgrounds and experiences; thus, their approach to using things
may be considerably different from that of a younger person. That said, most
user interfaces and product features probably don't fit any userbase well. So
in a way, the sea of bad interfaces isn't ageist - it's just bad UX.

~~~
moltensodium
You managed to take an article about ageism and somehow transform it into a UX
problem because that's the prism you wanted to see the world through.

Wow, that's really something else. You see this a lot on HN but this comment
is really just breathtaking in the leaps it takes.

~~~
blunte
Subtitle of article: Products designed for older people reinforce a bogus
image of them as passive and feeble.

And elsewhere in the article: Half of older longtime job holders, meanwhile,
are pushed out of their jobs before they planned to retire.

~~~
whycome
The fact that you so simply replied to that misguided comment with information
rather than its much-deserved counter-attack really shows your age. Thank you.

------
wnissen
Life expectancy past 65 is not, in fact, increasing at nearly the rate of
overall life expectancy, which is mainly driven by reduced infant and child
mortality. This data is from the UK, not the US, but the curves are similar.
In the last 30 years life expectancy for women who reach age 65 has increased
only by about 4 years. People are living a few years longer than a generation
ago, but not that many. [https://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/public/news-
item/are-we-too...](https://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/public/news-item/are-we-
too-complacent-about-life-expectancy)

------
rmilejczz
> And don’t try to tell me the real issue is that older people aren’t tech
> savvy. Maybe that stereotype once contained a grain of truth—in 2000, just
> 14% of 65-plus America used the internet—but it’s no longer the case. Today,
> 73% of the 65-plus population is online, and half own smartphones.

This is interesting to me, as while it certainly is true it doesn’t come close
to saying what the author is trying to make it say imo. Yeah my grandparents
have smartphones, I still wouldn’t call them tech savvy.

I work as one of a small team of developers in a rather old (demographically)
vocational company, and while our team doesn’t do IT work per se, all the
employees over 50 can’t tell the difference between the Dev team and IT
support. They have no clue, and explaining it to them is impossible. Further,
it’s a constant pain point for me working with older people on software
related issues, especially when it comes to user interface details. Management
is constantly pushing for interfaces to be as plain, simple, and stupid as
possible to ensure that all employees can use internal tools without needing
assistance.

Older people today do engage with technology but that doesn’t make them “tech
savvy” and in my opinion they probably never will be. Subsequent generations
(mine being one of the first) had the benefit of being introduced to computers
at a very young age so to us it’s as natural as riding bike or making grilled
cheese. I think that, no matter what we try to do, there’s no way to make
older generations be “tech savvy” because they were deprived of that early
exposure.

I think older people absolutely do have a desire to be tech savvy, I just
don’t see how we get there. I’ve thought about this often but I don’t know
what the solution is. Overall great article, and I’m probably a lot dumber
than anyone who works at MIT AgeLabs so my opinion probably should be taken
with a grain of salt

~~~
LameRubberDucky
I think that many people you seem to think are tech savvy are really not. I'm
51 and I've been programming since 13, getting paid for it since around 20
years old. My kids are 21 and 19, they both use smartphones, so do my wife and
I, I just picked up a OnePlus 7 Pro 5G.

My kids know how to use the latest social media apps sure, but they don't know
how anything behind that phone and computer work at all. I can write Android
apps all day long but they wouldn't even know where to start.

I had to teach my son how to punch a hole through the firewall to run a
Minecraft server for his friends 5 or 6 years ago. After watching me build a
few computers, he has now built his own top of the line rig. But he didn't
just "know" that stuff because he's young, he had to have an interest and
learn, from an old dude no less. It's just like people that drive cars, most
of them do not know how cars work but they can still drive. I can also take a
car apart and put it back together. I can do a ton of other technical things
as well. It's not age, but interest in my opinion, that makes a person tech
savvy.

Please don't lump all people over 50 together. Many of us designed and built
the tech that you are so proud of now. We stood on the shoulders of giants and
so do you. Your time is coming as and "old person." Always remember that.

~~~
saltcured
Also, there is a real aspect of "old age," where cognitive function declines,
taking savvy with it. It might be known as "dementia" or "senility" when it is
very advanced, but subtle changes can happen for years or decades prior for
some people. It's been painful watching an ~80 year old relative---definitely
tech savvy for most of his life---as he slowly loses his upper-hand on his own
technology.

This is someone who worked on radar systems, cryptographic systems, computers,
power electronics, control systems, and measurement systems in the military
and civilian worlds from the 1960s to early 2000s. He built his own kit
electronics for home audio and later a ZX-80 computer. He followed the whole
PC revolution from the CP/M and DOS days to Windows 7. He participated in BBS
systems in the 1980s and used the Internet since around 1991. He exposed his
children and friends to science and tech.

He followed countless changes from minicomputers and teletypes, to PCs with
CRTs and text CLIs, to window-based GUIs. Then, he started to struggle with
the abstractions of these same GUIs as well as web sites. He struggles to
identify the boundaries between different programs and content, like some
novice user who never understood how it was all put together. Worse, he is
aware of this struggle and of his losses. I can see that it frustrates him
daily. Once in a while, I'd say it terrifies him.

~~~
m0llusk
The longer you live the more likely something will go wrong. That is true but
at the same time not all that interesting.

Similar problems come up with very young people. Not only can dementia itself
exhibit itself in the young, but people can become tuned out to anything
outside their interests and expertise and lose interest in learning through
play and experimentation. When this happens people become locked in their
modes and may not move forward.

To add some anecdata I know people who were prolific programmers with perl CGI
scripts but were never able to make the jump to modern application
programming, not even the relatively easy transition to "modern perl". At the
same time I know some older programmers who have contributed to modern apps
while working on both embedded devices and machine learning and love being at
the forward edge of everything.

There are many aspects to work in technology and age is a minor factor
especially compared to attitude and interest. This reminds me of how Victor
Frankl describes in Man's Search for Meaning that people expected the strong
and healthy to endure life in concentration camps and yet many died within
days while some who were weak and sick endured because they had something that
kept them going through the greatest challenges. Age and experience are
factors, but it is how they are framed and leveraged that actually matters.

