

Ask HN: Do you teach the old generation to use internet? - snitko

If you do, then how? What do you think they don't get and why? What do you think you're teaching not good enough? What are the crucial things every user should know, but most don't?
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ggchappell
Your question presumes that knowledge and understanding are the primary issues
in getting "the old generation" on the net. They are important, of course, but
I wonder if, in some cases, the critical issues are those related to filtering
a large number of inputs.

Consider: I'm 43 (and at least on the edge of what some of you would call "the
old generation"). I find large portions of the web to be unusable without
flashblock. I'm sure I have a well developed case of banner blindness (of
which I'm very glad), but some pages are still rough.

Now take a 70-year-old who grew up in a media-poor environment and has little
computer experience, and stick a typical web page in front of them. If it's
something to read, sure, they can read it. But navigation, search, etc., all
require finding the right thing to click on, and ignoring all the
distractions. Can they do that easily, even if they know how?

I just went to the Amazon home page, certainly one of the calmer commercial
pages on the web, and counted the number of clickable regions on my screen.
Result: 143. I can easily imagine someone who knows what they want to do and
how to do it, still having trouble getting it done, when confronted with that
many choices.

Now take that person to an animation-heavy page. They see 100+ choices, of
which 30 of the wrong ones are insistently clamoring for attention. Is this
going to work, even if they know what to do?

The real question here is whether the kind of unconscious filtering we all do
is something the old can (easily) learn. And if it is, how to best ensure that
someone learns it. I'm afraid I don't know the answer to either of those
questions.

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mcav
Yes. I taught my grandma how to use the Internet, E-mail, and Skype. She
played Freecell often before, but nothing else on the computer. (She still
says "So can I X-this out?" to close a window.)

I sat her down one afternoon and explained things _very_ slowly, using
_metaphors_ such as the postman bringing mail to your house, and you putting
mail in your mailbox when you want it to go out at some point.

For the internet, I used the metaphor that "your computer talks to other
computers" and shows you pages that live on other computers. I had to explain
about hyperlinks, ads, etc.

The key point to remember: They're not stupid; the internet is completely
foreign to them. You have to explain things that we take for granted, such as
hyperlinks, the windows taskbar, what a "window", "application", etc are.

Technical details: I put her in Chrome, and added a shortcut to her start menu
for Gmail. She can feel safe because the home button always gets her out of
wherever she wants to go.

~~~
tokenadult
_The key point to remember: They're not stupid; the internet is completely
foreign to them._

This is a very good point about software usability in general. What's habitual
to you is annoyingly picky to someone else. Moreover, any computer user has a
noncomputerized personal life that sometimes demands time and attention. So
it's compassionate to any user to assume that user errors may be because the
user was tired, distracted, or never informed about how to use the software.

------
buugs
I help them if they ask, my grandfather learned how to use the net and email
on his own and knows about the hazardous attachments that live and about spam,
and I'm guessing my grandmother checks email through him, on the other side my
other grandmother has no use for the internet and has no plans of ever using a
computer.

My father although not in the older generation (senior) is relatively new to
the internet and pretty much just knows ebay gmail and google, but one thing
the it guys at his work have done is instill a good fear of opening
attachments as he seems to get a large amount of virus spam.

Most just want to use email to keep in contact, send pictures, and relay
internet jokes and if they ask they can get my help.

I think the best thing to teach them is about malware and maybe even show them
how to do a virus scan, also show them how to send pictures and open pictures,
as that is what they want to do.

------
tokenadult
I'm IN the older generation. But I've been using the Internet since before AOL
and other commercial online services set up gateways to Internet services. My
parents' generation among my relatives includes people who don't use the
Internet at all, and some who use it for email. I've had to tell one relative
to check Snopes before forwarding emails to a distribution list of all her
friends.

