What does the digital revolution have to offer the "old old?"

By Anne K. Fishel, Ph.D.

The "old old" are a demographic who mostly have been left in the dust by the digital age revolution. Very few of the old old -- those over 85 -- use social networking sites, though some may use email to stay in touch with family or with their doctors. For the most part, technological advances for those over 85 have nothing to do with the Internet, and everything to do with devices and programs that will allow this group (the US Census Bureau projects that they will grow from 5.3 million in 2006 to nearly 21 million by 2050) to live independently for longer. Thanks to such places as the Oregon Center for Aging and Technology and the MIT AgeLab, the very elderly can benefit from technological advances--they can use fall prevention sensors, wireless pillboxes that transmit information about their medication use, and skyping robots that follow them from room to room.

But there are other, more subtle ways that the very elderly are benefiting from the digital revolution. Even though my nonagenarian father doesn't own or use a computer, the Internet has been a helpful force in our relationship. The Internet is a brain we share to revisit the decades before I was born, which still hold great interest for him. When he reminisces about events in the 1920s and ‘30s, a time when his memory is a whole lot sharper than mine, I can use Google to bridge our memories. Talking about his beloved New York Giants, he asked: "Do you remember Carl Hubbell?" Of course I don't, because Hubbell played for the Giants many years before I was born. But, in about 30 seconds I tell him, "Oh yes, he pitched an 18-inning shutout against the St. Louis Cardinals in 1933." When my father wants to sing an old song with me, like ‘I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy', I can easily find the lines and grease his rusty memory. And when I know that his same-aged lady friend is coming to visit, I can send a romantic Broadway musical from the Netflix account that I manage for him.

If my 20-something kids are digital natives, and I'm a digital immigrant, then my 93-year-old father is still in the old country. In other words, my kids grew up with technology as their first language; I have struggled to assimilate into the digital world; my father doesn't speak the language at all. But, the metaphor breaks down, as much of the digital world doesn't require any translation. When I visit my father with a laptop computer, and his grandson skypes from 4,000 miles (reminding my father of the futuristic visual telephone at the 1963 World's Fair) the only language he needs to know is the one they've shared for years. No matter what your age, when technology is really facilitating connection, the gadgetry is the least of it.

Copyright, Anne Fishel, 2011.