Tomorrow (Friday) Morning… I’ll be on BBC Radio Nottingham, sharing my thoughts how best to stay connected especially with our elderly relatives and friends.
Technology can be daunting for most of us – imagine what it’s like for those who haven’t grown up with it. Even then… All these new ways to stay connected and in touch can easily confuse people.
Then there’s the fear… fear of pressing the wrong button. Fear of accidentally downloading something that you have to pay for, fear of not knowing what to download and how, fear that the battery might run out… there’s so many fears!
For the majority of us, it’s fairly easy. Those on iPhones (iOS) can make facetime calls to each other. But what happens when friends, relatives, elderly are on other operating platforms… such as Android and you want to facetime someone on an iPhone?
- Find a common platform – As simple as this sounds, it can be more difficult! I would suggest go for a common and simple approach – such as Whatsapp. Via Whatsapp, you can make calls, video calls, send messages, send videos, etc… available on all platforms…. AND you can have it on your tablet and your computer. There’s a lot of flexibility.
- Let the elderly know – they can’t break anything – remove that fear from them. Whatsapp is fairly easy and simple to install – just follow the instructions on the screen and you’re set up in no time. ALSO – let them know, they don’t have to pay for the app…. if they’re trying to download something that’s asking for payment – then it’s a NO NO!!!
- There’s other options…. there’s Google Hangouts… Zoom…. Skype…. so many more, so whatever you use on a regular basis and are comfortable with, recommend that. Make sure it’s easy to navigate.
To the last point – there’s various YouTube videos on how to use the above tools – might be an idea to share a video first, so they know what to do, how to install and use it… then they can go ahead and use it!
If they are a total novice – no problemo!… why not talk them through it. Most elderly folk will have a land-line (for the younger generation wondering what that is… I’ll share with you next time). So call them on the landline and talk them through what they have to do.
If this is difficult… then you can watch the YouTube video with subtitles and read the subtitles to them! Genius… I know.
More than anything – please make sure you have patience. We’re living in a fast world…. where a tik tok video of a few seconds is the norm… stories on Insta are what we can take in…. many of us are used to the amount of content being thrown at us….. don’t think it’s the same for the elderly.