Never too old for facebook?
28 October 2009 | By Jani Rayner
Categories: While stumbling across this article during my usual 3:30itis, I didn’t exactly have the feel good factor after reading this. It’s true you can’t be too old for facebook, but you can be too “unskilled”. Well that’s what I have been seeing recently with friend parents wanting to join and then said “friends” having to spend a minimum of 5 hours helping them to create the page and explaining how it works (by the way this can all be found in the ‘about facebook’ link).
But all of this time is wasted in vain as maybe a week later when “parent” goes to go on facebook said friend will receive a panic stricken call of “i’ve forgotton my password!” completely forgetting said friends advice (and the fact that right underneath that login is “forgotten password” link). From personal experience this is extremely annoying; because they are “old” they think they can get away with lacking any commonsense when a screen is put in front of them. Now I certainly don’t object to older people using facebook it’s a great way for them to keep in touch with people and look at photos etc, but I certainly do object to people who waste other people’s time when the answer is right there in front of them (or on Google). Come on oldies, if you want to be where the young’ins are - suck it up.
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I’m tempted to say chillax, but for the fact that I usually gag each time I hear that word… but on the flip side I think I can hear your frustration – and the frustration of tech-supporters everywhere – especially when most web2 apps are made to be user friendly with links, FAQs, and other tips all over the place. But, maybe this is part of the itiation into a web2 world – the thinking then is that once they’ve got over this hurdle and learnt about it, then it’s like, “you know, you remember last time when that happened on facebook, what did you do”… assuming that learning took place it would hopefully be easier to manage. On the plus side I’m always impressed how effective simply googling a question can be for providing technical direction for those without someone to turn to.
Oh but this also raises the issue of what do people do without coaches? Is this where senior net and community courses come in for adults?
Maybe the blame lies with us. Maybe we show our family members the wrong things. When they ask for help setting up Facebook, we should point them to the “how to set up your facebook” advice online. The thing they need to learn about using technology is how to find out how to do things – so we should focus on that.
I wonder if the issue is not one of age but confidence. People who are using technologies regularly build a familiarity with how these things generally operate. If you are not a regular user, it takes a while to build the confidence to: click on something, try this link , see what this does… in general, explore and learn.
I was a computer applications trainer for a while and had classes of very young people , but also had classes designed just for “mature” people.
The young people always asked the same question. “How do I ….?
The “mature” people always asked “Why does this ….?
The answer to a “Why” question can be complex. I saw “mature” students work very hard to understand “Why”. It was as if they were looking to relate this new knowledge to something that was already familiar to them.
You can build confidence much faster with answers to “How” questions, than answers to “Why” questions, regardless of your age.
Interesting comments. I agree its not just a matter of age but inexperience which make digital tourists a bit frustrating.