Digital Inclusion for Seniors Changes Amid Pandemic

Older adults have long needed help with technology. Because of this dynamic, for many years digital inclusion programs have worked extensively with older adults. Those efforts, however, became impossible to safely conduct at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. So, advocates in the space had to get creative. Tobey Dichter is the CEO of Generations on Line, with more than 20 years of experience in digital inclusion work with seniors. Dichter’s group offers online tutorials to help those who are connected learn more about how to navigate and stay safe on the Internet. During the pandemic, traffic to those tutorials increased tenfold. While Dichter had long seen demand from seniors who wanted to learn to use tech better, the pandemic also removed some existing reluctance. At the same time, there has also been an increase in support and resources. As in all areas of digital inclusion, partnerships have formed faster now that the pandemic has shown the need for Internet in homes. This has led to an erosion of some barriers that have long kept older adults offline, including access to devices and Internet connection affordability. Those both remain a struggle, but experts in the space say there is more support to overcome them than ever before. A third challenge — digital skills training — remains perhaps the largest issue, and it’s actually become harder with more of life going online. There is now more to learn, more to do and more ways to feel overwhelmed, intimidated, scammed or unsafe. The key for instructors, Dichter emphasizes, is pinpointing and addressing the moments when this sort of discouragement is most likely to occur, as well as just generally being aware of it.