Many seniors are feeling left out as the Information Age progresses.
It’s getting harder all the time to do business online. Websites and phone prompts are difficult to navigate and passwords more complicated than ever.
Younger people may be able to get by instinctively, but aging brains cannot. Seniors have been disenfranchised.
It isn’t enough to enter your user name and PIN anymore. Now you you have to enter a code texted to your phone as well in “double authentication.”
Of course, you must log in to buy tickets on many sites and prove that you aren’t a robot. Some seniors just show up at the door, hoping against a sell-out.
I may be 84 years old, but I’m not stupid. As a technology reporter for three national publications, I was an early adapter to desktop computing, the World Wide Web and Facebook. But I retired 17 years ago and my mind isn’t what it used to be.
Too many times I have booked the wrong date for a hotel room. Now I insist on calling the local hotel and making a reservation over the phone.
When I want a drug refill, I just tell the pharmacy clerk what I want a few days in advance. I have trouble reading the numbers on the pill bottle anymore or navigating the phone system.
This column was inspired by our experience with the Social Security website, when we needed a tax form. Not only was it hard to log in but it made Pickett take a selfie of herself and make a photograph of her driver’s license.
She finally gave up and we drove to the Social Security office, where someone printed the form out for her. We lost it again and she had to go back, but I won’t blame Social Security for that! Just last week, she opened an envelope where she had put one of the missing forms. “Here it is!” She said proudly.
So there’s the problem. What’s the solution? I have several suggestions for tech companies that might help.
—Make more use of facial recognition, fingerprints and voice recognition.
—Let people speak to the website more easily to get what they want.
—Stop changing a website’s navigation so often with updates.
—Have uniform ways of doing repetitive tasks. Why can’t every ticket seller have the same format? And have you ever had to enter a new credit card to make automatic payments? Each company has a unique way of changing personal information. With passwords, of course.
—We can make more use of AI. Most older people hate AI, but when I have a problem like these, I go to ChatGPT and ask what to do. I wrote about this before: Once when I couldn’t get through to my cable company, ChatGPT advised me to just tell the cable company’s AI voice to “cancel” and you get right through. It worked. After all, AI characters know how their brothers and sisters think!
Appropriately, here are the words I wrote to a song I wrote several years ago.
You can hear it in this link.
Password Blues
I’ve got the password blues, I just can’t get in.
My bank account is frozen and my wallet’s too thin,
What can I do? This just isn’t fair.
I wrote it down some place, but I don’t know where.
Refrain:
Password Blues, please let me in.
Password blues, I don’t know my PIN.
Password blues, I lost my long list.
According to the Internet, I just don’t exist.
“Forgot Your password?” Now here’s where to click.
This whole awful process just makes me so sick.
They texted my phone. But where’d I put that?
I’ll have to call the bank and have a long chat.
They’ll give you a password but please don’t explode.
With capitals and numbers you just can’t decode.
It will pop up always in a a password app.
But when you need it, what happened to that?
Facial recognition, the new tech religion
Will solve this problem, require no decision.
But I’m wearing a mask or maybe a hat.
The website looks and asks: Who the heck is that?
To prove who you are and show you aren’t a trickster,
They’ll ask: How many cars are in this picture?
I just don’t know. My idea is better.
Give me your address, and I’ll mail you a letter!
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