Teaching the old folks

Fri Feb 26 09:34:21 PST 1999

x-no-archive: yes

A Surfing Safari for Seniors - The 55-and-over crowd flocks to
Elderhostel's Web workshop. 

Business Week 2/8/99

They sat shoulder-to-shoulder and knee-to-cane on folding chairs
crammed into a San Jose hotel room. The mood was friendly but
intense. "Welcome to San Jose," said a cheery Phyllis Shedroff. Her
audience was about 40 senior citizens gathered for the opening session
of From Prunes to PowerBooks, a program designed to introduce seniors
to the Internet and Silicon Valley. "I guess we should have had
Roberta Flack here singing that song to you." 

"Dionne Warwick," a man barked from the back. "It was Dionne Warwick
who sang [Do You Know the Way to San Jose]." Several other people
nodded vigorously. Someone cracked: "Senior moment." Another man
raised his hand: "Is it too early in the program to ask what silicon
is?" 

Tough crowd. Average age: seventysomething. They had come from
around the country to merge onto the Information Highway, and they
were in no mood to sit and schmooze on the on-ramp. For the next five
days, they would get a crash course on the computer biz--its history,
what makes it tick, and how they could Web surf smarter, faster,
better. "I have friends who don't want anything to do with computers,"
says 63-year-old Jerry Roslund of Bend, Ore. "Well, they're just going
to be left behind." 

About eight times a year for the past four years, organizers
Shedroff and Pat Tappan have been introducing seniors to Silicon
Valley through Boston-based Elderhostel, an international
organization that offers those 55 and up inexpensive lodging and
courses on everything from kayaking to forensic science. Shedroff and
Tappan, who also teach elementary school, hire local computer experts
and history buffs for the lectures and training sessions. This
course's title is no poke at the audience but rather a reference to
the history of this region, once best known for its abundant orchards.
"The first thing to realize," says Tappan to her audience, "is that
Silicon Valley is not a place. It's a concept." 

That they fill these sessions every six weeks or so is a tribute to
two realities. One is the world's continuing fixation on Silicon
Valley as the wellspring of digital culture. The other is that seniors
nationwide are clamoring to get wired. "I can't wait to get my hands
on a keyboard," says 77-year-old Marie Christen of Sacramento. 

Hostelers offered me several explanations for why they were here.
Several inherited their kids' cast-off computers and want to figure
out how to use them. Many want to track stocks. Past attendees came to
understand what their children, who work in the Valley, do for a
living. Whatever the reason, upwards of 20% of senior citizens now own
pcs, and an estimated 9 million adults over 50 go online. Seniors are
among the most avid users of online trading and financial-service Web
sites. And they're an increasingly important target for marketers from
E*Trade (EGRP) to Procter & Gamble (PG). 

It's clear that E-mail is the killer app, however. Personal
connections made possible and maintained online are helping seniors
get over their wariness of computers. Marguerite Meek of Hemlock,
Mich., now has a large database of jokes that friends have zapped to
her. She keeps them so she can send cheery postcards daily to ailing
chums. "I have to tell you, the hardest thing in the world is to find
a new clean joke every day that fits on a postcard," she says. 

Marguerite discovered the value of online correspondence several
years ago, when she was the one who needed cheer. After her
39-year-old daughter died, she happened to tell one of her
daughter's childhood friends that she had an E-mail address. Before
long, he and other friends were sending Marguerite fond accounts of
their teenage adventures, creating an E-memorial Marguerite treasures.
"E-mail is my pet," she says. 

The Web was a different story for Marguerite and a number of others.
Day Three of the week's events involved a full day of training on
surfing the Internet--a rite of passage that seems to intimidate and
infuriate even those seniors who use E-mail daily. "Learning a whole
new communication system creates a lot of stress," says my new
octogenarian friend Frank, who preferred not to give his last name.
Adds Marguerite: "I'm worried I'll click the wrong button and get a
bill for $20." 

Watching this feisty gang for a few hours, I began to appreciate how
bewildering the Web can seem for first-timers. When a page reloads or
they click to a new link, for example, many fret that they've deleted
what they were just viewing. Jokes about the "world wide wait" fail to
amuse them as they watch the Netscape meteor shower and can't always
recall where they just clicked. So they click again. And again. That
touches off a confusing array of flashing screens and beeps. Another
frustration: On a Web page with lots of fine print, seniors are easily
hijacked by an ad's simple order to "click here." Repeatedly, I'd
hear: "Now where am I?" as a genealogy page morphed into an ad for a
Ford Explorer. 

Tappan acknowledges that patience among these folks often is
stretched. They want to learn everything at once. Some come armed with
a single, sometimes unrealistic goal. For example, a woman with three
daughters who talk every morning in a Net chat room had hoped on
training day to bust into their digital klatch with a big hello.
Unfortunately, the instructor was just getting to what the "back"
button on a Web browser means when the chat ended. 

On the other hand, Web aces such as Gertrude Mokotoff, 80, spends two
to three hours a day on the Net, sending E-mail, tracking stocks, and
researching trips. Her pet peeve: resorts that don't have all the
details about rooms online. "I don't want to have to call the darned
800 number," she says. Gert, a former mayor of Middletown, N.Y.,
mainly attended the hostel program to "see" Silicon Valley. She was
somewhat disappointed to find out that the Valley is a collection of
off-limits corporations--rather than a specific destination. "I think
it's a figment of somebody's imagination," she says, sighing. A Mac
lover, Gert and her 84-year-old husband have even got their own
Mac-vs.-pc feud roaring: "I sent him to the other training room,"
which was equipped with pcs. "I'm not putting a 57-year marriage at
risk." 

Of all the seniors here eager to go on the Net, few could match
Jerry and Georgia Roslund's motivation: Their newest grandson had been
born two weeks earlier, after they'd already left Oregon on this
vacation. So they had their son ship a photograph to the training room
over E-mail. As other seniors huddled round, Georgia squeaked a single
syllable of unadulterated joy when she got her first look at the
dimpled, digitized face of Cooper, her new grandson.

Seniors have many resources beyond Elderhostel to help them go
online. The SeniorNet organization now has learning centers
nationwide to help with computing. It also boasts a Web site for
continuing support. 

As more seniors go online, the market is fragmenting. That's because
the interests of a retired 50-year-old Luddite triathlete are
different from those of an 80-year-old Civil War buff in a wheelchair.
Even the hostel factions got a little hostile at times: "This was
supposed to be for beginners, but half the people were way beyond
that. Their questions pissed a lot of us off," says James Edmiston,
66. San Francisco's Third Age Media Inc. runs what it calls a "Web
site for grownups," targeting adults in the 45- to 64-year-old range.
The two most popular areas: romance and tech support. "The hope is
[the Internet] could be the new fountain of youth," says Third Age
founder Mary Furlong, who notes that the vanguard of 76 million baby
boomers turned 50 just three years ago.

Wired world look out: This generation of seniors is better educated
and more tech-savvy than its predecessors. You better believe they
know the way to San Jose. 

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