Closing the Digital Divide for Seniors
Have you heard the term “digital divide”? It means the gap between people who do and don’t have the access and ability to use modern communications technology. Often, seniors fall into the category of having little or no access to tools and services like smartphones, computers, internet access and data plans.
During this time of COVID-19, the consequences of the digital divide have been brought into clear focus. When people can’t leave their homes, or can’t have visitors at their assisted living or long-term care facility, digital connectivity is vital for maintaining social connections, ordering groceries or prescriptions online, and communicating with healthcare providers.
We are fortunate in Rhode Island to have many institutions, organizations and even volunteers working to bridge the divide. Let’s take a look at some of their initiatives.
Over the summer, an interesting new project called the digiAGE Collaborative was launched. digiAGE is a “community-driven effort to help digitally connect more older Rhode Islanders and adults living with disabilities to virtual social networks and other tech-enabled services and opportunities.”
The collaborative has several areas of focus:
- increasing availability and access to user-centric technology
- developing services and programs, such as the new RI Virtual Community Center
- improving internet connectivity
digiAGE is headed by the the Rhode Island Office of Healthy Aging, the Rhode Island Executive Office of Health and Human Services and a growing list of other community partners.
On the volunteer front, there’s TeleHealth Access for Seniors, a new nonprofit that provides smartphones and other devices to seniors and low-income people with the primary goal of making virtual medical appointments possible.
Co-lead Brooke Milosh describes how import technology is for seniors: “One of the communities that is most commonly ignored is seniors — especially because during the pandemic they couldn’t even get out. I could see this with my own grandparents. When I heard that a lot of these seniors did not even have a device that they could use to contact family and physicians, I realized that just by raising a little bit of money, it could make such a big difference in their health outcome.”
Once you’ve got a device, how can you take advantage of all its high tech capabilities?
We’ve mentioned URI’s Cyber Seniors program before, and it continues to be a wonderful resource. This intergenerational program matches a senior with a student. The student develops communication and teaching skills while mentoring the senior in using devices like smart phones, computers and GPS units. The lessons are tailored to individual technological device, knowledge and interests, and can include specific features of different devices, using e-mail, internet searching, YouTube, Zoom, Skype, Facebook, etc.
And speaking of Zoom, AARP and Senior Planet have created a great video conferencing 101 tutorial for using Zoom. You can view it here:
AARP also has videos to explain how to use FaceTime with your iPhone or iPad for one-on-one video calls or group video calls.
Need a little extra help? There are also many local companies who offer tech support and training services for seniors.