How to Bridge the Digital Divide for Senior Citizens?

— A keynote speech by Prof. Zhou Xianghong at Tongji University

22 December 2020 Source: Jiefang Daily

Digital technology has advanced the degree of connectivity and interconnection among people and the things we do. Easy-to-use technologies, such as mobile ordering, DiDi, QR payment codes, online booking of doctor’s appointment, are ubiquitous and they made us believe that we have reached an era of ‘coding euphoria’. While the COVID-19 pandemic still exists, various health codes on our mobile devices are frequently required and can be used with great convenience.

While the majority of the populace enjoys the convenience of digital technologies, however, senior citizens are experiencing greater and greater difficulties with the digital divide. Some senior citizens were declined from riding buses due to lack of smartphones or being unable to display their health codes; there are cases where the senior citizen has to be uplifted by their children manually to reach the height of the bank counters to perform face recognition to activate their social security card…in many places, the phenomenon of being an “outsider” during the digitalization tide can make us sigh.

Digitalization and the problem of an aging society march head-to-head. As of the end of 2019, the number of people at an age of 60 or above was approximately 254 million, accounting for 18.1% of the total. The number of people at an age of 65 or above was 176 million, accounting for 12.6% of the total. Many of these elderly people do not have smartphones or access to the internet, and it has become increasingly difficult for them to keep up with the rapid development of new technologies.

Recently, the State Council issued The Implementation Plan to Resolve the Problems Experienced by Senior Citizens with Smart Technologies. The new document has laid the foundation to push for solutions for senior citizens to have easy access to smart technologies, to creatively combine traditional elderly care services and smart services, and to provide senior citizens more convenient services that are comprehensive, caring, and easy-to-use.

This Plan focuses on the daily lives of senior citizens, which include scenarios of high-frequency services such as transportation, medical care, purchases, entertainment, and handling of routine affairs. The Plan laid out 20 concrete requirements to execute. It requires the service providers must retain traditional services for elderly people when such service is tied to daily livelihood. It also raised the need to increase the supply of elderly-friendly smart devices, the need to upgrade internet applications to include elderly-friendly interfaces, the need for better telecom services for the elderly, and the need to provide smart technology training for the elderly.

The Plan was widely praised by society. It has also triggered a social introspection: How can we bridge the digital divide for the senior citizen in the age of smart technologies?

The Phenomenon of Being Unable to Completely Understand New Technology Reinforces the Senior Citizens’ Refusal to Access New Technology

The digital divide is referring to the discrepancy between the degree of possession and application of information technologies by entities with different fundamental resources in the age of social information technology development, digitalization, and networking.

Under normal circumstances, younger people are more curious about new creations, they are filled with energy, and they possess a higher degree of acceptance and ability to use new creations. Comparatively speaking, senior people have lower acceptance of new creations. We summed up the major reasons for such differences between the young and the old:

The first reason is that elderly people are more or less afraid of taking up difficult tasks.

It’s not just the elderly, most people would have such psychological problems. Take me as an example, I was bad at sports, and if I were asked to run a long-distance track, it would make me feel like there are butterflies in my stomach, and I would raise all sorts of reasons to reject such assignments. When facing digital technologies, such psychological fearfulness is evident with elderly people, and some of them might even have formed some sort of “path dependence”.

The second reason is that existing information technologies did not fully consider the characteristics of elderly users.

Most senior citizens feel some kind of obstacles with smartphones even if modern technologies have brought with them more convenient ways of living. The most prominent problems where senior citizens felt they have troubles are functional use of applications, system settings and maintenance, and the download of suitable applications. Such problems made it difficult for senior citizens to have adequate access to mobile technologies in their daily life.

The third reason is the degrading physical conditions of elderly people, such as blurred sight, muffled hearing, and numbing fingers.

We were unable to fathom the reasons why grandpas and grandmas walk so slow or talk so loud when we were just kids. Like young kids, the designers of new technologies lack an empathetic understanding of how to include the elderly group into their applications.

Besides, elderly people suffer from degrading comprehension and memory ability, and they “do not understand” or “do not fully master” the use of smartphones and the Internet. Such difficulties reinforced their fear of new technologies, resulting in further unwillingness to access the Internet or even cyber-phobia.

Affecting Living Conditions, and Further Inhibiting the Elderly Group’s

Ability Growth and Sharing of Social Welfare

One event made its mark on my mind—at the worst moment of the pandemic, a netizen by the nickname of “Laosu 8811” suddenly became the hot topic of the day. The real person behind the avatar was a 77-year-old Mr. Liu who was stuck in the most difficult situation: his daughter had just passed away due to COVID-19, his 13-year-old granddaughter, his wife, and himself had all been diagnosed as confirmed cases, and his son was helping the fight against the outbreak in Wuhan.

To save his little granddaughter, the old man sent out his first-ever Weibo post with one word: Hello. Short as it was, that single word was the outcry of an elderly man trying to secure outside help. This event told us that elderly people’s needs for internet-based applications are just as urgent and important as with everyone else.

It is a fact that different social groups embrace the digital age with a different tempo. Some of us entered the digital age voluntarily, and some of us were forced to accept this new age. In the face of the fast-paced internet age, elderly people seem unable to keep up with the change of society because they were used to a slow-paced life.

Unable to conduct online payment, inconvenient transportation experience due to lack of health code, and unable to make medical registration online…a whole series of obstacles are telling us that our society needs to help the senior citizens bridge the digital divide.

In fact, the digital divide may cause chain reactions. For example, it may lead to digital poverty. When a certain space or a certain social group became deficient in the abilities to supply, acquire, and make use of digital information, either in one area or in all areas, we could conclude that they are suffering from digital poverty.

Digital poverty is an important branch of knowledge poverty or information poverty. The digital divide puts some parts of the population into disadvantaged positions, compounded by the Matthew Effect, digital poverty causes further divergence of social welfare. On a bigger scale, the digital divide and digital poverty not only affect the living conditions of those suffering deficient information privilege but also exacerbate the gap between the rich and the poor within any given country.

Moreover, the digital divide will restrict people’s participation in social activities. Especially for the disadvantaged groups, it will become harder for them to acquire and use digital services such as e-commerce, digital civil service, and online education; making them lose the opportunities to secure their rights and benefits, and eventually resulting in the inhibition of the group’s ability growth and sharing of social welfare.

Upholding the Principle of “Encompassing the Bottom Level of the Populace and Be Compatible” so that Technologies Can Provide More Caring and Humane Services

Digital products iterate and upgrade at high frequency. The whole society needs to give attention to the special groups entrapped by the “digital complex”. We must uphold the principle of “encompassing the bottom level of the populace and be compatible” when developing new technologies so that we can provide elderly people with more caring and humane service to settle their uneasiness.

“Encompassing the bottom level of the populace” means that we need to strengthen the construction of information infrastructures, formulate favorable policies for special regions and groups, and enforce the telecom operators to provide more inclusive service packages. We can provide senior citizens with offline service interfaces such as the “computer service booth” and the “mini home” in the construction of smart communities. From a regional development perspective, we need to strengthen strategic guidance to push for more broadband infrastructure in poor areas.

“Be compatible” means that we need to consider both hardware and software developments and realize the simultaneous development of both traditional and smart services. On one hand, digitalization, information-oriented technologies, and smart applications are unavoidable trends, we need to follow the trend and provide more smart services for senior citizens. On the other hand, we need to retain traditional services that are already acquainted with the senior citizens in consideration of the characteristics of this age group.

Not long ago, the Shanghai Museum has set up an onsite booking service booth at the entrance to solve problems such as “I forgot to make an appointment”, “I forgot to bring my ID”, “Elderly people without smartphones”, or “I don’t know how to get the Shanghai health code on my phone”. They have shown how to provide more considerate and thoughtful services.

Local train stations in Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, has set aside an aisle for senior citizens who do not know how to get their health codes, and this approach was widely acclaimed by netizens across the country. For passengers experiencing difficulties, the train stations could issue a special certificate allowing them to exit the station; for passengers who do not know how to operate their smartphones, the station has designated special persons to teach them, effectively solving the problems brought by using the health code system.

These proactive measures have raised the cities’ profile, and they also demonstrated the caring culture of our society. To sum up, we need to stick to the path of “walking with both legs”, we need to make the smart services more adaptable to the needs of senior citizens while improving the traditional ways of service to provide more considerate services.

Cultivate a Healthy Business Ecosystem and Corresponding Mechanisms to

Imbue Energy into the “Silver Hair Economy”

Helping senior citizens bridge the digital divide would also rely on the coordination of various industries, to cultivate a healthy business ecosystem and corresponding mechanisms, to boost the social awareness of the problem by setting a good economic cycle in motion.

People coined the term “silver hair economy” to describe an economic system that centers around senior citizens. “Silver hair economy” may sound like a declining industry, but it is in fact a booming sector. Specially, we could explore the following areas:

First, finance for senior citizens.

Acquisition and utilization of information-technology-based products and services require the users to possess certain skills, and sometimes it may require the users to pay certain fees. Apart from that, online payment and online wealth management were born with inherent financial risks of which the senior citizen have little means to know. Therefore, we need to strengthen education and training for senior citizens in terms of financial knowledge and risks, while helping online finance to go on a sustainable growth pattern.

Second, senior-friendly products.

There is a report showing that the number of senior-friendly products was growing at 39% annually. Among them, the number of senior-friendly products in 2019 grew 78% compared to that of 2017. In the next stage, we could speed up the upgrade of senior-friendly products such as the zooming lens and hearing aid, and further improving telecom products and services for seniors.

Third, services for senior citizens.

Apart from household services, I would like to talk about training for seniors. Training for seniors is a new sector that evolved as more senior citizens were included in the digital age. Providing training for seniors is an important way to bridge the “last kilometer” of the digital divide for seniors. We should hire specialized and patient coaches, select easy-to-understand teaching materials, and help the senior citizens to become literate in technology.

Recently, some of the internet platforms and companies in Shanghai have launched senior-friendly products. For example, the taxi-hailing platform of Shanghai has enabled “one button hail” and “big letter mode” so that seniors with poor eyesight can send their location information with a single click.

In the digital age, driving the development of the “silver hair economy” and paying more attention to the special needs of the senior citizens can bring both social benefits and economic rewards. The platforms and companies have improved their products to serve the seniors better, and at the same time, they have demonstrated their social responsibility.

On Top of Efforts from Governments, Companies, and Society, We also Need

The Help of Families

Helping senior citizens bridge the digital divide, we need efforts from the governments, companies, and the whole society, and we also need the help of family members.

As statistics show, 92% of senior citizens went for their sons and daughters for help when they encounter problems with their phones. Their children should not only assist them in finding a solution but should also help them raise their awareness of information technology, increase their ability to identify false information on the internet and raise their ability to counter internet fraud.

Due to the fast tempo of modern living and the stress of the modern working environment, most children would not have enough time to teach their parents to use digital devices. Furthermore, due to memory degeneration, some elderly people may frequently forget the knowledge, and their children may lose patience in teaching the same knowledge repeatedly. However, no matter how difficult it may be, having help from family members is a key element in helping bridge the digital divide for senior citizens.

There are always more solutions than problems. For example, some companies have developed “Elderly Aid” functions, so that children can assist their parents even if they are living in different cities. With the help of the new function, children can achieve live sharing of their smart phone’s desktops with their parents, and they can use audio messages and marked pictures to achieve “step by step” guidance. Moreover, children can generate in-app links using their phones and send them to their parents, and their parents can have “green installation” by simply clicking the links.

I have one more point to add, to bridge the digital divide, the senior citizens are not passively taking in help from others. The senior citizens can help each other and facilitate dialogue among themselves, this is also one important way of bridging the digital divide. We must encourage the senior citizens to act together, to overcome psychological obstacles and fear of new technologies, to proactively embrace the smart society, and stick to the belief of “never too old to learn”.

In a nutshell, every family has elders in their midst, and any one of us will eventually grow old. To help the senior citizens to embrace new technology is help us to get a sense of our uncertain future. For senior citizens to feel happy and secure in the digital age, we need to combine the forces of new technology and cultural caring.