The Age of Connectivity

Posted on September 2, 2010 by bob in Features

Eleanor Lucas uses her phone to stay connected to work, family, and friends.

(Story by Lenore Vickrey. Photos by Bob Corley)

When Eleanor Lucas wants you to see the latest photos of her granddaughter, she doesn’t necessarily look inside her purse or pull out her wallet. She’ll log on to her Facebook page. Or she’ll check her Twitter feed.

Bill Elders has had success selling his books on-line.

Bill Elder didn’t even know how to turn on a computer until 1995, but he now has his own website, blog, and sells his books via a few keyboard clicks on PayPal.

Eleanor Davis depends on computers to help run her business.

Montgomery businesswoman Eleanor Davis runs her consignment shop completely on her computer, using e-mail to alert her customers and consignors to sales and important dates. If she needs some information about a particular designer fashion, she “googles” it.

Facebook. Twitter. PayPal. Google. Sound like a foreign language to you? Not for an increasing number of the more than 17.5 million older adults estimated to be using the Internet for e-mail, sharing photos, social networking and reading the news.

In the last five years, the number of Americans 65 and older using the Internet increased by more than 55 percent, according to The Nielsen Company. While still only less than 10 percent of those actively using the Internet, the numbers are steadily increasing and surveys show that seniors are spending more time on the web.

The biggest increase in Internet use since 2005 is in the 70 to 75-year-old age group, with 45 percent currently online, says the Pew Internet and American Life Project. That’s up from 26 percent five years ago.

Davis keeps inventory and customer and vendor data bases on her computer network.

Davis, who’s 73, is one of that age group who uses her computer daily, either for business or personal use or both. “I do everything on the computer,” says the well-known Montgomery Little Theatre actress and former Ms. Senior Alabama. “I pay my sales tax on the computer, I do all my personal banking online. I’m as paperless as you can be. I tell all my older friends it’s safe and not to worry about it. The advantage is you don’t have a lot of (paper) mail.”

Davis owns and operates Repeat Performance, a large consignment store on Mulberry Street in Montgomery. She uses e-mail to communicate with her 18,000 consignors and 6,000 customers, and maintains all her clothing items in a database on her server and several networked computers. But her use of the Internet isn’t all for business. About a year ago, at the encouragement of her children, she got a Facebook page. “I thought it was for 14-year-old girls,” she said. But she soon found other friends who were on the hugely popular social networking site that claims more than 500 million users worldwide.

On her recent birthday, she received 57 well wishes and compliments on her page. It was like a birthday party, she said, “and you didn’t have to clean up afterwards.”

She has 250 Facebook “friends,” but if you irritate her with useless status updates about what you ate for breakfast, she’s quick to “hide” you. “That’s only news if you’re 100 years old and anorexic,” she said.

Book by Bill Elders sold well on the Internet.

Bill Elder, 68, a former college basketball coach and athletic director, had little or no experience with computers until several years ago. “I didn’t know how to operate a computer until 1995,” he said. But he grew tired of being intimidated by the devices and decided to learn how to use them, taking a typing class and using sticky notes to remind himself how to do basic tasks. Now, however, he’s got 525 friends on Facebook, communicates on Twitter (http://twitter.com/saveournation), his own  web site (www.bill-elder.com) and blog.

“It’s been a lot of fun,” said Elder, who, like Davis, joined Facebook to keep up with his children and grandchildren. “I got in touch with a lot of old friends,” he said, especially those from high school in Bucyrus, Ohio, the setting for his second book on growing up in the 1950s.  When he posted on Facebook that he’d have a booksigning in his old hometown,  he was surprised at the large crowd who turned out to see him.

A home-town book signing brought hundreds of fans to Bill Elders' Ohio birthplace.

“It was surreal,” he said. He’s also sold some 400 copies via PayPal, an online payment web site that was completely foreign to him a few years ago. “I keep shocking my son-in-law, who works for Microsoft. They’re all stunned I can pull this off,” he added, chuckling.

Fear of technology and the cost can be the biggest obstacles to keeping older adults from using the Internet for communicating, according to Virginia Debolt, a  former teacher and senior blogger (aka the Elder Geek Blogger) based in New Mexico who has a web site, three blogs, and has written technical books about web site design.

“Most (seniors) are happy to learn and use at least e-mail,” she said. “I don’t find many older adults who aren’t using the Internet at all.” Debolt, who is in her late 60s, said she stays in touch with friends on Twitter, Facebook, through blogs and texting. “Sometimes by e-mail. I even talk on the phone now and then, if you can imagine that.”

Tim Lennox, a confirmed news-a-holic, uses technology to supply both work material as well as material for his personal blog.

Longtime radio talk show host and former Alabama Public Television news anchor Tim Lennox has been writing a blog for about three years at www.timlennox.com. At age 60, he figures he’s the oldest of the group of regular bloggers he follows, but that’s okay with him. “I blog because I have a lot to talk about,” he said. “As an old talk radio guy, one of the things you do constantly is look for things to talk about, so I have lots of material.”

Blogging isn’t difficult, technically. “You just supply the words and the pictures and video,” he said. “The Google program Blogger is pretty self-sufficient.”

As a member of the media, computers have played an integral part of Tim Lennox's life for decades.

Lennox, now the morning anchor on WAKA Channel 8, also tweets on Twitter, using it to point viewers to his newest blog post, and has a Facebook page. “I try to use all of these in conjunction with one another,” he said. “If I was just on Twitter, it wouldn’t make any sense.”

The “connectedness” offered by social networking sites is one of the appeals for Eleanor Lucas, 53, who started a Weight Watchers Online group in 2004 and still keeps in touch with a dozen members of the original group. “We’ve become good friends, spread out all over the country, who have traveled to meet one another many times,” she said.

She also enjoys catching up with far-flung classmates from Floyd Elementary School in 1964. “What Facebook has given me – given all of us – is an opportunity to connect across time and geography to have those same wonderful affirmative interactions. There really is nothing like laughing with an old friend – even if you’re typing – about the warm, dyed-red pistachios you bought when you’d walk to Loveman’s at Normandale Mall that would leave your fingers stained red; or sharing a huge plate of French fries at the counter at Woolworth’s; or riding tandem for miles to ride the horses at Fisher Farms.”

Davis has had a similar experience reconnecting with friends of the Montgomery Little Theatre, which now has an alumni page with 130 members who’ve posted dozens of vintage photos of MLT productions on Facebook.

“I hooked up with people I haven’t heard of in 50 years,” she said.

If you’re still not convinced getting online is for you, consider this: there may be some health benefits.  A survey of 7,000 retired Americans 55 and older by the Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal and Economic Studies showed that Internet usage reduces depression by 20 percent for older adults. Seniors who are lonely or housebound can find support and keep in touch with others online, experts point out. It may also protect against a decline in motor skills.

Even Eleanor Lucas’ own 83-year-old mother joined Facebook so she could keep up with her grandchildren.

“Of course, when she joined I had the same feeling my own grown children had when I did: ‘uh oh!’” she said.  “But I am certain it has forged a new path for communication across these generations, and I see that as a big positive.”

Resources

Educational institutions and other organizations offer computer classes from basic to advanced, including tuition-free programs for senior adults at some state two-year colleges as well as four-year universities. Policies vary from school to school. Check to see which one offers you the best options.

Montgomery Area Council on Aging, 334-263-0532 www.macoa.org
Family Guidance Center, 334-270-4100 www.familyguidancecenter.org
Alabama State University, 334-229-4100,  www.alasu.edu
Amridge University, 888-790-8080, www.amridgeuniversity.edu
Auburn University Montgomery, 334-244-3000, www.aum.edu
Faulkner University, 334-272-5820, www.faulkner.edu
Huntingdon College, 334-833-4497, www.huntingdon.edu
South University,800-688-0932, www.southuniversity.edu/montgomery.aspx
Troy University Montgomery, 334-834-1400,  www.troy.edu
Trenholm State Technical College, 334-420-4200, www.trenholmstate.edu
Virginia College, 334-277-3390, www.vacollege.net