The Digital World & Generational Divides
Most of us have been there, trying to teach our parent’s in their 70’s how to use an iPad or smartphone, or helping them with their home desktop/laptop. Or grandkids and even great grandkids trying to do the same… “but grandma, it’s so easy and you can do so much!” But the resistance, the reluctance is there. Sometimes it isn’t. The man that ran the website for an organization I belong to retired when he reached 100 years old. He could stand up servers, wrote .php and HTML5 code. I can’t. I was half his age. But many people over 60 struggle the most with social media, online banking and doing things like applying for permits or other civic functions. It’s easy to ascribe this to age and resistance to technology. For some, perhaps. For most, it’s not about age at all. So what is it really about?
In a word? Culture. Cultural norms and behaviours. It’s representative of that old turn of phrase; “but this is how we’ve always done it.” What that really reflects is the way people navigate their world. For people over 60, the majority of their lives was navigating one world. The real world. Today, especially for Gen Z, they were born and raising navigating two worlds. The physical and the digital. As these two worlds have become increasingly intertwined, societies that have adopted digital technologies have become more phygital.
Take for example, banking and personal finances, including personally managing investments such as stock trades and retirement funds. For Millennials and Gen Z, they do this through apps. WealthSimple understood this very well and have become a leader in this space. A first-mover FinTech company that truly got it right with regards to key cultural aspects of a demographic group. This is a generation that will rarely set foot in a bank and find it frustrating and awkward to do so. For those in thier late 60’s upwards, going to the bank is a cultural norm. It provides comfort and a personal sense of security. It is a tangible experience rooted in the physical world. Digital world experiences are often intangible and are vague representations of the real world. Psychologically and socioculturally, that is a big leap for some to make.
Culture is the knowledge we use to navigate our world. Some aspects of cultures are multi-generational, such a music, religious practices, foods and celebrations, ritual such as marriage, dating and key times of year. Digital tools may play a greater role now (such as islamic calls to prayer via a smartphone app or Bible readings and sermons for Christians), but the overall cultural strictures remain multi-generational. Social media apps enable cultural groups to share their cultural celebrations and activities with others, so that Christians, Jews, Muslims, Atheists may all share with the whole world, their rituals and practices.
That is another element that older generations don’t understand either. Some may say aloud that they don’t “get it” or understand why younger generations would share such activities. That is cultural as well. It is very contextual. Say for example, your great-grandparents lived in Poland during WW2 and they are Jewish. Sharing Jewish holidays then and for some years after the war could be dangerous. For African Canadians and Americans, sharing and talking about Kwanzaa until recently, would invite derision and negative commentary (sometimes it still does, sadly.) Today, in our digital world and increasingly physical world, we see greater acknowledgement and representation of Kwanzaa.
It is less about the technology itself that creates tensions and hesitation in older generations than it is about culture and the context within the culture that results in a resistance to adoption and uses of digital technologies. When we understand this, we can better understand where the reluctance comes from.
For digital product designers developing apps for seniors, a noble pursuit, doing a deep dive on cultural aspects of generational preferences can be very beneficial. It’s where most such apps fail. They focus on larger buttons and process simplification, both of which are critical, but often forget the cultural context within which the app will be used. Adding that into the UX research and strategy can be very helpful.
For those of us helping our parents, grandparents and great-parents, keep in mind the culture we and they came from and that older generations are brilliant and have much to teach us, but they are used to navigating one world, the physical one, and not navigating two worlds.
As I’ve written before, cultures are meeting, mixing and evolving globally unlike ever before in human history. One of the key adaptations humans will have to make in what I call the Cognitive Age, is the ability to navigate the physical and digital worlds simultaneously. For Gen Z and the next generation, this will be far easier. But even Gen Z at some point, will struggle as their children embed Brain Computer Interfaces (BCI) and other sensors into their bodies. Fascinating times!
