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By Annabelle Yao
The Lawrenceville School
Standing in front of the cinema’s ticketing machine, an old granny looked confused, frustrated and lost. She found no place to insert her cash. A black QR code kept flashing in front of her eyes, and a polite, but unhelpful voice, kept alerting her to “Please scan and pay.” But how? After a series of hectic searches and selection, she was shocked and disappointed, knowing she could not get a ticket if she had no mobile payment.
She is not alone. The older 18.7% of the population in China now deal with similar emotions daily. In a society with more than 75% smartphone penetration and 85% mobile payment penetration among mobile users, almost everything in life has been converted online. People order groceries to their doorstep, reserve taxis through taxi apps, and use WeChat Pay, Alipay, or Apple Pay on their mobile phones for everything, from shared bikes to hospital bills. China is moving fastly toward a super efficient and cashless society.
However, to the elderly, the other 18.7% of the population, technology brings frustration and helplessness. This advancement of technology has caused the elders to be abandoned by society at a faster pace. Some don’t know that they can no longer hail an empty taxi on the street because those taxis have already been pre-allocated a pickup job by an app, others don’t have a smartphone that could run the modern apps. And others struggle to recognize the tiny fonts on a phone screen.
Suddenly, in this techie society, the elders’ past wisdom and experiences seem no longer valuable. Their usual conversation topics and advice to younger people, such as the best books to read, views on relationships or jobs to work, appear no longer desired, because the younger generations can find the answers in their mobile phones. In fact, even children, with their lesser amount of experience, know more than the elderly do about technology. Research published in the Guardian shows that six to seven-year-olds scored a higher Digital Quotient (digital understanding) score than both the elderly and the adults. The technology disadvantage has caused the elderly to be disconnected not just from modern-day society but also from younger family members and friends.
For many younger generations nowadays, aging has always been a cause of worry. Worry that one day, we will come to resemble those “senile” and “useless” elderly members of society. But are the elderly actually “senile” or “useless”? Absolutely not. Whilst elders sit on the sidelines much of the time, they’re actually the unspoken heroes of our society. When someone requires help, seniors are always among the first to volunteer. They’re the doting grandparents who look after naughty grandchildren, the free domestic counselors who give unconditional support to their stressed kids, and the husband and wife with ailing bodies who decide to look out for each other at home instead of going to a care home and creating a larger burden on the already overwhelmed healthcare system. These altruistic elders deserve the same full rights in being part of our technological evolution.
My grandparents preferred spending time fixing things rather than replacing the damaged object with a new one. Such a habit highly resembles their, and many other elders’, attitudes in life. They held more hope towards the broken aspects of life, effortlessly working to improve rather than abandon. So when the things that once worked have grown old and stopped working, instead of throwing them aside and leaving the elders to fend for themselves, we, as the more technologically capable generation, should learn to improve and help them. Robots, such as drones, can be introduced to senior care. More classes can be offered to the elderly on how to use smartphones. And more senior-friendly apps can be developed. Were the elders truly welcomed into the technology development, we would find they, too, improve society’s productivity.
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