What an Aging Population Means for the Future of the Internet

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/old-and-online-fake-news-aging-population

by smb111 • 7 years ago

81 48 7 years ago

I'm a bit annoyed when people talk about "fake news" as if everyone understands what that means. It seems pretty clear to me that different people have different conceptions of what that is.

nothanksmydude• 7 years ago

One of the best ways to make me cringe is to use "fake news" as a joke in the completely wrong context. It physically hurts me to realize this every time it happens (which is unfortunately common)

Not implying you are doing this, had to chime in tho cause it really does piss me off

I should clarify that doing this on purpose isn't even remotely funny. It's the realiziation that they have an extremely incorrect understanding of the term that hurts

josteink• 7 years ago

It’s also interesting that those who popularized the term “fake news” (left wing politicians) used it to discredit their opposition, by claiming some sort of “collusion” between Trump and the Russians.

And now that whole construct, which was reported on to great lengths by “real” news outlets, has been proven to be “fake news” as well.

As in, the phenomenon of fake news was actually faked? Could this even be messier?

No wonder nobody trusts anything anymore.

austincheney• 7 years ago

While everybody may use or abuse that term there is only person who popularized that term, to me, and that person does not claim to be left wing.

Joeboy• 7 years ago

I'm sure there was a moment when "fake news" meant stories coming from superficially reputable looking websites, that in reality were fugaciously created to give a veneer of respectability to made up stories. This meaning of "fake news", which I think is actually meaningful and useful, seems to have completely vanished, or maybe I just imagined it?

asark2• 7 years ago

It didn't vanish so much as it was vanished. Trump and friends calling anything they didn't like "fake news" effectively destroyed any utility or specificity the term may, briefly, have had. Brilliant move.

dredmorbius4• 7 years ago

The term dates to the late 1980s when it referred to propagandistic video and audio "news releases" generally created by or for corporate interests. That usage continued through to mid-to-late 2000s decade.

It was applied to more general misinformation in the 2010s, before being 'undefined' by many of the promotors and beneficiaries of fake news.

https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Fake_news

https://www.prwatch.org/fakenews/execsummary/

https://www.prwatch.org/fakenews2/execsummary

lnsru• 7 years ago

I am shocked how some older people behave in their inboxes... One lady clicks on every single link in every e-mail she gets. Her man tries to open every attachment. I was even more shocked when I saw, that their free mail provider Gmx doesn’t really have spam filter. I use gmail in Germany and see spam every few months. Gmx’s inbox had many suspicious e-mails when Amazon purchase notifications landed in spam folder. Both computers Windows 7 with no antivirus. After years educating them I achieved, that she does not open suspicions e-mails and the guy open attachments only from his friends. Some of these friends strongly believe, that everything on Internet is true. It was a weird moment understanding, that some random website is trusted by older people on same level as quality journalism like Sueddeutsche Zeitung. This aging population is nice target for individuals with not the best intentions.

collyw2• 7 years ago

I cleaned up my mums computer a while ago, removing all the crapware / spyware / malware. She was annoyed that I removed the bullshit emojis add-on that she had installed to her web browser, which fitted into all three of those categories.

NeedMoreTea4• 7 years ago

Everything you have written applies equally to young folks too.

I was shocked when I discovered how our kid's friends are with tech - youngest is 20 now, and has been messing with computers since 4. Shocked because unlike my parents generation they've all grown up with, and been educated around tech their whole lives. All I have to do to get a significant number of them to believe $conspiracy, or 2+2=7.234 is put it on a convincing looking website. They'll mostly install any and every app that passes under their nose. In the days of FB among the kids, and FB games and surveys, they'd go with every single one of those too... and share, and ping their whole contact list... Before that every drive by popup/malware install...

At least my parents generation had their expectations fixed in the 1930s and 1940s. Receiving something in writing meant something. Honesty and ethics were mostly to be expected. The scams were far more about in-person confidence tricks, or the dodgy tradesman charging for work that's not needed etc. I don't blame some for not adjusting their model to everyone's a spamming scammer. :)

I do blame the youngster's generation. How the hell do they not get it and so glaringly badly?

kris-s• 7 years ago

I do blame the youngster's generation.

When you're young the older generations complain about you. When you're old you complain about the younger.

https://mentalfloss.com/article/52209/15-historical-complain...

thedailymail• 7 years ago

I wonder if this is a transient phenomenon in which people from the last generation not to grow up with internet (=people born before 1985 or so) becoming easy prey to manipulative agents online, or whether it will continue in subsequent "old" generations due to age-related cognitive decline and social isolation.

ido• 7 years ago

I think your timeline is way off. I was born in 1983 and know lots of people born in the 70s and 60s (many of which coworkers, friends or family) & I would place the "gullibility divide" much earlier than 1985 - by maybe 20 years.

This is more something I find with my mother's (in her 70s) cohorts than with people in their 30/40/50s.

collyw2• 7 years ago

Born in 1974, internet was becoming a thing when I was at university. I think most people my age are reasonably computer literate. My parents generation less so.

xxs• 7 years ago

1985 is way way too high, I'd presume you are young enough, though.

If you were born pre-1985, you might have witnessed netiquette and its desolation.

ubermonkey2• 7 years ago

b1970. I remember when it became September Forever.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

ubermonkey2• 7 years ago

I don't think so.

By way of context: I'm 49. I graduated from high school (US) in 1988. I sort of grew up with the net, in the sense that I got my first Internet email address in 1987. I definitely grew up with computers; it's people my age that hassled their parents for those 8-bit machines that plugged into televisions.

People of my cohort were definitely aware that we were on the leading edge of computer-mediated societal change. In 1985 it was still possible to hear folks suggest ridiculous things like "Oh, I just run a $small_business; computers will never help here" from people who did not yet Get It. It was bizarre.

I thought, from my teens through my mid-30s, that this sort of fundamental technological illiteracy was the transient phenomenon, and that once people my age got to be 50 or whatever, it would be extinct. This has not come to pass.

Today, I work in software (surprise!). Our product does a particular kind of project management only interesting in very large contexts. It's a staid and conservative market. And yet there are people my age or a little older within our user community who are still clearly baffled by the idea of having multiple applications open at once, or by the basics of file manipulation, or by the idea of importing data from one location to another. It's bizarre.

My boss is 14 years older than I am, so into his middle 60s. He's like me; he's been in or near computing his whole life. Neither of us understand it, but there appears to be an inexhaustible reservoir of folks who just look at anything with an integrated circuit in it and say "Nope!" From our POV, though, it's just NOT OKAY to have worked in data intense business for decades and still be baffled by something as simple as "save-as" or whatever.

KineticLensman3• 7 years ago

I was born in 1961 and first saw ftp [0] in 1982. I like to think I will always an ability to spot internet scams (as well as I can spot a doorstep scammer), but I can sense my own cognitive decline beginning even now in terms of quickly navigating to specific menu items, etc.

Chatting to an (intelligent) 20 year old the other day, I realised that they didn't appreciate the difference between a search bar and and address bar (and the pros and cons of using either). So I don't make the assumption that young people always have a better handle on the underlying tech (as soon as I explained, they got it)

But they still could operate an interface they were familiar with much faster than I could, now.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Transfer_Protocol

Nextgrid2• 7 years ago

I don’t think it has anything to do with old age.

I’m in my early 20s and most of my friends’ tech-literacy (or lack thereof) is appalling.

If anything, I’d say it’s worse than in old people - the latter group might not be tech-literate but they at least have a lifetime of experience and some kind of common sense. The younger group is just as bad when it comes to tech but doesn’t even have experience nor much common sense to save them.

NeedMoreTea4• 7 years ago

I mostly felt like I was reading a piece from 10 years ago. Liking a page on the back of a share or ad for something popular is so common as to be a trope. Britain First were hugely successful pushing their far right racist bullshit with this tactic ten years back. It's how they grew to being noticeable in the first place! Now every idiot can be heard.

Much of the age statistics also apply across the demographic - if non-technical. I don't think anyone, of any age, outside of tech has a reasonable picture of how algorithms affect their lives, and what they might see. The older couple might get taken in by a Microsoft tech support scam or a you won a lottery you didn't buy a ticket for spam. The kids buy cheap games/festival tickets/fashion/tech from absurdly poor scam sites - then don't complain as they've been educated by site policies rather than any awareness of consumer law.

Last, I think everyoen is more lonely. We have apps that centre on us, the individual. No need to go to the club without an appointment, or make a phone call, or interact with any of those pesky humans. Apps, internet and politics are all driving this hard. Purely from what I see, it seems like the youngsters are hardest hit - they should have their max amount of friends and least chance of existential loneliness. By the time you hit 60s half your friends have moved miles away or died. A good proportion will have been widowed. Loneliness rather goes with the territory of ageing.

cstross• 7 years ago

Article totally misses another major issue with an aging demographic: UX concerns.

I'm 54. A UI with clutter, or carousels that move too fast, or text in a small font (or one with low contrast against the background color/image) is hard to use. I also have middle-aged memory issues, which only get worse with age: I'm far less able to hold multiple bits of information in working memory, so I can get demotivated and give up when a website or app expects me to remember seemingly irrelevant details (hint: disabling copy/paste in password entry fields is a great way to lose me as a customer because I rely on 1password and know enough to use strong passwords — but I can't memorize them).

Apps and websites designed by twenty somethings tend to assume twenty-something levels of cognitive performance and sensory ability and reflexes which older users once had but have now lost.

And so on.

… And before you comment to say "well, don't use the app/website, then", bear in mind that it's increasingly impossible to avoid filing your tax return online, dealing with your bank and credit cards via an app, ordering supermarket deliveries online (especially if, as with many elderly people, you're mobility-impaired) …

There's a point at which bad UX design becomes life-threatening. This is well understood in human factors engineering in e.g. the aerospace sector, where aircraft cockpit controls are carefully designed to be where and do what pilots expect. But there comes a point at which badly-designed smartphone apps are going to become an actual hazard to users who are unable to use them as their (younger, able-bodied) designers expected.

Erlich_Bachman• 7 years ago

A website which forces someone to manually type on their password (disabling copy/paste) has nothing to do with age, it's just a bad UI. It's just a worse experience for no practical benefit, for all age groups.

degenerate• 7 years ago

Age comes into play with how people react to bad UX. A youngster can learn the quirks of a bad UI, and deal with it (while hating it). An older person will simply choose to not use the product.

0xDEFC0DE2• 7 years ago

Carousels in particular are bloody stupid and lazy design and I wish they'd fall off the face of the earth already.

Angostura• 7 years ago

Carousels have a particular purpose which is amazing valuable for web designers. You deploy them when management cant decide what the most important thing is. After waiting 6 months with pressure mounting to go live, you wack in a carousel.

Const-me• 7 years ago

About passwords, when I really need to enter them, I use the following 3 lines of VBScript:

    Set objShell = WScript.CreateObject( "WScript.Shell" )
    WScript.Sleep( 5000 )
    objShell.SendKeys "The Password"

This gives 5 seconds to alt-tab to browser and click in the password input box.

sandworm101• 7 years ago

The market will respond. Look at television. Turn on CNN. Every add is for either a drug or retirement planning. Old people have all the money. As soon as old people start relying on smartphone, when they actually start using them as the young do today, the apps will adapt.

Facebook is getting older. I'd expect the first real UI changes to begin there.

asark2• 7 years ago

I'm not old (well, not that old) and I bounced off Facebook when I first tried it around 2010 or so, because I couldn't figure out where anything was or what anything did or meant. Recently have had to use their "workplace" product and it's just as bad as I remember. Their UX is so bad I can't figure out how to use their product, accessibility entirely aside.

It's like Crusader Kings II but without the game to motivate me to figure it out, and also not apparently as necessarily complex so I'm not sure why it's so confusing.

dredmorbius4• 7 years ago

"Market" solutions can and do lead to race-to-the-bottom, or discriminatory, actions.

Regulations can set a. floor.

No, regulation isn't panacea, but neither are markets.

codetrotter• 7 years ago

While we are on the subject of UX design, since you talked a bit about it and I agree with what you are saying, could you take a look at a web app I built recently and tell me how you feel about it? I have made an effort for it to be very user friendly but I cannot be sure that what is user friendly to me is user friendly to others. (Also I have a couple of ideas that I have not yet implemented which will further improve the experience of using this app.)

I considered waiting for a response before giving the link but since we are probably in different time zones (GMT+1 here) that would mean more overhead and it would mean you would have to check back so I am going to put the link here right away instead.

https://www.tell-ned.no/

I should add that some of the buttons don't do anything yet, because the app is still a work in progress.

rjp0008• 7 years ago

For the copy paste disable issue, you can usually paste into the address bar, and then select and drag the text down into the field. You may have to type and delete a character if they’re also listening for keypresses. Hope this helps you cause I hate it too!

gumby• 7 years ago

hint: disabling copy/paste in password entry fields

If you're using Safari on the Mac, a program called Stop The Madness junks crap like that for you.

mostlysimilar• 7 years ago

As a counterpoint, I lament the loss of high-density interfaces and applications with a lot of configuration options.

I see the modern web moving more and more towards the lowest common denominator. I appreciate your perspective because I had previously not viewed it from an accessibility standpoint, but as application developers creating things that can be used with as little thought as possible, to the dismay of people like me.

I think there's an opportunity to create tools and UI that can adapt for power users as well as people who need accessibility. Stripping everything out and placing large text on a plain white page and calling it accessibility seems like laziness. Or perhaps that unrelenting drive towards simplification for the sake of saving time/money. Anything that needs more support, more developer time, etc. is seen as a bad thing and avoided.

Just some thoughts.

NeedMoreTea4• 7 years ago

High density, and configuration choices are not clutter. Their loss is a cargo cult fashion as much as bell bottom jeans or flat monochrome UI. :p

I'm about the same age as Charlie. I need reading glasses and have wrist issues thanks to decades of constant typing. As I can feel some of the deterioration now I notice when I'm fighting it. I'm amazed so little accessibility has been achieved.

Clutter is the irrelevance, the ads, the options they want you to click rather than the one you're looking for. The random mess that achieves nothing beneficial -- for me. Obsessions with flat monochrome UI (Hello Win 10) that no theme or setting can remove are clutter - informational clutter that ensures the usual channels are overloaded or missing.

Clutter might not even be the one room, one app or one site, but become so when there's the whole house to consider, or the dozens of apps or sites the modern world expects you to use. I don't mind spending 10 or 20 minutes finding an option or setting, or buying a book, ONCE. I do mind when it's become so cluttered that every interaction with everyone takes 10, 20, 30 minutes from me -- for the benefit of some random company I have no choice about using anyway. Every current Amazon purchase takes far too long, as does phone co, electric co, bank, government or council. When every company and department over 3 people has the same useless, hateful queuing system and consigns serviec and continuity to the bin. "Your call is important to us". Bullshit, if it were you'd still have the local number answered after 3 rings.

Tech is to serve them, the corporation, not us. Everyone's life has filled with clutter to give free time, and data, to serve the master^Wcorporate overlord.

I got into tech because I could make things better, quicker, easier, more fun. It's none of those things any more mostly deliberately choosing the opposite. Laziness of UI is profitable -- that's the only care in this second gilded age.

This is heading to rant. I'll stop now. :)

dredmorbius4• 7 years ago

The tyranny of the minumum viable user:

https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/69wk8y/the_tyr...

KineticLensman3• 7 years ago

(source: I'm 58)

I think another challenge that is already happening is reduced accessibility to older people of household devices that are app driven.

I'm in the process of buying some new high-ish end audio equipment. All of the systems I've seen pretty much involve having a smart phone / tablet to control it and access to streaming services (e.g. tidal or deezer) if you want high quality sound. There are several challenges right there for folk who just want to insert some physical media and press 'play'.

I can handle this, for now. But who knows what the interfaces to these systems will be like in say 10 or 15 years time. Voice control may address some of these challenges, but I think for a lot of people, a whole range of devices they rely on will become alien and scary.

pariahHN• 7 years ago

It's not just older people - I'm late 20s and I don't want a a high end ANYTHING that relies on a third party to work. Sometimes unavoidable, but I feel like there are quite a few cases (yours included) where it's just unnecessary. I see discounts all the time for smart TVs - I just want a 60 inch monitor without someone else proprietary BS stuffed in it. Seriously concerned about the possibility of smart/app everything with no dumb/consumer customizable options. Apparently something similar is happening with car audio too, because of the increasing integration of the head unit into the guts of the car.

We should be making things easier for people to do themselves, not finding more ways to extract money by doing it for them.

bfuller• 7 years ago

Dealing with my aging baby boomer father concerning the internet has been a FUCKING NIGHTMARE. He somehow gets every toolbar installed on his computer, falls for every phishing/fraud scheme. I am terrified of what the world will look like when I start losing my faculties.

Nextgrid2• 7 years ago

The solution for this is to give them locked down devices like iPhones or iPads.

What an Aging Population Means for the Future of the Internet

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