With a tap of her finger, Deborah Miller tried to send a text message on her smartphone. Instead she deleted photos of loved ones: her grandchildren who live in Florida and a friend in Arizona who passed away.
“Oh Lord, I was in a panic,” said Miller, a 72-year-old caregiver. “I didn’t know what to do.”
Alone at home, Miller took a deep breath and a beat to think.
“This is when you have to go back to what people have taught you,” Miller told herself, summoning advice she got from a staff member at St. Patrick Senior Center in Detroit. She scrolled through her smartphone, salvaged the cherished mementos from the trash folder, and her burst of panic evaporated.
Born in an era of vinyl records, cassette tapes, and analog clocks, it’s a struggle for some older Detroiters to adapt to a blitz of new apps, devices and emerging tech, which are actively reshaping their present and future.
To help ease that transition, the St. Patrick Senior Center, a bastion for senior wellness, resources and recreation for more than half a century, has incorporated digital literacy as part of its ministry of community service.
The center recently became one of the city of Detroit’s certified tech hubs, an ongoing initiative to promote neighborhood locations with free internet access, devices and digital literacy training. Other hubs include The Stoudamire Wellness Hub, the Elmwood Park and Jefferson Libraries on the east side and the Adams Butzel Complex and Cody Rouge Community Action Alliance on the west side, according to an online map.
For seniors, digital skills are becoming increasingly necessary to perform basic tasks, learn, connect, guard against health misinformation, curb loneliness, and – as one in eight retirees are poised to return to the national workforce this year – combat ageism in the hiring process. The top reasons for that comeback: rising costs in daily expenses and housing, paying off debt and to relieve boredom.
Yet experts worry the skills gap among some seniors remains overlooked. As the older adult population grows, so will the demand for tech skills as tech itself advances — at an accelerated pace.
What could help seniors navigate the trials of the technosphere? Experts agree training in digital literacy, or a person’s capacity to learn and safely use digital technologies, is needed for current older generations and the ones ahead.
Tech is redefining aging, and SaTrice Coleman-Betts, the executive director of St. Pat’s for 21 years, said she recognized some seniors have trouble overcoming the digital skills gap.
“Seniors are really left out,” she said. “They need technology to help them be more independent, to be socialized and engaged.”
Tech adoption sparks stress
Each year, 3,200 seniors obtain services at St. Pat’s. About 80% are Detroiters, and some are aging alone.
In the city’s Midtown neighborhood, the center is housed in a former Catholic school built in 1892. Pass through the lively cafeteria and ascend two staircases to find the second-floor lab filled with desktop computers and a large smart TV.
Coleman-Betts said grants from Comcast, the Detroit Area Agency on Aging and the Thome Aging Well Program propelled the center into the digital literacy landscape and paid for computer lab upgrades and ongoing tech pop-ups.
Older Detroiters feel catapulted into a society gone increasingly electronic: scanning a QR code to read a restaurant menu, shopping online, paying energy bills online, mobile banking, making telehealth appointments, video chatting with family or friends separated by long distances. Smart refrigerators and smart dishwashers. Court proceedings on Zoom. Robot pets.
From Tuesday through Friday, staff provide one-on-one technical assistance, lessons on topics like computer basics and internet safety, or support those in a federal job training program build resumes or apply for work digitally.
Upcoming workshops will soon transport seniors to faraway continents or even just a raucous dance party at a nightclub through an immersive, virtual reality headset called an Oculus Rift.
The center’s peer digital navigators are actually older adults themselves.
“It’s much easier talking to someone who you consider your friend,” Coleman-Betts said. “Less intimidation.” So far, staff has trained seven of them, and these familiar faces could soothe the agitations tech can inflame.
Besides briefly losing photos of her grandchildren and friend, Miller said she had $50 stolen from her CashApp account. She said the constant use of devices that “just never ends” spurs stress, anxiety and other indignant feelings.
“You can’t avoid it,” Miller said. “You’re fearful you may do something wrong. You might hit the wrong button.”
The onset of COVID-19 exposed stark digital access disparities in the city where 21.5 % of residents 65 and older live in poverty, more than double the state average per census estimates.
At the time, the center, which provides Medicaid and Medicare benefit aid, healthy meals, dance classes and other activities for people 55 and older, gave electronic devices away to seniors. Some didn’t have the skills or the confidence to use them effectively.
“Some are still apprehensive,” Coleman-Betts said.
But in recent years, Coleman-Betts said some seniors’ “staunch refusal” of tech is fading. Embracing tech could support their desires to grow old and stay independent at home.
‘Don’t be afraid to fail’
On a recent Friday afternoon, computer lab manager Melinda Modzel offered an older woman sitting behind a wide desk tips on password creation: use a capital letter, a symbol and replace vowels with numbers.
More than a dozen other seniors in the lab rummaged through online stores in search of the Kroger app during a digital grocery coupon class. Earlier, Modzel had warned the class about the rising cost of eggs.
At the lab, Modzel, 24, along with the center’s digital navigators, play teacher, live IT support, and patient listener.
A St. Pat regular, Kimberly Devezin, 57, came to class curious about computer functions and the possibilities tech creates.
“I want to learn a lot of stuff,” she said. “It’s been fun because I’m thinking, ‘I’m in a movie.’ Everything is, like, high-tech.”
Kimberly Wray-Norman found renewed purpose at the lab after life as a “workaholic” consultant for Blue Cross Blue Shield.
That Friday, the 62-year-old digital navigator convinced a few seniors to join an online learning course.
She said some seniors need help with applying for property tax exemptions or renewing their Bridge cards online. She aided one senior with a Ring security camera and another with a smartphone to track their daily steps.
“I didn’t want everyone to always think technology is (just) computers, because it’s not,” she said. “Technology impacts everything.”
Technology can also affect older people in need.
Wray-Norman said seniors used to complete paper forms to pick up food in the pantry downstairs. The line was so long that it snaked “all the way out of the room, all the way to the elevator.” Staff members have since taught them how to use their smartphones to check in and retrieve their meals, which shrunk wait times.
“It just makes life easier,” Wray-Norman said.
Modzel noted that a few other older adults visited the lab after getting “strange” calls telling them their internet had been compromised. She has fielded questions about credit card scams and new phishing attacks involving QR codes, known as “quishing.”
To avoid scams, Modzel said to watch for red flags: a low-quality website logo and texts or emails stressing urgency to resolve an issue immediately.
Deborah Bunkley, a 70-year-old retiree, is the communications coordinator for the League of Women Voters of Detroit. She works at the lab at least three times a week and recently led a digital literacy pop-up at a community center in southwest Detroit.
Although Bunkley still writes paper checks, the digital navigator has come a long way from where her tech skills used to be.
“I was humiliated every time I tried and I couldn’t figure something out,” she said. “I just felt like I couldn’t ask a question.”
Post-retirement from the University of Michigan, where clerical employees handled the computer tasks, Bunkley said she no longer had the institution’s “blanket” of digital security and was worried a hacker could steal her information. She visited the senior center lab and met Modzel, a game-changing time for her confidence in tech.
“She took the time. She had the patience,” Bunkley said of Modzel.
Modzel said Bunkley was “terrified” of attaching files and sending them by private email, but “she was able to learn and just do it on her own.
“That’s how I’ve learned how to do anything, is just try it and fail,” Modzel said. “Don’t be afraid to fail.”
St. Patrick Senior Center is located at 58 Parsons Street in Detroit. The center is open Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. For more information, call 313-833-7080.