Helping Low-Income Seniors Build A Social Web Online

The Internet is often considered the realm of the young. But in the U.S., people over 65 are one of the fastest-growing groups to go online, and social media usage among seniors has soared.

A program in Washington, D.C., is designed to bring more seniors online, especially those who are socially isolated.

The Connecting to Community training program is sponsored by the AARP Foundation in partnership with the nonprofit Older Adults Technology Services, Comcast and the D.C. social services organization Family Matters of Greater Washington.

It puts the latest digital tools in the hands of low-income, older Americans to help them combat loneliness and develop social connections through social media and other online offerings.

The program’s pilot run just finished in Washington, D.C., and while the free iPad tablets the students received were brand new, some of the people using them were born decades before Bill Gates or Steve Jobs were out of diapers.

Volunteer trainer Karen Coville and student Ruby Lester work with Ruby’s new iPad.

Art Silverman/NPR

Learning The Tools And Privacy Basics

The students, all on limited incomes, have been attending class a couple of times each week, with instruction from volunteer trainers. They’ve learned to use touch screens and to navigate social media like Facebook and Twitter.

But what comes naturally to a 20-year-old can take time for someone three times that age. “I was trying to take a picture, and I ended up taking a picture of myself,” says student Doris Bagley at a recent class. “I want to know how the heck that happened.”

Ruby Lester gets nervous when she sees unexpected pop-ups on the screen. “That scares me, and I just cut my computer off,” she says.

And Kenneth Butler has had a difficult time using his tablet’s camera function. “I have, essentially, tremors,” he says. “When I take pictures, I [shake] so much that I don’t get a clear picture.”

The classes are designed to help the participants sort through those issues. Another important component of the Connecting to Community program, explains instructor Sheila Poole, is privacy.

“When we talk about your privacy and your settings on the social media, you need to know how to decide what you want people to be able to see, what you don’t want people to be able to see, what you possibly don’t even want to put on,” Poole tells the class.

With this group, the touch-screen technology has come easier than learning the dos and don’ts of social networking, Poole says.

“We show them … what your settings should be like for privacy,” she says. “[We] teach them how to spot spam items and [that] if you feel uncomfortable about doing something, don’t do it. We let them know these are your brakes, just like in your car.”