Unconnected and older than dirt

Culture | December 14th, 2016

I told you before that I am an information junkie. I read reports, surveys, investigations, whatever turns my crank. Since I am older than dirt, I have a tendency to read things that affect my generation. This time I read something that was put out by the Pew Research Center (a think tank) that said that 13 percent of Americans still do not use the Internet.

OK, here is the important part. Of that group, the most telling variable is no longer race, sex or even income. It’s age. Over 40 percent of seniors are offline, compared with 1 percent of millennials. Two other groups stand out as digital holdouts — rural Americans (22 percent) and those with less than a high school education (34 percent).

What is going on here? While income undoubtedly plays a significant role, many who remain offline wouldn’t use the Internet even if it were free. A report just out from the Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration finds, consistent with earlier surveys, that over half of those who don’t have Internet service at home say they don’t want or need it.

Ladies and Gentlemen, this is not a good thing! Given the Internet’s growing importance for education, health care and jobs, non-adopters are tragically mistaken about relevance. So the focus needs to be on persuading them to join us. And join us they must. The more users who join the network, the faster each added connection increases its value. The silence of older, rural and less-educated Americans from the online conversation makes all of us that much poorer.

You can improve the life and the digital life of older Americans and less educated Americans. We have to make digital life more relevant and there is a relatively simple way to do it. Older, rural, and less-educated Americans share one important characteristic — they are all heavy users of government services. For example, 53 percent of benefits go to people 65 and older.

Migrating their entitlements to easy-to-use applications, and providing training through community-based groups, will make the Internet essential, if not irresistible, to those still disconnected. The fear factor about computers within the senior citizen ranks is rampant. If you can get your older neighbor, friend, or relative to attend the free classes around the city you can help them overcome their fear of computers. Send me email and I will research some of the classes they could take based on experience, application types, or disabilities.

We need apps (software) that pull together relevant information across government and agency boundaries and a design that is focused on convenience for the older or less experienced user. Deploying them quickly would not only increase online adoption but also simultaneously improve government performance and lower its cost. Do you know someone or some software company that would be able to develop such an application?

The recently created U.S. Digital Service (www.USDS.gov), which recruits top designers, engineers, product managers and policy experts and pairs them with forward-thinking civil servants, deploys high-powered teams “to untangle the most important government services.”

There’s also www.Data.gov, which has released nearly 200,000 government datasets open to “civic hackers, tech entrepreneurs, data scientists, and developers of all stripes.” Hundreds of apps have already been built. If you have previous computer programming experience, check out these sites, write some apps and see if you can get more seniors online.

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