Technology — love it, or Luddite?
Technology — love it, or Luddite?
https://concordbridge.org/index.php/2026/02/22/aging-well-technology-love-it-or-luddite/
Publish Date: 2026-02-22 07:00:00
Source Domain: concordbridge.org
Without technology, many of us would never have connected. The daily lives of the over-70 generations today are so different from those of our grandparents.
We face a never-ending parade of new technologies that make our lives easier, more connected, entertaining, and sometimes frustrating. It also means that we’ve been in continual learning and adapting mode because of rapid innovations.
We began our lives when the world moved at a slower pace, connected by voice with telephones and radio — definitely not as digital natives. Then came television, word processors, computers, email, the internet, smartphones, Zoom, and electric cars. Video games and robots arrived, too, but those were on the sidelines of my life. Some technologies came and went in our lifetime. Dictating machines, slide projectors, records, cassettes, fax machines, and CDs. I learned to use them all, and then suddenly they disappeared.
Disparate takes on tech
As I look around at my peers in my town and those I’ve met in my research, I see that we 70-, 80-, and 90-year-olds are all over the place in terms of our comfort and skills with computers. Many of us learned skills somewhere, often in the workplace. At the other extreme, some of us live without email or smartphones. A few don’t use a TV for anything but news. But older people are becoming more tech-savvy, and some 75% of those over age 65 use the internet. According to a 2021 Pew Research survey, 96% of those ages 18 to 29 own a smartphone compared with 61% of those 65 and older, a 35 percentage point difference. However, that gap decreased from 53 points in 2012.
Technology is inescapable — for me, it’s included reading newsletters on a smartphone, emailing on a desktop computer, employing software for writing, logging in to Zoom meetings, running errands in a computer on four wheels, and wrapping up the day with a sleep-inducing book on a Kindle.
That’s so different from how it has been…
