I thought it was an age thing, but I've met PLENTY of seniors who completely understand how to use email, browsers, and at least one SNS. My stepmom set up her own router at home, just following the manual. A secretary at my wife's work administrates their network including a strict IP address list set up to prevent any non-employee from having any ability to connect. Shit, I have -no- idea how to do that. But at this point, I think my mother has some cognitive problem which prevents her from doing anything other than send/receive email from one app. She avoids using the iPad I gave her. I know three-year-olds who use iPads, including being able to switch from app to app.
Several months ago, she wanted to be able to check email while traveling. She didn't want to bother me about it, so she called her service provider and tried to figure out how she could log in to public PCs while traveling. (:oh_shit.gif), but the first thing they told her was she could just log in to their webmail service with her usual password and username. But she couldn't remember her password, so they offered to set it to whatever she liked (:wait_wut.gif), so she reset her password at the server, which of course meant that all her local devices could no longer retrieve or send mail because the server has her new password but local devices all have the stuff I set up for her. So she calls to ask me how to fix it, but she can't really explain why things aren't working, because she doesn't realize what has been changed and where it was changed. In the end, I had to call her provider on Google Voice with her on a separate Facebook line to provide any billing information to prove that I'm not socially engineering the situation, to get them to set the password back to what I'd had it set for her. (:fuckingjesustakemenow.gif)
Total service call time: two and a half hours of hair pulling madness.
