Brenda Davis-White asks Gavin Koh a question during a tech tutoring session at her home in Sidney, B.C.Chad Hipolito/The Globe and Mail
Brenda Davis-White, 76, calls herself “a bit of a Luddite.” She says that as a retired operating room nurse, she had a career that required the use of specialized medical equipment, but not much computer use.
“My career and my life never gave me the opportunity to explore that,” says Davis-White, who lives in Sidney, B.C. “I didn’t have a cellphone for years and then finally acquiesced.”
She says that lack of experience resulted in challenges when she was trying to use her mobile phone and tablet.
“I got tired of asking family for help, which never seemed to come with a lot of enthusiasm,” says Davis-White, “and so I decided I was going to get some help myself.”
She found Victoria Seniors Tech Tutor online and met with tutor Gavin Koh. They immediately clicked. “He’s very gentle and easy to work with and that’s important.” Koh came to her home and helped her get comfortable with her devices including tasks like online banking and using a key-chain for her passwords – “really basic stuff, even just navigating screens and buttons,” she says.
Davis-White says the lessons have been invaluable. “I feel like I’m not reaching out into the wilderness. I am very comfortable doing my banking and online purchases and spotting spam and I just feel way more confident,” she says.
As computers, mobile phones and other devices have become essential tools for everyday life, tech classes for seniors – both paid and free – have gained in popularity. Maybe it’s about fixing a malfunctioning WiFi signal, sending photos on WhatsApp or depositing a cheque via a banking app. Increasingly, it’s deciphering whether a text or e-mail is genuine or if it’s a scammer with fraudulent intentions.
Koh – who charges $120 for a 1.5-hour in-home session – says his clients typically fall into three categories. There is a small minority who are totally new to tech and need coaching with things like turning on a cellphone or answering a call. Then, there are the newly retired, who may have been quite adept with computers during their career and want help with using Canva, AI tools or creating YouTube videos.
“And the middle is people who are just frustrated,” says Koh, who does sessions in Victoria, Sidney and Saanich, B.C. “The most common thing that they say is, ‘I never grew up with this. I had a job that either took care of it or we never used it. No one trained me and I had a family to raise.’”
Koh says he often meets with people after they’ve spent hours on a doom loop of customer service that gets them nowhere.
“And then I come over, and because I’m in their physical presence and have access to their computer, it’s ‘click, click, click’ and within twenty minutes everything is fixed,” he says.
Koh says he also devotes a lot of his time to helping his clients avoid scams and says it’s easier to be fooled than you might think. He estimates 30 per cent of his clients have been scammed, including one who held a very senior legal role in their career but fell victim to digital fraud. It’s not unusual for him to work with a client and see something fraudulent – the fake gift card scam is a frequent offender – come through in real time.
He says his goal for any session is that his clients emerge feeling “liberated” and unburdened from the overwhelm and fear they might feel around this increasingly ubiquitous part of modern life. “I want them to go away thinking, ‘Oh, that wasn’t as scary as I thought it was.’”
Emily Jones Joanisse, left, helps her client Sandra use her computer at Connected Canadians in Ottawa.Supplied
Emily Jones Joanisse, co-founder and CEO of Connected Canadians in Ottawa, says the often-fraught “offspring as unpaid tech support” dynamic is one of the primary reasons that older people seek out paid tech help. Connected Canadians is a national digital inclusion charity that works to help seniors build their technology skills.
“Either they don’t have children or grandchildren that can help them, or they realize that their relationship with their adult child is getting strained due to ongoing requests for tech support,” says Jones Joanisse. “It’s very much like when you’re teaching your kids to drive. It’s something that needs to be done, but you’re not necessarily the person to do it.”
Connected Canadians has nine employees and 900 trained volunteers across the country, providing free, one-on-one coaching for seniors and lessons tailored to the tech skills they’re interested in. Content includes everything from online banking to e-mail to using Zoom or Facebook, texting and streaming music or entertainment. The organization also offers group workshops, either virtually or in person.
She adds that there is a cohort of students who are “self-actualizing,” using their third act to finally do the things they always planned.
“They want to write a novel and they don’t know how to publish it on Amazon or promote it on social media,” says Jones Joanisse, who has an undergrad in computer science and works as an assistant professor of business at Carleton University. “We also have older artists who need help getting their art in an online gallery.”
Then there are the people who may have once delegated the tech stuff to a partner who’s now passed away.
“They have their grief, and then this horrible worry of not knowing how to do things,” Jones Joanisse says. She adds that a major part of her team’s work is fostering the human connections that can happen between a mentor and older learner.
“We want to make sure that every session that happens has moments of human connection. It’s meant to help reduce loneliness and isolation.” After all, in a world where everything from booking a fitness class to buying a movie ticket to chatting with grandchildren often needs to be mediated by a device, a lack of those skills can drive that isolation.
Jones Joanisse also believes that ensuring seniors have tech skills is a way to honour the important place older people have in our society.
“It’s so important to me that older adults are able to still contribute,” she says.
