Quote:
Originally Posted by Tarana
Yep, I think health issues are what takes a lot of elderly from active reading to passive pursuits. Medications, arthritis, mental agility, hearing loss all work against you. Plus, keep in mind that a lot of elderly don't know how to use technology, so even though ereaders and audiobooks may solve their problem, there is nobody helping them with it.
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And part of that health decline may be in eye related problems too. While some models of e reader can read aloud to you not all can and even if it can if the person using the tech doesn't understand how to use it (as you said) it won't make much difference to them. Not to mention that with RA and other like ills of old age they may have trouble holding even an ebook device much less a paper book. I also recall reading somewhere about how our tastes in music is pretty much set by age 35 (hard wired into our brains) so we are less likely to start listening to a new genre of music after that. I can imagine something like that applying to trying new gadgets for many as well. Before she passed last year my mom liked to look at the Rockford IL paper online, but she had me open up the site for her. She wasn't even sure where the on switch for my computer was much less how to navigate to the paper's page. Instead she had me do the work even though I tried to show her how many times, she just couldn't master it. To her computers were the big machines in banks (she was born in 1943) and the modern personal computer was beyond her understanding.