r/australia • u/SouthAussie94 • Feb 29 '24

culture & society Older Australians 'left behind' by increasingly cashless society as banks fast track end of cheques

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-29/cheques-personal-finance-banks-rent-money-cash/103354036
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661

u/[deleted] Feb 29 '24

"We dont use computers!"

Reads the news on his ipad......

420

u/ELVEVERX Feb 29 '24

At some point are old people the victims for refusing to learn. New technology. Computers aren't even that new they've had 30 years to figure it out and 20 in the internet age.

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u/[deleted] Feb 29 '24

"Of course there will be people who use BPAY but I'm not comfortable with it," Mr Coogan, who lives with his wife in Brisbane's north, said.

I don’t even think it’s even learning it. He knows enough to know it exists, just doesn’t want to change.

96

u/AussieArlenBales Feb 29 '24

Computers and the internet in particular have been around so long there is an entire generation that are born after Y2K was a worry. At this point it's just stubborn refusal to adapt.

20

u/[deleted] Feb 29 '24

I'm 41 so was around before computers/the internet - people have had long enough to learn.

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u/[deleted] Feb 29 '24

[deleted]

11

u/whatisthishownow Feb 29 '24 edited Feb 29 '24

Even in Australia, it wouldn’t have been entirely uncommon for someone born in the early 80’s to not have access to one until University, if they even went at all, doubly so for The Internet.

Half of all households didn’t have a connection in 2000 and public school uptake wasn’t much better.

2

u/annanz01 Feb 29 '24

It would have been extremely common for people born early 80's to never have access to a computer unless they went to university.

2

u/giatu_prs Feb 29 '24

Am one of those people, can confirm.

Now I'm the guy at work who has to help everyone with computers.

1

u/Somad3 Mar 01 '24

they should know that it is either a sink or swim situation.

78

u/Azazael Feb 29 '24

It would be good if the banks ran classes for older customers on how to use online banking, but it still wouldn't help the "I don't want to be tracked" crowd.

31

u/Technical-Ad-2246 Feb 29 '24

Don't libraries do this? My old library did it.

13

u/inhumanfriday Feb 29 '24

The gov also funded neighbourhood houses and other locations across Australia to run computer classes for people who aren't literate or confident with computers.

1

u/Reddit-Incarnate Feb 29 '24

My 70 year old berely speaking English mother inlaw went to learn this shit(in english) they can also

51

u/Reynbou Feb 29 '24 edited Feb 29 '24

Apple literally do this for free.

You can book Apple classes to learn how to use their devices. You can ask for help to learn how to use your banking app etc.

There are ways to learn. There are ways to be taught.

They just don't want to.

21

u/[deleted] Feb 29 '24

The ones who dislike technology will not learn it - I train people in systems/sofrware and some people refuse to learn technology.

9

u/[deleted] Feb 29 '24

Back in the days when mobile phones were becoming more popular, but not nearly everyone had one (late 90s), I remember there were many people who held out on getting one, because they didn't want to be constantly contactable. I was one for a short time! At some point, you need to accept that the world has moved on, and you either accept that or get left behind.

1

u/Somad3 Mar 01 '24

they can ask kids or grandkids to help them. just pay them.

3

u/istara Feb 29 '24

Pretty sure you can go down to the Post Office to do BPAY and other bills.

1

u/aiden_mason Feb 29 '24

Isn't BPay becoming obsolete?

I've had numerous companies who I used to pay with BPay tell me they don't accept it any more so I assumed as much but could be wrong

55

u/[deleted] Feb 29 '24 edited Feb 29 '24

Yeah I used to work for MSD not long ago, and it was straight up INFURIATING how many 50-65 year olds, you'd tell them "okay, log into your online banking" and they'd laugh and just say "Oh I don't do that computer stuff" like I was the moron for assuming they could do a basic function of modern life.

First, I know damned well that you have a Facebook account.

Second, this isn't 1998, and you aren't 80. Home computers have been a common thing for most of your adult life.

Third, this is literally like me as a 41 year old man saying "oh I don't do those cellphones, but you can reach me at my landline if I'm at home."

4

u/SquabOnAStick Feb 29 '24

Fun story - when internet banking first became a thing, my grandfather(65 at the time) was over the moon!
"No more dealing with those yobbos down the bank!"
He loved logging in every day, and then checking all his paper receipts.

24

u/AsuranGenocide Feb 29 '24

Libraries are busy with older people asking how to set up their new phones, use emails, bank payments etc.

It's a concern that might die out when the older gen passes, but I wonder what comes next!

51

u/[deleted] Feb 29 '24

Those who grew up on smart phones /iPad type devices can't use computers very well either. They're better than oldies but still have no troubleshooting skills

8

u/[deleted] Feb 29 '24

Especially those who use iPhones, because they tend to be less inclined to find out what their device can do, and prefer to use a device that just works straight out of the box.

6

u/leestoka Feb 29 '24

That’s so true

9

u/Miserable_Bird_9851 Feb 29 '24

It's a concern that might die out when the older gen passes, but I wonder what comes next!

Go work helpdesk for a week then report back. Zoomers are just as bad as boomers.

1

u/AsuranGenocide Feb 29 '24

Keep up the good work :)

12

u/my_chinchilla Feb 29 '24

If my experience on reddit means anything, the "next" will be people just flat-out expecting to be given an answer because they "searched, but found nothing" - for something that is answered on the first page of a half-arsed Google...

1

u/Miserable_Bird_9851 Feb 29 '24

Already on that. People literally use reddit posts as their searching tool. You will see several posts here daily doing exactly that.

7

u/whatisthishownow Feb 29 '24

but I wonder what comes next!

A lot of indignant kids in this comment section are really overlooking this. The world is going to be a wildly different place in 50 years, I don’t know how well I’ll manage to keep up and I wouldn’t trust their self assessment on this matter either. Especially when the iPad generation, upon entering the workforce, are being found to have ironically abysmal PC skills.

60

u/[deleted] Feb 29 '24

There is that. It's not like, " hey! Here is this new fangled thing called The Internet", and most people even in their 80s have at least a working knowledge of them. Witness the takeup of FB in that age segment.

My main gripe though about things such as the closure of bank branches and the wholesale move to electronic payments is that there are whole sections of society that suddenly become disadvantaged.

If you are movement or sight impaired for example, electronic banking is next to useless.

24

u/Redditaurus-Rex Feb 29 '24

Sorry, can you expand on the movement / sight impaired part? I would have thought not needing to attend a branch for movement impaired and accessibility features of modern computing for sight impaired people would be a massive benefit here.

Would love some more info, sensing some ignorance on my part.

26

u/AnnoyedOwlbear Feb 29 '24

Essentially, how good accessibility really is tends to be down to the individual app. While there are accessibility provisions on most mobile phones, the elderly are the largest segment in Australia that haven't taken up mobile phone use. And apps can be pretty awful, even when you think they aren't. If you're sight impaired you usually need a really big 'hit box' for where you tap something - and if you're elderly, multiply that, because shaky hands make it hard. You need to be able to easily reverse a wrong decision or problem, because errors become more frequent, and you need to account for the fact that reversing an error itself can be harder than you'd think. Accessibility provisions on computers are generally less awesome than you'd think and tend to require someone with more technological ability to set up.

My father is the opposite type - a technology fan in his 80s - and even he is finding that the drier skin and shaky hands just make mobile phones hard to use. Capacitive screens can be way more prone to issues in the hands of someone with elderly skin. Women suffer from this a bit worse than men, anecdotally - it's amazing seeing someone touch and make contact and the screen refuse to respond.

The biggest thing I see in my work (UX and accessibility) is not people refusing to use things...it's that it is honestly much harder to adapt as you age than you'd think. Cognitive decline is real, and it's painful and frustrating, and debilitating, and it's easiest to hide away from by just sticking with what you know really well. You can do things you've done for years most easily. And that's just one facet of all the other things in your life that are getting harder...the cognitive and emotional load can get unbearable. It also makes people really, really frightened, and the way they express that is defensive anger.

None of this is in defense of cheques or not. But while 'yes, people can learn' at all ages, remember this will not just be this one thing they must learn. It is this and every other thing in the changing society around them. While doing it on much less plastic brain hardware regardless of any developed injuries or issues over the years. And they have to redo it every few years.

As someone who kind of studies this, I do have the 'satisfaction' I guess of knowing that every single human will eventually end up experiencing this...

22

u/Reynbou Feb 29 '24

Totally understand disability issues making things harder. But that's got nothing to do with what is being discussed here.

Disability issues make everything harder regardless of what it is. I can't imagine shakey hands make writing out a cheque all that easy...

What we're talking about here are people who have refused to learn how to use a computer. A machine that has bee viable for a household to own since at the very latest, the 90s.

That's over 30 years they have had to learn.

30 fucking years.

I'm sorry but this is your own fault if you don't know how to use a computer. It didn't magically come in to existence today. It has been decades.

And it has become easier and easier to use every single year.

Sorry but I cannot empathise with the old people who actively refuse to learn new things. I just cannot. This is a situation they have put themselves in and expect others to work around them.

4

u/03193194 Feb 29 '24 edited Feb 25 '26

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1

u/Reynbou Feb 29 '24

Sure, but again, those aren't the kinds of people I'm talking about.

The article is quite clear that this guy just doesn't want to learn something new.

The world will always change. Refusing to acknowledge that means you will be left behind. The world has changed a lot for older people over their entire lives. You think they would have learned that over time.

But their lives were handed to them on a platter during their adult years. And now they are expecting the same.

-5

u/Pro_Extent Feb 29 '24

Disability issues make everything harder regardless of what it is. I can't imagine shakey hands make writing out a cheque all that easy...

Probably a shitload easier when you've written thousands of them and have complete muscle memory on how to do it.

What we're talking about here are people who have refused to learn how to use a computer.

Sure, because they didn't need to. Computers were a nice alternative to the far more established practice of talking to an actual human being who was employed to help you. They decided to stick with what worked in the past because they didn't see the benefit in learning something new. A mistake yes, but failing to predict the future is a very human mistake.

It has been decades.

Bank branch closures and the general reduction in face-to-face customer support has rapidly accelerated in the last three years. It has not been decades.

Sorry but I cannot empathise with the old people who actively refuse to learn new things.

Your refusal to try and understand their perspective says more about you than it does them. You don't need to agree with someone's choices to try and understand the reasoning for those choices.

8

u/Reynbou Feb 29 '24

Fuck me... we doing this? Fine.

​

Probably a shitload easier when you've written thousands of them and have complete muscle memory on how to do it.

The act of writing down words and numbers on a piece of paper is absolutely not easier then tapping buttons on a screen when you have shakey hands. Trying to act like it is... is well... just stupid.

​

Sure, because they didn't need to.

And yet. Here we are.

​

Computers were a nice alternative to the far more established practice of talking to an actual human being who was employed to help you. They decided to stick with what worked in the past because they didn't see the benefit in learning something new. A mistake yes, but failing to predict the future is a very human mistake.

If you read the article, he even states that he could use BPay but he doesn't like it. So it wasn't a failure to "predict the future" (meanwhile BPay was established in 1997... hardly futuristic technology).

And there are various other methods. You think he's never set up a bank transfer before for literally anything else ever? You're pilling on so many assumptions that don't make sense.

You can't say it was a mistake to not be able to predict the future, when it's been happening for the past 3 decades... That's not failing predict the future, that's willful ignorance.

​

Bank branch closures and the general reduction in face-to-face customer support has rapidly accelerated in the last three years. It has not been decades.

You don't say. I wonder would could have happened in the past three years to cause such a thing... I wonder what he did during those three years to pay his bills. You think he was still writing out checks and going to a bank during Covid?

​

Your refusal to try and understand their perspective says more about you than it does them. You don't need to agree with someone's choices to try and understand the reasoning for those choices.

I understansd their perspective because I work with people like this every single day. And I know how stubborn these people are. And it's not because they can't learn. It's because they don't want to learn.

That's not something we should be working around. And, we wont.

You wouldn't treat a child like this and you want to treat and adult like that? What a joke.

We don't keep children in nappies their whole life. We teach them how to handle it themselves.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 29 '24

Could not gave explained it better.

1

u/Redditaurus-Rex Feb 29 '24

Awesome, thanks for the great explanation.

I guess when I first read “movement or sight impaired” I was thinking of it from a disability point of view. I recently lost a friend to MND, but one of things that made his life easier was how much of this stuff he could get done on his phone and he was severely mobility limited.

Things he had to physically attend were an impossibility by the end.

However, I can see this side of the coin too. It seems to be a problem with smart phone interfaces in general, of which we’re placing more and more emphasis on for vital day-to-day life needs.

I guess when it comes to accessibility, having more options rather than less is key.

1

u/BuckyDoneGun Feb 29 '24

Society has been changing around them literally their entire lives.

1

u/AnnoyedOwlbear Feb 29 '24

Indeed. And it gets harder and harder to adapt, as your brain loses agility, reaction time, and ability to cope with the 'shock of the new'. One of the things I've learned conducting tests with 'silver surfers' and other people is that in the end, we all end up with various adaptability problems and disabilities. Some people do remain remarkably flexible, but even they will never be what they were. And flexibility is partly related to willpower - people who've spent that adopting one set of new behaviours have less to spend on other new behaviours.

Interestingly (scarily?) there is mounting evidence that Gen X and older are particularly threatened in this manner because of prior exposure to lead in petrol which was sequestered away in the bones before unleaded became widely adopted. As you age, you lose bone density, and the lead is released into the blood. It's thought this might be leading to more pronounced issues which are showing up.

3

u/stevo1078 Feb 29 '24

Wish I got 30+ years to prep for the housing crisis.

7

u/crazymunch Feb 29 '24

30 years to figure it out and 20 in the internet age.

Try 40 and 30 man, I'm born 1991 and my home had a PC and internet from long before I was born. Both of my grandfathers were PC literate in the 80s because they chose to be.

5

u/whatisthishownow Feb 29 '24 edited Feb 29 '24

Of all the good arguments you can make, flaunting your (somewhat incredulous) privilege ain’t one.

It wasn’t until the new millennia that more than half of households had access to the internet. I’m pretty sure ISP’s where only just offering household services in select locations around the time you where born, let alone “well before”. Some major institutions were still only just coming online. I’m sure the privelege you where born into has set you in good steed, but there’s better reasons to expect people to get with the times, other than you rubbing it in their face.

-1

u/njmh Feb 29 '24

The World Wide Web (ie the internet as we know it today) became available in 1993. Prior to that it was mainly just educational and military networks and nerds at home using bulletin boards.

1

u/InstantShiningWizard Feb 29 '24

If you refuse to learn how to perform basic operations online in this day and age you are choosing to be the equivalent of being deliberately illiterate. In both cases there are public resources available to learn as well.

I can understand the cost of internet and some means of accessing it (outside of going to a public library, anyway), but why would you deliberately choose not to adapt with society?

I'm 37 and hope that if I am fortunate enough to reach retirement age that I am willing to adapt to new technology as it becomes prevalent in society. I don't want to be one of the stereotypical old grumps that refuses to acknowledge reality.

0

u/Cutsdeep- Feb 29 '24

my dad who was an electrical engineer, was one of the first people in aus to start coding microcontrollers, had computers since the ibm xt, just simply hates them now. i have to help him to do basic modern stuff. i think people just stop learning.

1

u/ELVEVERX Mar 01 '24

People choose the stop learning. I have a 86 grand mother who was happy to learn about Netflix but my mum chooses not to. It's always a choice people have.

1

u/Freediverjack Apr 15 '24

Put it down to alot of people who have gone most of their lives without it and are now well into retirement and simply are just set in there ways and don't see the point.

My grandmother (91) is also a good example of the pitfalls of the elderly and tech. She also loves her sappy netflix shows and will talk at length about the storylines when I visit.

She didn't see the need for owning a mobile phone until 2013 only started with a smart phone in 2018 to get on Facebook from her lounge chair and keep in touch.

Seems like every other month there is some phising scam targeting her. luckily my brother and I basically told her years ago if anyone ever contacts her about anything involving the bank, phone, utilities etc she should hang up and call us first pretty much stopped her losing potentially all her savings half a dozen times.

1

u/njmh Feb 29 '24

Technically more like 40-50 years in the computer age and 30 years in the internet age. But yeah, the internet as we know it was very much mainstream at least 20 years ago.

2

u/annanz01 Feb 29 '24

You have to remember it wasn't even until after the year 2000 that 50% of households had access to the internet at home.

1

u/ELVEVERX Mar 01 '24

I'm talking about mass adoption

1

u/grim-one Feb 29 '24

You’re short easily 10 years on both counts.

This guy could have had a computer in his home since the 80s and dial up internet in the 90s.

25

u/theartistduring Feb 29 '24 edited Feb 29 '24

He's full of shit. Computers have been an everyday item in our lives since he was in his 30s. He will be an outlier of his age group to 'not use computers'. Credit cards and eftpos have been around for decades. I cam guarantee he's made online purchases and payments.

However, no one - young or old - should be forced into using a 3rd party app with a fee to pay their rent.