There is a variety of things an older person can use the internet for, aside from just chatting. I am saying that because my mother can’t seem to find anything positive about it.
That said I came up with the following list of things that a person can get involved with which does not infer wastefulness.
- An older person can read a classic that he normally doesn’t see on the shelves. There is a site called Gutenberg where a person can access some of the world’s most famous classics.
- A lot of people like window-shopping over the internet and this has the advantage of saving a lot of legwork to see things they wouldn’t normally buy or to compare prices
- People can plan a trip by checking out travel agency deals and seeing what various hotels have to offer
- It is convenient to pay your bills on line so that you don’t have to wait for a teller or worse have to fit your work schedule around their availability
- There is a certain appeal for solitaire on the internet or interactive games like scrabble, chess or other games. This helps to kill time especially if the older person doesn’t have a neighbour that is free to play the game.
- A lot of people like catching up with the news and they can pick their favourite channel and get some news on what is current
- Sending emails to friends has always saved on postage and one can even send a wide choice of ecards through the internet. Nothing beats getting a birthday card on the mail though.
- An older person may want to look up where he can do volunteer services and there are websites that he can frequent so as to choose the right resource
- Writing on the internet offers another means of exposure and that writing could be in the form of poetry, prose or narratives. There is a wide choice of websites that will even pay for submissions although one should be careful of those that offer quick riches.
- One can consult the internet for rentals in the house or car market. This also saves a lot of leg work
- Calls can be made over the internet if the person is outside the house and wants to speak to someone. All one needs is to download a program to make the call and attaché a microphone into the jack of a laptop.
- Opinions and comments can be done over the internet especially if one is concerned over the nature of an article and wants to voice his differences
September 22nd, 2008 at 7:30 am
How about this revolutionary idea — most older people aren’t too different from you young ones. They blog, take part in discussion forums, do research with Google and other search engines, they surf, watch videos, design and run websites, run businesses, etc.
September 24th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
Very good of you to add additional details. Surely the list could be longer. This is my way of saying we are much the same no matter how old we get:)