When the teacher calls the room to order, a dozen white-haired people focus their gaze on the white curtain where the first slide of the class is projected: “Mastering the smartphone (our cell phone).”
The teacher, Jose Ignacio Casas (73 years old), who is younger than some of the students, asks that the cell phones be silenced, but first he asks the audience if they know how to do it.
In the second row, the couple Carmen Cid (72 years old) and José Luis Alfonso (71 years old) sit.
The man states that he is “basically motivated by necessity”, he wants to know “how the hell” to file an income tax return online or open a report in PDF format.
She wants to learn how to write down a shopping list, or check medical appointments on her cell phone.
During the two sessions held between January 22 and 24, at the Casa de las Asociaciones de Rivas-Vaciamadrid, the 14 enrolled in the course have learned to obtain the electronic DNI, consult the medical history and even what the difference is between the Apple and Android operating systems.
This student body joins the 363 seniors who, since last year, have received the expertclick course in Madrid, where in the same period 40 of these workshops have been given to bring seniors closer to digital tools.
The class starts with the basics: what airplane mode is, what the IMEI is for, how to organize the icons in folders or how to hold the phone, with the little finger resting on the base, like “la chavalería”, a term reserved by Casas. for digital natives, the example to follow in this classroom.
Every once in a while, the lesson is interrupted by a student shouting that his phone doesn't have that option or that she can't find an app.
During the seconds in which the teacher attends to the individual need, a murmur worthy of any classroom breaks out.
In that short period, spontaneous friendships arise and there are plenty of hands to help those who are not clear about the lesson.
The adults practice, question and answer each other, until the teacher calls them to order and resumes teaching.
Expertclick digital tools course, on January 22, 2024 in Rivas-Vaciamadrid.Juan José Martínez
One in five adults over 65 years of age in Spain has not used the internet in the last three months or has never done so and only 65% do so regularly, a percentage that in those under 54 years of age exceeds 93%. , according to the latest survey, the INE survey on the use of technology.
This generational imbalance has not gone unnoticed by those affected: the digital divide worries 76% of those over 80 years of age, according to the 65YMÁS Senior Observatory.
To counteract such inequity in the management of technology, a battalion of 3,500 volunteers has been traveling around the country since 2018 to help adults get out of the technological shipwreck in which they ran aground after the turn of the millennium.
“The objective of my workshops is for people to lose their fear of the telephone, for them to say 'I control the mobile phone and it is not the mobile phone that controls me,' explains Casas, minutes before starting the lesson.
The beneficiaries in Madrid exceed 1,400;
In Spain there are more than 6,100.
Jose Ignacio Casas, volunteer teacher of the expertclick course for older adults.Juan José Martínez
Casas is a sociologist and can afford to have eaten from it, as he explains with humor.
He has learned how to use technology empirically, due to his work, which forces him to constantly search for sources of information on the web.
“I don't know about technology, but I know the problems that people have with technology,” explains the volunteer, who gives an example to his students “that what used to be done in the bank with a simple folder, now a email, a mobile phone, a contract with an operator, having installed the bank app, Bizum, the card...”.
The teacher is careful to warn his students about the dangers of the Internet, for example, the WhatsApp forward button, with which Casas recommends "very careful, because it is often used to share hoaxes."
Or SMS, useful for confirming medical appointments, “but not for sending messages because they usually charge for them separately.”
Once his class begins, he alternates information with humor, always aware that “you can't teach anyone at this age.”
"If your daughter installs an app on your phone, ask her to uninstall it and teach you how to install it yourself," insists the teacher.
“They don't have patience,” emphasizes a voice from the audience, supported by a wave of nodding heads.
―That's when you have to say: “The patience I had with you when you were little is the patience you should have for me now.”
These adults feel victims of a transformation that suddenly overtook them.
Alfonso feels that there is “a lot of discrimination” towards older adults: “They talk about us as clumsy or useless and we are not.”
The pandemic converted many analog processes into digital ones, which increased the lack of protection for the elderly.
Ángela Paccini, secretary of the Rivas-Vaciamadrid House of Associations and student of the digital tools course.Juan José Martínez
The secretary of the House of Associations of Rivas-Vaciamdrid, Ángela Paccini (69 years old), remembers that she had a difficult time during the first months of the pandemic when she was not able to pay the assembly fee in person.
A couple of years later, it was she who invited the Cibervoluntarios Foundation to teach the digital tools course, of which she was a precursor and student.
“I wanted to provide the members [of the association] with things that could be of use to them, because I see that they push their children and grandchildren a lot [to use the cell phone], neither they nor the grandchildren wanting to,” says who now serves as a monitor of classes, resolving the doubts of his contemporaries.
“The idea that older people are not capable of learning makes people treat us with paternalism… you see the older people!”, emphasizes Paccini ironically for whom “it is very important for the elderly to be autonomous.”
If Henry Ford's maxim is applied, under which “any person who continues learning stays young”, the attendees of the expertclick course have returned to the prime of their lives.
In this room, where time and patience are important, students learn to place their little finger on the base of the mobile phone and leave their thumb free to
scroll,
as
the kids
do .
Each learning brings more security, as Francisco Yañez (75 years old) confesses: “What scares me the most is making payments because suddenly I click something wrong and it empties my account.”
This is one of the teachings that he comes to seek.
Of course, although he wants to know, he doubts that he will use it.
"I prefer to go to the bank because that's how you talk to people... that's another thing..."
He didn't finish his sentence because the teacher asked for silence to continue the session, but it wasn't necessary either.
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