The Charlotte County Resource Centre has partnered with the New Brunswick Public Libraries to offer tech support to area seniors.
Emma Keech said the resource centre, which is a nursing home without walls, saw a gap in computer lessons and many things associated with technology.
“We wanted to empower all our seniors to use their technology as well as trying to close that digital divide,” she said, speaking in an interview with The Courier.
According to Statistics Canada, about 74 per cent of people aged 65 years and older sent and received emails in 2022, which was an increase of about 7.7 per cent from 2020.
However, only about 40 per cent of seniors use technology for banking purposes in 2022.
The COVID-19 pandemic forced a lot of people to use technology in ways not typically done before, including for banking, government services, medical appointments, and working from home.
Keech said the digital world never stops growing.
“There’s no way to get around it, really,” he said. “It is critical, I think, in day-to-day life now,”
“We’re just feeling that if we can help guide them and navigate that system for them or with them, it really lets them take control of their life and give them the choices to navigate the systems if they choose to,” she said.
Every class and one-on-one session to date has been filled, although they take a break in the wintertime.
Keith MacKinnon, who is the regional resource librarian for the Fundy Library region, has been doing the classes, travelling from Saint John.
“I started off doing class sessions on how to search Google, how to use your iPad,” he said in an interview. “There were so many different questions that came out of that that were beyond the scope of the class that we decided we would do one-on-one tutorials.”
He said questions ranged from simply how to use their cellphone, to how to pay their bills online, and how to store information on the computer.
People have continued to come to these sessions armed with questions about technology.
“I think they really need that contact to understand a wide variety of things,” he said.
MacKinnon said the digital literacy aspect of these sessions is very important.
“There’s no way to get around it, really,” he said. “It is critical, I think, in day-to-day life now,” MacKinnon explained.
He also said he learns from these sessions too, sometimes getting questions that require him to do a little bit more research, but he also understands digital literacy can keep seniors safe.
“I think it’s just a matter of raising their awareness that there are so many scams out there,” he said. “They’re getting more and more clever, and it’s easier to be fooled by them.”
The group hopes to resume the sessions by late March or April, once there is an improvement in the winter weather.
Author
