Six Ways Smartphones Can Help Senior Citizens
Smartphones are designed for nearly all age groups, including elderly people, as long as they still have adequate cognitive and motor skills. We already become dependent on using various devices in our lives. Unfortunately, elderly isn’t technology friendly and they tend to avoid technical devices like smartphones and tablets. Un-beknown to them, there are also apps that helps with mind training and memory skills. If an elderly family member or friend is still sticking with dumb, feature phone, here are ways to encourage them to migrate to smart devices:
Bigger screen
For older people, weak eyesight can be a major hindrance. Many feature phones have small physical keys. A 5.5-inch smartphone will be more comfortable to use for elderly, especially because the text size and font can be adjusted to ease usage. The iPhone text size can easily be adjusted in settings to suit the user.
Easy communication
The basic goal of having a phone is to communicate with others. With smartphones, communication is no longer limited to voice call and text message. It will be easy to use video calls, email, social media and instant messaging to interact with more people at once. For people with arthritic fingers, texting can be quite challenging. In some cases, it’s already difficult for them to use a big touchscreen. Smartphones can support easy integration of voice calls. After installing a VoIP or video call app, it should take only a few taps to start communicating friends and loved ones. There are also text to speech apps that can read aloud text messages and email. Voice to text apps could also help to dictate text responses and they can be sent immediately through email, social media or instant messaging.
Digital money
Digital money is now easy to manage. It’s no longer necessary to wait in long queues. Seniors can make payment or check balances using smartphone apps. Booking payments could also be performed with just a few taps on the phone display. It will be delightful for seniors knowing that they don’t need to go outside to book tickets or purchase things from online stores.
Navigation
Seniors often have reduced awareness about their surroundings. When travelling to a new area, they may not be able to correctly predict correct routes. With Google Maps, they can get real-time directions to reach specific locations.
Music and videos
Music, poetry and audio books are common interests among seniors. With smartphone, it should be easy to access music and even audio books in YouTube and other platforms. They can be the source of learning and entertainment for seniors.
Medications management
Seniors need to manage their medications and there are some smartphone apps that can help them do that. They can get alert reminders to take medication at specific time of the day or schedule an appointment with the doctor. Some smartphone models also have emergency mode that allow people to store critical information, such as home address and medical data.
If you’re a senior citizen living in Exeter, you can find great deals on smartphones at fonehouse. Phones that you would generally avoid, such as the iPhone XR or Samsung Galaxy. It’s a great time to get yourself up to date with technology, especially with the iPhone XR dropping in price.
