Wall Street Journal
Adult children of baby boomers often find themselves in a role they never asked for—the round-the-clock IT expert for aging electronic-gadget enthusiasts.
When Sandy LaVake accidentally broke the screen off her laptop recently, she picked up the phone and called one person she knew could help: her son, Jamie Martin. And the next time Mr. Martin, 27 years old, makes it home to Fargo, N.D., Ms. LaVake has another problem for him to troubleshoot. Her Roku box and television seem to be stuck on a preview screen.
“He’s very helpful,” says Ms. LaVake, 57 years old. “But he does, at times, get a little snarky with me. He will take a real deep breath and go, ‘Oh, mother’.”
The parent-child tech support relationship is leading to exasperated phone calls and tense visits home. Baby boomers, feeling a bit foolish and fearful, don’t know where else to turn when a dreaded error message pops up on their screen. Sons and daughters often want to help but quickly grow frustrated with their parents’ seemingly obscure problems and lack of knowledge about technology as a whole.
“I lose patience very easily with my parents,” says Mr. Martin, a data acquisition engineer in Sioux Falls, S.D.
Unlike previous generations, which often resisted the introduction of new technology, baby boomers are enthusiastic adopters. More than three quarters of 60- to 69-year-olds—a group Pew Research Center calls “Older Boomers”—use the Internet. Nearly half have a smartphone, and four in 10 have a tablet.
Parents buy much of this new technology for themselves, but some of it has been thrust upon them by well-wishing children. Sign up for Facebook on your iPad to see pictures of your grandchildren; try watching Netflix on an Apple TV.
New gadgets mean new problems. Something as simple as sending an email or turning on the television involves multiple steps—and multiples chances for something to go awry. Safety is also a concern. A weak password or opening the wrong email could lead to a virus or something much worse, like identity theft or a wiped hard drive.
“Rather than being a burden for physical care, it’s a technology care,” says Vickie Makela, a 63-year-old training and development manager who lives in Hutchinson, Minn., about 60 miles outside of Minneapolis. “You don’t want to feel like you’re a burden, but quite frankly there’s nowhere to go to get that help.”
Ginger Riker, Ms. Makela’s daughter who lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., spent one afternoon during a recent visit teaching her mom to use 1Password, a password-management system. Ms. Riker, who used to work at Twitter and Google, was concerned that her mother was using the same password for too many websites.
“I just can’t, in good conscience, let my parents wander around the Internet unsecure like that,” says Ms. Riker, 40 years old. Her mom was appreciative. “It’s helpful to know what new technology is out there,” Ms. Makela says.
Parental problems can be head scratchers, like when Evan Roberts’s mother called because her computer screen had “magically flipped upside down.” After a bit of googling, he found the combination of keys to flip it back.
Mr. Roberts, a 37-year-old online marketer who lives in Raleigh, N.C., usually fixes his parents’ problems in person since they live nearby. “They’ll feed me, so there’s always a win there,” he says. When problem solving, he suggests a bit of liquid patience. “Booze,” he says. “It helps.”
Holidays and birthdays are prime time for family tech support, when problem-prone gadgets arrive as gifts. “I feel comfortable giving my parents something that’s a little over their head because I’m going to be there to help set them up,” says Tad Carpenter, a 35-year-old who runs a design and branding firm in Kansas City, Mo.
Mr. Carpenter bought his mom and dad a digital picture frame for Christmas a few years back, loaded up with dozens of family photos. “I remember him saying at the time, ‘Mom, you can add any pictures you want,’ and we just never did,” says Becki Carpenter, Mr. Carpenter’s mom. “But we enjoy what’s there.”
Ms. Carpenter, 63, lives in nearby Shawnee, Kan., and says she buys mostly Apple products because that’s what her son and daughter-in-law use. Ms. Carpenter also relies on the step-by-step instructions her son has written out for their Samsung Smart TV.
TIPS FOR GIVING STRESS-FREE TECH SUPPORT
Reassure your parents: Fear, not smarts, is the biggest hurdle.Find out what your parents were trying to do when the problem happened. Understanding the end goal can help diagnose what went wrong.When possible, have parents do the actual troubleshooting themselves. Knowledge is power—and comfort.Ditch technical terms. Talk in clear, everyday language. When explaining something, use an analogy.Try Skype or Facetime for problem solving from afar. Remote-access programs may be helpful.Know your limits. If a problem is outside your comfort zone, call a professional.
Ms. Carpenter has learned a few basic troubleshooting techniques of her own. When she and her husband couldn’t switch the television from the DVD setting, “we turned everything off and turned it back on; that’s the one thing we remembered,” she says. “And it worked!”
Some tech-support companies are trying to mimic the parent-child dynamic. HelloTech, which launched in Southern California a year ago and is expanding to several more cities this year, initially focused its recruiting on clean cut, friendly college students, says Steve Hartmann, vice president of marketing, to mimic “the idea of the children and grandchildren being the tech support.”
Its in-home support workers are trained to talk through what might have caused a problem and what the solution is, rather than just fix it, Mr. Hartmann says. (HelloTech charges $79 an hour for an in-home visit.)
Derek Meister, member of the online support team for Best Buy’s Geek Squad, suggests starting not with the problem but with what the user was trying to do. Was your mom trying to attach a photo to an email? Was your dad trying to stream a basketball game? Understanding the end goal can help diagnose what went wrong along the way.
In his 11 years with Geek Squad, Mr. Meister has learned that fear is the biggest obstacle. Baby boomers first learned about computers when they were big, expensive machines that lived at universities or companies. Having those devices in their home now is exciting—but also intimidating. “It’d be like if somebody showed up at your house and dropped off a military jet and said, ‘OK, fly it,’” Mr. Meister says. (Geek Squad charges $199 for a year of unlimited tech support over the phone, online or in stores.)
When a problem occurs, have the parent do the actual navigating themselves, if possible. “Knowledge is not only power, it’s comfort,” Mr. Meister says.
Talk through what needs to be done and ditch technical terms, Mr. Meister says. Use analogies instead. When explaining what an antivirus program can do, he often equates it to a raincoat. It will keep you dry in the rain but it can only go so far; you’ll still get wet if you jump into a lake.
When recommending a new device, look for the simplest option. If a parent wants to use a laptop only for email and social media, perhaps a tablet would suffice. Ask for the make and model of whatever they get, Mr. Meister says, so you can access a support page or an instruction manual remotely, if necessary.
Skype or Facetime can make solving problems from afar a little easier, so you can get eyes on the program or error message. For advanced problems, try a remote-access program like TeamViewer, Mr. Meister says.
Know your limits. You wouldn’t try to fix your parents’ refrigerator just because they asked you to, Mr. Meister says. The same holds true with tech problems outside your comfort zone. “Some of my best clients were sent to me by their children,” Mr. Meister says.
Mr. Carpenter, in Kansas City, says he tries to keep some perspective when his parents come to him with a tech dilemma. “There’s no one that has helped you more than these two human beings,” he says. “Their USB drive doesn’t work? You can sit there for an hour and figure it out.”
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