The retirement community was recently outfitted with wireless technology to benefit its approximately 100 residents. Internet usage among senior citizens is one of the web’s most booming demographics. A study cited in a 2009 Yahoo article concluded 37 percent of those 65 and older access the Internet regularly.
A computer club within the nursing home has sprung up in the past couple weeks, already boasting 10 members. The organizer of the club is Nathan Squire, a 17-year-old senior at Middletown High School and some 60 years the junior of many of Liberty Retirement’s residents.
“You don’t want to hear about people in a nursing home losing contact with their friends,” Squire said. “I think, if I’m there some day, I’d want to communicate with the outside world too.”
He offered to lend a hand after his mother — the nursing home’s director of social services — told him of the recent wireless conversion. Squire’s found that relating to an older crowd is pretty straightforward.
“At first I was getting questions about how to access the Internet,” he said. “Now I’m getting tougher questions, like how to set up a Facebook account.”
The number of Facebook users 55 and older grew by over 900 percent in the past year, now accounting for 9 million users. This is only about a million fewer than those 13 to 17 using the social network, according to numbers provided by Facebook’s Social Ads Platform.
Joyce Wyrick, 75, uses her Facebook account to shuffle through pictures of her daughters, granddaughter and great-granddaughter.
But a quick Google search also led her to reconnect to a friend she had known since 1961 and lost contact with about eight years ago. Her friend, Dixie, now lives in State College, Pa., and Wyrick immediately gave her a call.
“I learned she’s been looking for me, too,” Wyrick said. “She said every Christmas she would send a Christmas card to my old address knowing full well it was going to come back.”
The student responsible for such personal revelations remains humble.
“I like helping these people out,” Squire said. “I just show them the basics because they didn’t grow up with it.”
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