On the day that my mother got her very first smart phone (three years after everyone in the family had gotten IPhones) I received a panicked call from her as I was out at the mall with my friends. My mother reported that, throughout a five minute phone call, she had accidentally switched to speaker phone three times and had taken several blurry pictures of her feet throughout the call. She is a baby boomer who has begrudgingly stumbled her way into the digital age. She has been forced to keep up with her three teenage daughters and tech loving husband. Unenthusiastically, she mastered the bare minimum: Google, Microsoft Word, and Email and everything else requires a step by step walkthrough by either me, one of my sisters, or my father.
On the opposite spectrum, however, my father has never had any trouble adjusting to the technological age. Many times in my life, my father has been the one to help me with the computer, or the television, or the phone. The way that he interacts with new technology is very similar to me and my sisters, he choses his laptop or iPad over paper sources and does not have any trouble adapting to new technology. He has mastered technology, despite being 57 years old, and has been able to become citizen of the digital age. While it is true that older generations do not generally pick up digital technology as quickly as millennials, I believe that this generational gap can be crossed by those with enough desire and interest to explore and adapt.
Annlus 