How the elderly stimulates their brain thanks to new technologies

Everything started with a high school writing course.

Wanda Woods joined because his father told him to dominate writing, he would help him find work. Thus, it was rented by the Federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as an outside of the curriculum when she was studying the eleventh grade.

“I sat in front of a machine called the word therapist,” Woods, who is now 67. “It was large and huge magnetic cards and used to store information. I thought:” I love this. “

After decades, remained like. In 2012, the first year More than half of the Americans are more than 65 who use the InternetThe computer education company launched.

Now he is a coach in A big planetIn Denver, an initiative with the support of Aarp to help the elderly learn and keep up with technology. Woods has no pension plans. He said that working with technology “also keeps me on the things that happen.”

Some neuroscientists who search for the effects of technology on the elderly tend to agree. The first generation of the elderly who, not always enthusiastically, has reached the digital community to an era in which the cognitive deterioration is increasingly common.

After decades of warnings about technology threats for our brain and in good health, which is sometimes called “digital dementia”, the negative effects are expected to begin to appear.

However, it appears to be the opposite. “Among the pioneering generation in the use of digital technology, the daily use of this technology has been linked to a decrease in the risk of cognitive deterioration and dementia,” said Michael Sculin, a cognitive nerve scientist from the University of Baylor.

It is almost like listening to a dietitian to say that bacon It is good for health.

“This changes the narration that technology is always bad,” said Dr. Morali Doriswami, Director of Neurological Cognitive Disorders at Duke University, who has not participated in the study. “It is a refreshing and provocative, and it raises a hypothesis worthy of investigation more comprehensively.”

Dr. Sculin and Jarid Big, a nervous psychologist at the University of Texas in Austin, are authors of a Modern analysis that examines the effects of technology use In people over 50 years of age (average age: 69).

Discover that those who used computers, smartphones, the Internet, or a mixture of these devices obtained better results in cognitive tests and had less indicators than diagnosing cognitive degradation or diagnosing dementia than those who avoided technology or used them less frequently.

“In general, there is a lot of contrast between studies,” Skolin said. But in this analysis of 57 studies in which more than 411,000 elderly participated, they were published in natural human behavior, nearly 90 % of studies found that technology has a realistic perception effect.

Many of Fear about technology Cognition arose from investigations with children Y TeenagerAnd its brains develop.

“There are very convincing data that can arise with mental health or health problems.” When young people are excessively To screens and digital devices, warnly warn.

The brain of the older adults is also flexible, but to a lower extent. Sculin added that those who started dealing with medium -sized technology have already learned “basic skills and skills.”

After that, to participate in the rapid development community, they had to learn much more.

Years Online brain training experiencesWhich lasts for a few weeks or months, produced various results. In general, they improve the ability to perform the concerned task without improving other skills.

“I tend to be very skeptical,” said Walter Pot, a psychologist at the Will Cornell behavioral research at the Will Cornell behavioral medicine center. “Perception is very difficult to change.”

However, the new analysis reflects “the use of technology in real life, with adults who had to adapt to a rapidly developed technological environment for several decades.” He considered that the study’s conclusions were “reasonable”.

An analysis like this cannot define causation. Does technology improve the awareness of the elderly or people with low cognitive ability to avoid technology? Do you build technology just an indication that you have enough money to buy a laptop?

Dr. Doriswami said: “We still do not know whether they are eggs or chicken.”

However, when Scullin and Bege took into account health, education, social and economic situation and other demographic variables, they continued to find a greatly superior cognitive ability among the older users of digital technology.

What can this clear contact explain?

“These devices represent new and complex challenges,” Skolin said. “If you do not give up, if you overwhelm frustration, you are facing the same challenges that studies have shown useful for perception.”

Even dealing with continuous updates and solving new problems and operating systems, sometimes desperate, can be useful. “You must Revander Something is another positive mental challenge. “

In addition, digital technology can also protect brain health by enhancing social relationships, which are known to help prevent cognitive deterioration. Or reminders and notifications can Partial compensation for memory lossScullin and Bege were also discovered in a study on smartphones, while their applications help maintain functional capabilities such as shopping or banking operations.

Several studies have shown that although the number of people with dementia increases with the progress of the population, the number of people increases, The proportion of larger adults who develop dementia decreased In the United States and in many European countries.

The researchers attributed this decrease to various factors, including smoking limit, increased education and improving treatments for arterial blood pressure. It is possible, according to Doraiswamy, that the use of technology was part of this style.

Of course, digital technologies also have risks. he Fraud and fraud On the Internet, they are directed to the elderly, and although they are less likely to reproduce young fraud losses, the amounts they lose are much greater, according to the Federal Trade Committee (FTC). Disturbance raises its own risks.

As with users at any age, but not necessarily better.

“If you spend 10 hours a day watching Netflix, you can lose your social relationships,” Doriswami said. He said that technology cannot “replace other health activities for the brain”, such as exercising and eating reasonably.

A question that has not been answered: Will this supposed interest be extended to? Subsequent generationsFor those indigenous digital population who feel more comfortable with that technology that gave a lot of headaches to their grandparents? “The technology is not fixed, it continues to change,” said Bot. “So it may not be a specific effect.”

But the change that causes everything technology “follows a pattern.” “A new technology is presented and a kind of panic occurs.”

From TV and video to the last progress and perhaps more terrifying, artificial intelligence, “a large exaggerated amount of amounts is created.” “Then, over time, we see that it is not very bad and that in reality it can have benefits.”

Like most people of their age, Woods has grown in a representative world of checks and paper maps. But with the change of work during the 1980s and 1990s, IBM computers were used and learned to deal with Lotus 1-2-3 and Windows 3.1.

Something slowly, her personal life was also numbered: she bought a computer for her children when they needed it for school, a mobile phone when she and her husband could not seek help when they are thrown on the road, and a smart hour for the steps they take.

Today, Woods pays bills and perform online purchases, use a digital calendar and send collective text messages to your relatives. It appears that it is not afraid of artificial intelligence, the most revolutionary technology.

Last year, Woods turned into artificial Chatbots Keys such as Gemini and ChatGPT to plan a motor trip to South Carolina. Now use it to organize a cruise to celebrate the anniversary of her fifty marriage.

New aging occurs in an alliance with New York Times.