If you have an elderly loved one that has a laptop but isn’t quite sure about the best way to go about using it, you can be of great help to them. However, you’ll have to use your knowledge of technology and your understanding of your loved one to bridge any gaps they might be experiencing. 

So to help you in doing this, whether your loved one is still living at home or is using their laptop at their assisted living facility, here are three ways to help your elderly loved one get the most out of their laptop. 

Use All Necessary Accessibility Features

One thing that might be stopping your elderly loved one from using their laptop to its full potential could be that they physically are having a hard time with it. To combat this, you’ll want to set up their laptop so that it’s using all of the necessary accessibility features that are available to it. 

On most laptops, you can turn on features like voice recognition, and talk-to-text features. You can also adjust the brightness of the screen so that text is easier to see, make the text larger so that it’s easier to read, and even install an external mouse or keyboard that can be easier for them to use. 

Teach Them Based On Their Needs

When you’re sitting down with your loved one trying to teach them about using their laptop, you’ll need to think about what their needs are and how you can best facilitate them. What they want to do with their laptop may be quite different from what you’d want to do. But by learning what they want to do with their laptop and teaching them how to execute on those actions, you’ll be giving them the best possible education for them personally and their exact laptop. 

Assist With Managing Passwords

One of the hardest parts for older people about using technology is keeping their accounts safe and private with their passwords. While it’s best to have a strong password that’s unique to each account you have and won’t be easy for other people to guess, remembering these passwords can be hard for anyone, including those entering their twilight years. 

To help with this, you may want to install a password manager onto your elderly loved one’s laptop. While you can have them write their passwords down on paper and refer back to them when needed, if someone were to gain access to these written passwords, they could have access to things that your loved one may not want them to. But by using a password manager, they can have more secure passwords that they won’t have to remember on their own. 

If you want to help your elderly loved one get the most out of their laptop use, consider using the tips mentioned above to help them with this. 

Technology is changing the world quickly, and our ideas about retirement are changing, too. It’s not just a time to stop working anymore. Many older people want to start work again or even try out new careers. They could be doing it for fun because they’ve always wanted to, or they need some extra money.

There are lots of great jobs that suit seniors these days, especially in assisted living communities where residents look forward keenly towards contributing productively. So, let’s dive into four popular job choices that have caught their interest lately.

Consultancy Roles

Many older folks love working as consultants. They’ve worked for years in fields like marketing, finance, and engineering. They’re full of useful knowledge! Younger workers or new businesses can learn a lot from them. 

Consultants also get to work whenever suits them best: part-time, freelancing, or on specific projects. In short, being a consultant not only lets seniors share their wisdom but also helps the industries they care about grow.

Digital Content Creators

With the internet and social media, seniors are now finding fame as influencers or bloggers. Websites like YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok have more older people sharing their lives every day. They’re posting about everything from cooking tips to tech advice.

These online jobs keep them in touch with new technology, and they can connect with younger folks, too. People really enjoy hearing perspectives of this age group because it’s authentic, so these senior stars often get a big following.

Life Coaches and Mentors

A lot of seniors are becoming life coaches or mentors. Why? Because nothing beats real-life experience when it comes to helping others. All you need is good listening skills, a caring heart, and the talent for sharing what you’ve learned.

Lots of places now – from schools to businesses – want help from people who have been around the block a few times. It feels amazing, too, knowing that they’re shaping someone else’s journey in such an important way.

Community Event Coordinators

Lots of neighborhoods and groups need people to plan events or run workshops. Older folks are often just the ticket. They know how their community ticks, and they have lots of contacts.

Whether it’s setting up a festival, leading craft classes, or starting meetups, seniors can do this stuff in their sleep. All you need is some organizing talent along with creativity and good people skills. It’s also great fun for them because they’re helping bring everyone closer together.

Conclusion

Our high-tech world, with its changing ways of life, offers many new chances for seniors to spice up their retirement. The jobs we talked about are just a few examples – there’s so much more out there! Everyone should find something they love doing and see how their unique skills can fit today’s job scene perfectly.

While laptops are great for being able to get work done remotely, stay in contact with your elderly parents in assisted living, and just operate in this modern world, our dependence on our devices can make it hard to keep things moving smoothly if these devices stop working the way that we need them to. Especially for people that may not have a lot of knowledge about the actual inner workings of a laptop, they may not know what to do when things don’t operate like business as usual. Luckily, there are a few things that you can try if you ever find yourself in this situation.

To help you see just what to do, here are three things to try when you can’t get your laptop to work the way you need it to. 

Close Out All Your Programs

One reason why your laptop may be acting up is because you’re putting too much stress and pressure on it. This can be done by using it for too many hours at a time, not giving it a chance to cool down properly, having too many applications open at once, and more. 

If you think this might be why your laptop is being slow or weird, the first thing to try is closing out all of the programs that you’re not using. While this might take a second to actually execute on, if this was the problem, things should start working again once you’ve allowed the programs to stop and the laptop to catch up. 

Do A Hard Reset

For the times where you want to close down the programs that you’re not using but you simply can’t get the laptop to respond to your commands at all, the next thing you’ll want to do is to try a hard reset. 

For most laptops, this can be done by holding down the power button until the entire device turns off. Then, it should restart and get things going back from the beginning. While you might have lost some of the data or work that you had going before your laptop froze on you, this may be the only way to get things back on track if it really freezed. 

Get Rid Of What You Don’t Need

Sometimes, laptops will come with software and applications already installed on them. While the purpose of this is usually to make life easier for you, if you don’t actually want or use those apps, it’s best to just get rid of them so they don’t have the chance to bog everything down. So if you haven’t taken this step yet with your laptop, this could be a task to get done sooner rather than later. 

If you’re having a hard time getting your laptop to do what you want and need it to, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you troubleshoot some possible problems. 

With the amount of devices that most people use in a day, having an issue with one can really throw a wrench in your life. However, most people don’t actually know what to do if and when something does go wrong with their devices, especially if they’re older people living in assisted living communities who may not be as used to growing up with newer technology. Luckily, there are a few things you can try to get things back on track.

To help you see how this can be done, here are three things to do when you’re having issues with one of your devices. 

Try Starting Over Fresh

If something starts to go wrong on your device, the best thing you can try first is to start the process over fresh.

If you think that the issue might be coming from the specific app that you’re using, closing out that app and then reopening it might help. Additionally, you can check to see if there are any updates available for the app that you were using, as outdated versions of an app can have more issues than the most current version. And if you think that the issues you’re having are a result of your actual phone, restarting your phone or shutting it down completely and giving it some time before restarting it could do the trick. 

Ask A Professional

For those who try the above-mentioned solutions but still aren’t getting the results that you want, it might be time for you to ask a professional.

As a good first stop, consider asking someone that you know personally who’s good with tech. They might have some more intense solutions that they can try on your device. And if this doesn’t work or you don’t have anyone that you can reach out to, calling in an actual professional, like someone who works for the manufacturer or at a tech repair store, could be beneficial. 

Consider If You Might Be Dealing With Malware

When things start to go wrong with one of your devices, an option you should consider is that you might be dealing with malware of some kind.

To know if this is the issue, you should be on the lookout for things like error messages, programs or devices that won’t shut down, new ads or icons that you don’t recognize, sent messages or emails that you didn’t send, and other weird things. If you do notice these kinds of issues, you’ll want to be very careful with what you use your device to do until you’re able to get rid of this malware, either by yourself or with professional help. 

If you’ve just started to have some issues with one of your devices, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you find some solutions that might work for you.