The phone call always interupts at the most inconvenient and unideal moments. It can be anything ranging from me attending a meeting, taking a drive on the freeway, or even waiting in queue at the grocery store. The second I see my mother calling, a part of me panics. The last thing I want to do is talk to her, but I can already guess how this conversation is going to go.
“Marcus, the internet is broken again.”
She is the gold medal winner in the “overly dramatized billingual phrasing” which aforementioned can be used in many a scenarios in her world. In this case, refusing to accept help and choosing to suffering like this for some odd reason can mean a plethora of things. Such as, the password of her WiFi has changed. Or she might just not be able to access a certain page just because she’s typing the URL into Google. To put it mildly, her printer could be refusing to connect to the computer which it *will* never do.
In this case however, it is more likely that she has repeatly switched her iPAid to airplane mode and disconnected from the world. This is a prime example where you had one job and my mom recieves the award for it. There there is also the matter of me pampering my mother by gifting her an iPad at a Christmas family dinner for five years ago.
I thought I would make her life easier in my defense. As if that was not enough, I went ahead and made her accounts, downloaded “needed” applications, and enjoyed teaching the entire her how to operate everything. Not only that, I even included guides for basic functions an average person would be able to do in everyday life write instructions accompanied by pictures of buttons and arrows pointing to the buttons.
In retrospect, I should have been appreciating the courtesy more by becoming her IT problem solver, I effectively trapped myself in what one might call a no exit lifetime deal. Understandably so, I can take on this type of role professionally, which I most certainly can, but just not something I’d do willingly. Sure, I used to work in big tech and helped build sophisticated user-centric interfaces and systems, but somehow, I’m still stuck being my mother’s Facebook photo support technician.
This demonstrates that even after years of working towards automated help desk systems and aims at relieving monotonous streams of technical support, I still somehow become ‘life support tech’ and in my case “serving as on-call tech support” for my mom. Granola didn’t do much to recognize the ‘folklore’ contour that required tech the most, and that’s my mother. How does one go from relieving mothers to presenting themselves as the helped instruction document for a mother.
As we attempted to formulate a strategy that negated the need for the users to access technical support, now I have to explain to the eluther fitness why pictures my mother has difficulty pulling from Facebook are ‘not in the Google.’ This specific query was never addressed, which allows me to explain one problem after another. When referred to, the situation diagonally underexplained is tendentially follow a certain pattern. There are so many components to this argument deemed ‘the email problem’ whereby the the telegram version of ‘My emails don’t seem to a p p a r’ or ‘The Facebook people have disappeared’ proceed into careful dancing, attempting to solve the issues without driving the clients mad – this and, let me say, my friend is not here to let me enjoy resolving the matter.
The real emotion exhibit provides an experience where one can gaze in astonishment at the theatre hostage negotiator because this level of adaptive is remarkable. “Mom, when you state that ‘emails are not appearing’, may you, for a moment, vividly recall what is shown on the screen at that time?”
“I see a picture of the flowers I picked last summer.”
“Okay, so you are looking at your photo album and not your email application. Let’s close that window and find the email icon.
“
“Where is that?”
“You press on the home button located at the bottom of the iPad.”
“The button with circles on it?”
“Correct. The button with circles on it.”
“Nothing changed.”
“Did you touch it or press it?”
“I touched it.”
“Use more force when pushing this.”
“Now, all my applications are missing!””
“That’s awesome! That means you have reached the home screen.”
Now look for the mails icon; it’s a blue one with a white envelope on it.
“I still cannot find it,”
“It might be hidden in the other screen. Try swiping it left.”
“Now the weather is visible.”
Oops, this keeps going for about 45 minutes, and somehow, I end up answering the issue, or I handle it creatively, such that we have to wait for the system to turn off and update overnight. It’s my personal pause on ‘try again tomorrow, but I’ll be on standby while you work,’ but from a geek perspective. Her iPad use is very easy to comprehend. The only thing that makes sense here is a hodgepodge of how my mother engages with technology, which is a blend of stress and wishful thinking.
For instance, she continues to address her iPad as if it were capable of comprehending her words. At the same time, she maintains the belief that the iPad is setting its own traps against her by changing its settings to spite her. When she commands it to fetch “Susan’s photos,” she seems shocked that it doesn’t do so automatically. When I suggest that she uses voice commands to search for Susan on Facebook, she has a forlorn expression as if I ruined the punchline of an elaborate ruse.
While these issues are quite relatable for basic device navigation, they do not relate solely to device navigation. The intricacy of her relationship with passwords suggests that she does not even remember her accounts. With her repeated use of one, easy password, I started to become worried, which only led me to adopting more complex passwords. These accounts were locked away in a password manager she claimed to have.
Because this was problematic for her, she went back to writing passwords down on sticky notes. Instead of having a single location where she keeps her notes, she stores them in different areas of her home that she deems “memorable” and “secure.” These places include the bottom of her jewelry box, a taped note inside one of her cookbooks, and in one particularly inspiring spot, the tiny print on the back of a framed family photo. She contacted me for help navigating through the complex maze of her password-related challenges, telling me that she’s exhausted all options for hiding the passwords and needs guidance on how to reset them.
Most of the time, her attempts support fail because she doesn’t remember her security questions. While my father faces these issues, he has simply chosen not to use any technology at all. He makes use of a strategy involving a flip phone given to him in 2008 and refers to an Ipad as “your mother’s computer gizmo.” Still, not entirely devoid of curiosity, he becomes mildly interested during moments when he wants to know sports scores or the weather, in which case he asks his wife to “look something up on the Google.” To me, this balance is quite perfect and allows him to disengage without work when needing to understand how it works.
The most annoying aspect of my parent’s tech support is not the repetitive nature of their issues, nor the time it takes to sort out a single problem. For me, what is most painful is the realization that, to a certain extent, I bear responsibility for the chaos they are struggling with. In my professional life, in my time in tech, I focused on building the infrastructure for people who were in fact me.
The terms ‘digitally literate’ and ‘loves to learn new things’ are only aspects of a much broader concept. We took a leap and designed for the users we wished existed instead of thinking about the ones who were physically there. Work was done on features, not reliability and sameness.
When my mother after an update says: “they changed it again,” she is capturing the frustration of an industry that seems to pay more attention to their attempt at growth rather than consistency. It is the combination of wonder still rooted in the past, where one’s technological experience is minimal, but mostly comes from the fact that the digital realm is constantly evolving. The Facebook interface that she got used to learning last month got replaced with a ‘sleeker,’ more user friendly’ version crafted by a design team that will literally never meet her.
My parents’ home feels like an IT helpdesk now, and vacations now get branded as IT holidays. I usually get welcomed with a tech problem list the moment I arrive, and to my mother’s credit she keeps track with her trusty legal pad. One entry reads: ‘‘Netflix shows the wrong programs,” which I come to learn means that on her Netflix account her Spanish language preferences have somehow been turned on.
“Pictures are trapped in the I-Pad,” shows her lack of understanding regarding whether she reached her goal of capturing the pictures. My favorite is: “Google knows too much about my bunions,” and the truth behind this claim does not need explaining due to her online Google searching history. Each one of these support sessions sheds light on new facets of my parents’ digital lifestyles.
I was surprised to learn my mother subscribed to not one, but two streaming services, one of which I never even knew specialized in gardening and murder mysteries shows. For someone who does not bother to use technology, my father somehow became a professional poker player without me knowing. When I told him I did not believe that, he shrugged and said, “Your cousin Tommy showed me that one”, which told me he has a personal tech support system with my cousins, who funnel in for basic tech help and neighbors resorting for tailored assistance, with me as the main problem solver.
The most shocking, and borderline shocking, were my mothers online habits – something as simple as crudely engaging in email dangers such as forwarding every and any chain letter. To make matters worse, this lady claims to politely decline phishing attempts, complete with her name and number on the email. And guess what? She also once sent her social security number to someone ‘pretending’ to be from Facebook’s security department, claiming she was trying out for a fraud. When I tried explaining these scams to her, she couldn’t care less. Instead, she intriguingly focused on why she had to clear out space for her personal files and scheming potential criminals.
This discussion went from shocking to confusing in an instant when I had to articulate just how Mark Zuckerberg emailing her about account concerns doesn’t make any sense. Perhaps most challenging are the moments my parents encounter age-related features, like larger text, voice commands, or even simplified menus for older users. They refuse to use them.
My mother bluntly states, “I don’t need the old person settings,” as she actively chooses to hurt her eyes reading small text instead of accepting aid. I appreciate this denial because, though frustrating, there is some merit to refusing to give in to societal expectations, even if it makes my life harder. They expect to live in a modern digital society, not in one that has been oversimplified.
These assistive technologies help my parents explore technology deeper, but what they fail to grasp is that the device isn’t the problem. The issue is the technology’s architecture is built for someone else completely. Parents just want to become participants, switching onto a system that never seems to pause and perpetually evolves without even a single concern for their lifetime experiences, merging with blunders that invoke anything from a hassle to utter data breach pandemonium. Despite everything, it’s quite comforting to appreciate the human element of their mechanics in these technical issues.
Each time I remove a ‘crisis situation,’ my mother’s overjoyed with delight is a picture-perfect example. She tells me, “You’re so smart with these things.” That makes me reminisce of when I made her eyes sparkle during her watching as I learned to bike ride and even when I mastered how to tie my shoelaces. After I remedy what she insists is a ‘current crisis,’ she often would want me to join her so that I can assist her view a video she recorded of her video calling her cousin’s new baby.
The same devices that bring my mother pure joy and rage at the same time are quite interesting. Strange changes with my mom and her device adaptability have also come to my attention. This is the same woman who still prints out driving instructions even when she has Google Maps. She has inexplicably evolved into an adept at social media, able to transform herself into a cat or even swap visages with my father in a blink of an eye.
It is almost a guarantee that while forgetting the password to her email account, my mother will singlehandedly know every step needed to share particular cat videos I must see. Through this, I have gathered more patience from these interactions than what any meditation app could provide. It has taught me to listen and explain more, and to accept that what is obvious to me is more likely than not to be utterly mind-boggling to someone else.
Such skills proved to be incredibly useful in my work life. I never realized how much avoiding condescending language while trying to simplifying extremely complicated technical issues would come in handy, beyond the scope of parental tech support. My old line of work is now perceived from a different angle of understanding.
When I read about what the latest app update includes or the newest feature of the newest mobile phone, I now think, ‘This is bound to lead to at least three tremendously baffling calls from mom.’ For some reason, the layout which I find myself reconstructing is not intended for the mythical users of the technology company, but instead for my mother, who, while she is indeed a rational individual, somehow thinks that computers occasionally, for some reason or another, make decisions based on emotions. On the other hand, I set up my mom’s iPad and now regret it because it imposes an unconditional lifetime obligation of support on me.
On the contrary, from a totally different angle, I have no regrets whatsoever. These challenges have allowed us to connect in different ways along with me helping the amazing lady who devoted years of her life to teaching me the simplest of the skills on how to survive in this world. Now, we both reminisce and laugh over the stories where she turned all her settings to Korean and where she tried to charge her iPad by placing it in sunlight because, “It was low on energy,” as she puts it.
If you plan to set up a gadget for your parents this holiday season, then be extra cautious.
Know that you are not simply offering a gift, but signing a lifelong service agreement with them. Also keep in consideration the fact that beneath layers of desperate rage and anger, there are, in fact, glimpses of desperate unity waiting to be revealed, even if they commence with a message about how the internet is broken, yet again.
