Exhibition and volunteers help elderly understand smartphones
The exhibition allows the younger generation to understand the difficulties and challenges faced by the elderly when they use digital services.
What would a normal smartphone look like in the eyes of the elderly?
Pop-up windows, payment codes, incoming requests ... sometimes the elderly don't even know how to describe the problems they encounter.
A charity program and an offline exhibition in the city shed light on the digital gap for senior citizens.
In Shanghai, the number of people aged 60 or above had reached 5.42 million by the end of 2021, accounting for 36.3 percent of permanent residents.
The elderly population grew more than 1.6 percent from a year earlier.
The exhibition has been set up at the IMIX Park shopping mall in Jing'an District and runs through December 20.
They offer interactive facilities to raise some of the most pressing concerns for the elderly while using smartphones, such as payment, scanning QR codes and pop-up notices.
They also allow younger generation to understand the difficulties and challenges when the elderly want to seek help for digital services but don't know how to raise the issue.
Pop-up notices make it hard for the elderly to use their smartphones.
Jian Dan, a sophomore at Shanghai University of Political Science and Law, has been volunteering as a part of the "Blue Vest" program since September at the People's Square metro station to provide help for elderly to take public transportation.
"We have collected common concerns and made a small template on a cardboard to offer them tips," she said. "In this way they could remember the important steps required to scan mobile phones and take the metro lines."
In response to the growing digital divides, tech companies have been mobilized to launch smartphone application adaptations and accessibility improvements for the elderly.
China Internet Network Information Center shows that the number of Internet users aged 50 and above accounted for 25.8 percent of the total web user base.
Jian Dan, a volunteer with the "Blue Vest" program, helps the elderly to use smartphones to take the metro and navigate the virtual world.
Wang Yifei, an executive from Ant Group and initiator of the "Blue Vest" program, said more than 26,000 volunteers around the country had joined the charity over the past two years. They have helped more than 390,000 elderly consumers.
"The exhibition also calls on young people to share elderly people's concerns and join hands to seek solutions to those with difficulty navigating the virtual world," she added.
Guided by the Chinese National Committee on Aging and the Anti-Fraud Special Committee of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the program has been providing anti-fraud education in more than 100 cities and 400 counties.
In Shanghai it has covered dozens of communities, hospitals and public transportation hubs, and plans to extend into more districts in the future.
It has also launched a service hotline 95188 especially for seniors, which has served more than 1.13 million elderly people.
