It started with a droppage course in high school.
Wanda Woods registered because her father advised that the seizure of mastery would lead to jobs. Indeed, the Federal Environmental Protection Agency hired her as a worker after school when she was still a junior.
His supervisor “seated me and put me on a machine called a word processor,” recalls Woods, now 67 years old. “It was large and large and used magnetic cards to store information. I said to myself, “I like it a little. »»
Decades later, she still loved her. In 2012 – the first year that more than half of Americans aged 65 and over were Internet users – she launched a computer training company.
Now, she is an instructor at Senior Planet in Denver, an effort supported by the AARP to help the elderly learn and keep abreast of technology. Woods does not intend to retire. Staying involved in “also keeps me informed,” she said.
Some neuroscientists seeking the effects of technology on the elderly are inclined to agree. The first cohort of seniors to have argued – not always with enthusiasm – with a digital company has reached the age when cognitive disorders become more common.
Given the decades of alarms concerning the threats of technology against our brain and our well -being – sometimes called “digital dementia” – we could expect to start to see negative effects.
The opposite seems true. “Among the generation of digital pioneers, the use of daily digital technology has been associated with a reduction in the risk of cognitive and dementia deficiency,” said Michael Scullin, cognitive neuroscientist at Baylor University.
It is almost similar to hearing a nutritionist that Bacon is good for you.
“He returns the script that technology is still bad,” said Murali Doraiswamy, director of the Duke University Neurocognitive Disorders, which was not involved in the study. “It is refreshing and provocative and presents a hypothesis that deserves additional research.”
Scullin and Jared Bengge, neuropsychologist at the University of Texas in Austin, were co-authors of a recent analysis studying the effects of the use of technology on people over 50 (average age: 69 years).
They found that those who used computers, smartphones, Internet or a mixture made better cognitive tests, with lower cognitive disability or dementia diagnostics, than those who avoided technology or who used it less often.
“Normally, you see a lot of variability between studies,” said Scullin. But in this analysis of 57 studies involving more than 411,000 elderly people, published in Nature Human Behavior, almost 90% of studies revealed that technology had a protective cognitive effect.
Much of the apprehension of technology and cognition was born from children’s research, sometimes adolescent -oriented, whose brain is still developing.
“There are fairly convincing data that difficulties can emerge with attention or mental health or behavioral problems” when young people are overexposed to digital screens and devices, said Scullin.
The brains of the elderly are also malleable, but less. And those who started fighting technology in their forties had already learned “basic capacities and skills,” said Scullin.
Then, to participate in a rapidly evolving society, they had to learn much more.
Years of online brain training experiences of a few weeks or months have produced variable results. Often, they improve a person’s ability to do the task in question without improving other skills.
“I tend to be quite skeptical” of their benefit, said Walter Boot, psychologist at the center on aging and behavioral research at Weill Cornell Medicine. “Cognition is really difficult to change.”
The new analysis, however, reflects “the use of technology in nature,” he said, adults “had to adapt to a rapidly evolving technological environment” over several decades. He found the conclusions of the “plausible” study.
Analyzes like this cannot determine causation. Does technology improve the cognition of the elderly or do people with a low cognitive capacity avoid technology? Is technological adoption just a proxy for enough wealth to buy a laptop?
“We still don’t know if it’s chicken or egg,” said Doraiswamy.
However, when Scullin and Benge have taken into account health, education, socioeconomic status and other demographic variables, they have always found a significantly higher cognitive capacity in users of older digital technologies.
What could explain the apparent connection?
“These devices represent new complex challenges,” said Scullin. “If you do not abandon them, if you push frustration, you are engaging in the same challenges that studies have proven to be cognitively beneficial.”
Even the management of constant updates, troubleshooting and new operating systems sometimes exasperating could prove advantageous. “Having to relearn something is another positive mental challenge,” he said.
However, digital technology can also protect brain health by promoting social connections, known to help avoid cognitive decline. Or its reminders and prompts could partially compensate for memory loss, as Scullin and Benge found it in a smartphone study, while applications help preserve functional capacities such as purchases and banking services.
Many studies have shown that if the number of people with dementia increases as the population ages, the proportion of elderly people who develop dementia have dropped in the United States and several European countries.
Researchers have attributed decline to various factors, including reduced smoking, higher education levels and better blood pressure treatments. Perhaps, said Doraiswamy, engaging with technology was part of the model.
Of course, digital technologies also present risks. Online fraud and scams often target the elderly, and although they are less likely to report the losses of fraud than young people, the amounts they lose are much higher, according to the Federal Trade Commission. Disinformation poses its own dangers.
And as with users of all ages, no longer is necessarily better.
“If you fray a Netflix mud 10 hours a day, you can lose social ties,” said Doraiswamy. Technology, he noted, cannot “replace other healthy brain activities” such as exercising and eat reasonably.
An unanswered question: Will this supposed benefit extend to the following generations, digital Aboriginal people more comfortable with the technology on which their grandparents have often worked? “The technology is not static – it is still changing,” said Boot. “So maybe this is not a unique effect.”
However, the change in technology has forged “follows a model,” he added. “New technology is presented and there is a kind of panic.”
From television and video games to the most recent and perhaps the most frightening development, artificial intelligence, “largely an exaggerated initial reaction,” he said. “Then, over time, we see that it is not so bad and can have advantages.”
Like most people her age, Woods has grown up in an analog world of paper checks and paper cards. But while she went from one employer to another in the 80s and 90s, she progressed to IBM Desktops and Masted Lotus 1-2-3 and Windows 3.1.
Along the way, her personal life has also become digital: a home office when her sons needed it for school, a mobile phone after she and her husband could not summon help for an apartment by the roadside, an intelligent watch to follow her steps.
These days, Woods pays invoices and online stores, uses a digital calendar and the group of groups. And it seems fearless of AI, the new most soil technology.
Last year, Woods turned to AI chatbots like Google Gemini and Openai’s chatpt to plan a Southern Carolina excursion. Now she uses them to organize a family cruise celebrating her 50th wedding anniversary.
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