My friend spent a year teaching her mum how to use WhatsApp

One of the understated benefits of having older colleagues is the almost effortless way I get to learn history. I am fascinated by the ease with which two epochs of life can weave into a conversation, about…an email, for example.

There is a time I was having one of our random office chats and my colleague, Davy, talked about a letter opener. Letter, what? I had to Google that.

I was intrigued, not just by the fact that something was invented to specifically open letters (I imagine it is because people received as many letters as we do emails?) but by the levels of patience people needed to have to wait for feedback to snail through a box office.

Have you tried to send an email on slow Internet? No wonder they say do not marry someone until you have seen how they behave when using a computer with slow Internet.

Well, not just Davy gets to shine for us with the great skills that came to him after years of watching technology evolve. We get to school him every once in a while about ‘simple’ things he needs to learn to stay up to date with his favourite news channels, for example.

There is this one time my colleague, Esther, was guiding Davy on the steps of setting up an Instagram account.  We had been teasing him for not being on Instagram and I guess he was finally giving in.

As the Instagram lesson was going on a desk away from me, I tried to mind my business. I was doing well until I heard Davy ask Esther: “Mtu hutoa wapi (where does one get a) profile photo?” It was not the question, but how Davy asked, that made me laugh out loud.

He sounded as if he expected Esther to direct him to a specialised profiles shop that wholesales, or retails, photos, and where he could pay using a credit card, receive and sign for his consignment after 48 hours.

Of course, Esther and I had a good laugh – it is just unfortunate that we did not monetise that opportunity. Perhaps we should have told him he needs to subscribe to a particular account and pay Sh1,000 monthly to keep his Instagram profile picture.

Not too long ago, my mum was attending an event. And my dad, who was not in attendance, requested her to take a video of one of the main speakers and share it with him. This conversation happened in the family group chat and that is why I was among those who were waiting to hear what that speaker had to say.

But by evening, there was no video in the WhatsApp group. I didn’t think much about it, though, until I called my mum to ask about the event and, in passing, reminded her to share the video Dad had requested. To which she replied that she did not take the video because she did not know how to take videos with her relatively new phone.

The conversation reminded me of a childhood friend who told me she spent about a year trying to make her mother understand how to use WhatsApp. Buying data, then switching it on and off, and then locating the WhatsApp app to send or read messages was too complicated for her mother. So, she gave up trying!

I don’t know what your experience has been whenever you have tried to teach people how to use technology. I laugh every time I read memes of guys who “make a killing” in the village when they “fix” phones for guys when really the only thing that was wrong with the phone was that it was put on mute.

I am slowly accepting the fact that there are certain people who will simply never catch up with technology. Either because they can’t, or they have simply shut their minds, and they have no interest in even exploring. In the theory of diffusion of innovations, there is a category of people called laggards.

This group struggles with change the most and they are hardest to ‘convert’ because they are comfortable with how things are, they are conservative and are skeptical of change. Short of threats or using fear to pile pressure on them to adopt change, they are unlikely to ever try anything new.

Well, maybe an important skill for the digital native is to know when to stop trying to force issues, especially with the older folks.

The writer is the research and impact editor, NMG ([email protected]).