The most painful moment went something like this:
Dad: Hey, the computer isn't working, can you take a look at it? Computer: Full of porn popups because he was googling 'brittany spears nude'
this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2025
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Trying to teach my dad to double click.
Click twice really fast kept translating to two slow clicks. Took 2 hours of showing him how to do it.
Sometimes I worry they are being purposely dense because they want to spend more time with us.
My 4 year old similarly struggled. I finally taught her to click the icon then hit enter which she's stuck with
same for touch screen tapping. They just hammer their finger and keep it there for 5 seconds, then wonder why it didn't work
I do this when the shitty touch screens for Kiosks don't work. It is a compromise between my inner caveman who just wants to destroy it and the part of me which thinks that's a waste of effort.
I'm real proud of my mom actually. She couldn't even navigate the desktop when she started, but she has turned into a real techie. I used to have to do everything for her, but these days if she has a problem she looks up solutions online and is usually able to sort things out herself. She's 79. The only "old person" thing she still does is store files on her desktop and also keep a billion tabs open on her web browser lol.
All the old person BS is just that. Anyone who chooses to stop learning has actively made a choice, being old doesn't just turn your brain to mush.
My dad's the world champion with his tab usage.
At one point they booked a holiday in Spain, that was about 6 years ago and the damn tab is still open. 6 years.
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For what it's worth, I'm a mid 20s software developer and I store lots of files on my desktop. Ive heard the main argument against it, but imo the convenience is just worth it.
Dad calls me randomly one evening. He can't find the youtube app on his smart TV. I try to help him navigate it but over the phone communication isn't really working especially since things I assume anyone would know (like the home button on the remote) don't translate well to him. He gets pissed and tells me "why do you even work as a programmer what did you even learn in university?". Apparently I missed my Samsung smart TV UI classes.
If you can, get a photo of his remote and save it. (bonus if it's his actual remote with the worn down buttons or whatnot)
Draw a circle around the button (arrow pointing to it optional) and text the pic back of which button to push. Repeat as needed.
If you can get him to text you a photo of the TV screen - circle and repeat.
I have an older friend with a TV/remote that is close to ours, but slightly different. Having these reference photos helps with the "language barrier" and the minor differences in layout.
Since I started making it visual and texting photos, it makes it much easier. Because even I, with my CS degree, can stare at a screen (or grocery shelf), frustrated, and not see the very obvious blinking whatsit that I'm looking for.
We used to say, " if it was a snake it would have bit me" but snakes are also well known for blending in , so it makes sense that we don't see things until we see them, especially when we are stressed.
even I, with my CS degree, can stare at a screen (or grocery shelf), frustrated, and not see the very obvious blinking whatsit that I'm looking for.
At least it's not just me then. I sware my girlfriend stores things in some secret pocket dimension in the fridge. I open the door I look very very closely and there is definitely no butter in there, then she goes to the fridge opens it and pulls butter out. Where did the damn butter come from?
Trying to get my elderly mother to understand the difference between wifi and mobile data. Maddening.
Trying to explain to my Mom the difference between turning off her phone and locking it.
She also called me recently saying she played something on Spotify but wasn’t able to stop it.
Installing TeamViewer Quicksupport on her phone has been the best thing I ever done.
I have had plenty of painful moments, but a recent one is that my parents just don't seem to understand that the first result on Google is an advertisement and that they shouldn't be clicking on it. They literally can't see the difference between a sponsored search result (which can often be a bad faith actor or a scammer paying to get their result to the top of the search results) and a genuine link to the real site they were trying to reach.
I have tried installing adblockers for them, but they end up disabling them for certain websites that require popups to be enabled and then they never re-enable it again and end up clicking on bullshit links.
I got mine on a reduced privilege User Windows account, Installed Firefox, saved passwords to profile with sync to phones, Installed uBlock Origin extension for FF, hid all extensions so they can't disable, I also wrote a DOS script to nuke all system caches/history on reboot. Not a peep from them in over a year. If they hit a website with a popup, I'll just tell them it's a virus and do something else. It's never an important site that ever has popups.
My mother once threatened to evict me (was still living with them) because I asked her to back up her important files for me to carry them over to the new office computer I had set up for her.
She flat out refused to even attempt it or answer any of my investigative questions. This woman had been using windows computers for work for over 20 years at this point, but the thought of opening an explorer window apparently terrified her so much we got into an actual shouting match over it.
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I set up my parents with Ubuntu. One afternoon, they let my sister's ever-so-helpful boyfriend try to "upgrade" it to a short-term unstable version. He broke it and left the thing in shambles.
Now they have Apple computers and I don't get involved. They still use the same password for everything and just go to the Genius Bar when it gets slow.
Helping my octogenarian mom with her iPhone is the most painful experience. She often calls me about something that has "popped up" in some app that she's using. I tell her to just close it and she says "how?" I then say something like "just click the OK button ... or the Done or Close buttons, that will be some unknown color ... or click the X in the upper right or maybe the upper left corner ... or click "Done" or "Close" in the toolbar, on the left or right sides ... or maybe the thing has slid up from the bottom and you need to swipe down to get rid of it ... or maybe you need to click the Home tab on the app's bottom bar."
I've actually been an iOS mobile developer for 15 years now. Anybody who thinks there's any sort of consistent, intuitive design principles behind Apple products is insane.
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Having to explain to my grandma over the phone how to work the tv remote.
Same but with my mom. When the labels of several of the buttons have worn off from repeated use over years, and she can't figure out why the screen is blue because she's accidentally changed it to the wrong input. And all she would tell me before ten minutes of detailed questioning as far as what the issue was is "it's not working", I had to get from "not working" to "on the wrong input" over the phone. And when the first thing I asked was "what's on the screen?" and she answered "nothing."
When I was younger having to fill out timesheets in Excel for my mum.
Always forgetting their passwords to their accounts and having to reset their passwords for them.
Providing them access on my Netflix account and then when Netflix had the changes where you can't have it in two homes asking me why they can't get on, cancelled my subscription in the end.
Email attachments and when they go over the max attachment limit complaining about having to upload their files to the cloud.
Volunteering my help to others...
The list could go on and on.
I appreciate my parents but when it comes to helping with technology it sometimes drives me up the wall.
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