Senior citizens learn how to use smartphones during a free lesson organized by the Seoul Metropolitan government in this file photo. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, Oct. 24 (Korea Bizwire) — The recent service outage of Kakao Corp. has put a spotlight on seniors sidelined from the digital era, as the inconvenience that the younger generation had to go through for a couple of days is similar to what seniors experience every day.
For seniors, Oct. 15-16 were just like any other day while the rest of South Korea struggled with the massive disruption of Kakao’s dominant chat messenger KakaoTalk.
Since many seniors don’t know how to use smartphones, it was normal for them to live life without Kakao and its services.
“No harm done. This has been my life anyway,” said 81-year-old Shin Yeong-nam, who has never used a smartphone before.
“I have to go all the way to the station to buy tickets or to the bank to withdraw some cash. It gets a bit hard for an old man like me,” Shin said.
The Ministry of Science and ICT showed in a study last year that only 63.2 percent of South Koreans over 70 years of age owned smartphones, far lower than the national average (93.5 percent).
Seniors over 70 years of age scored 43.3 points out of 100 in terms of their capability to utilize digital information, and 22.4 points in terms of their competency. The results were far lower than the national average of 77.6 points and 63.8 points, respectively.
Experts argue that the Kakao outage has allowed the nation to experience what it’s like for seniors in the digital era, and efforts need to be made to close the digital gap between seniors and the rest of the population.
“Education is a must, and our perceptions should change too,” said Jung Jae-hoon, a social welfare professor at Seoul Women’s University.
“We shouldn’t just demand that seniors follow changes in technology. We have to understand the fact that what’s easy for me might be difficult for others.”
H. M. Kang (hmkang@koreabizwire.com)
