Whiz Kids with White Hair

By Philip Elmer-DeWitt

In many ways, senior citizens would seem to be perfect candidates for home computing. They have time on their hands and minds that tend to race ahead of their aging bodies. With a computer and telephone hookup, an elderly user who has trouble getting around can visit a library, buy a security, post a letter or run a small business without ever leaving home. But older Americans have been among the most reluctant computer users, according to industry surveys. While some 20% of all U.S. households have home computers, only 9% of adults age 60 to 69 own them -- a figure that drops to 3% for those 70 and older.

That is beginning to change. Across the U.S., thousands of aging Americans are happily tapping away at keyboards and trading floppy disks, thanks to a new wave of computer-literacy programs designed with the elderly user in mind. The largest of these is SeniorNet, the first national organization dedicated to bringing senior citizens into the information age. Since it was founded at the University of San Francisco in 1986, the nonprofit organization has trained nearly 4,000 of the elderly at 26 sites in the U.S. and Canada, including doctors' offices, retirement homes, senior centers, high schools and colleges. "We're evangelists for the idea that older adults are very capable users of computers," says Executive Director Mary Furlong, an associate professor of education at U.S.F. and co-author of a book titled Computers for Kids over Sixty.

For a $25 initiation fee, SeniorNet members receive a two-month, hands-on training course and a quarterly newsletter. Hundreds have hooked up to SeniorNet's computer network, which costs $6.90 per hour of use during evenings and on weekends. To seniors in isolated areas, the price seems cheap for the ability to communicate with people their own age through electronic mail, bulletin boards and computer forums on topics ranging from gardening to health-care legislation. "It's their window on the world," says Cindy Schwehr, SeniorNet coordinator at the Sheyenne Care Center in Valley City, N. Dak. "The residents stand by their doors and ask, 'Did I get any E-mail?' "

Mabel Osborne, 85, had spent two years sick in bed when she read about a SeniorNet class in Dallas. She signed up and made an important discovery. "I wasn't sick," she says. "I was just bored to death." Osborne quickly mastered basic computer skills and went on to study word processing at a local community college. "She bought a word processor and is now writing the history of her life," says Florence Wetzig, 69, a former beauty-salon operator who taught Osborne how to compute. "She has said to me many times that I saved her life."

For Seattle's E.B. ("Jiggs") Clark, 72, the impetus to become computer literate came from a seven-year-old boy he saw hacking away at a desktop machine in a computer store. "I asked, 'How did you learn how to work it?' He turned to me and said, 'What are you, some kind of dummy?' " Determined not to be left behind, Clark acquired an Apple IIc and plunged into the world of telecommunications. Now he uses his computer and modem to stay in touch with similarly equipped seniors all over the U.S. Says he: "If I'm immobilized, if I'm in a hospital, if I'm in a condition where I'm confined, I've got my world right in front of me."

Seniors are constantly finding fresh uses for computers. Retirees concerned about catastrophic health insurance are organizing congressional lobbying campaigns on the machines. Amateur genealogists are using the network to locate missing relatives. Widows who wake up in the middle of the night are logging on for companionship. A doll enthusiast has employed her computer to write a book about her collection. A numismatist has electronically cataloged , his 65,000 rare coins. A beekeeper in Hawaii is putting out a newsletter using the latest technology for desktop publishing. "It has been a ball," says Clark, who recently started a new SeniorNet center in Bellevue, Wash. "No matter how old you are, a guy's got to have his toys."

With reporting by Linda Williams/New York