Impact of rapid digitalization on older people- why societal efforts are needed.

Late at night, when the subways have stopped and it’s not easy to catch a city bus, it’s frustrating to wait on the street for 30 to 40 minutes for a taxi that only picks up young people.

It’s exasperating when a vacant taxi seems to be coming, only to stop in front of a young person who had made a reservation and then disappears after a few words. It’s frustrating for the elderly who don’t know how to use a taxi-hailing app.

I recently stopped by a foreign S sandwich chain restaurant that I had enjoyed with my children. The silver-haired grandmother standing in front of the kiosk, or whatever it is, gave up after tapping the keyboard a few times.

It was hard to tell the busy staff to make a sandwich with this and that, so I postponed eating a sandwich and just left.

It’s burdensome to interact with a machine, whether it’s a kiosk or a tablet PC, even to buy a bowl of seolleongtang (ox bone soup) or an ice cream.

The mechanization that has penetrated our daily lives

It’s hard for digitally vulnerable seniors to do business, whether it’s at a bank branch or a general hospital counter. They feel embarrassed and sometimes psychologically diminished.

The middle-aged and elderly also want to work these days. But the job market is online. This makes job hunting for the silver generation not easy.

Restaurants, cafes, banks, hospitals, public offices, taxis – there is no place in our daily lives where kiosks or tablet PCs have not penetrated.

Let’s look at the distribution of kiosks and tablet PCs. They surged from about 190,000 at the end of 2019 to about 460,000 at the end of 2022. It’s a huge increase, mainly in the food service industry.

The increase was for non-face-to-face sales in the Corona era, but the rapid rise in the minimum wage and the consequent increase in labor costs have led to a rapid spread of digitalization, mainly among self-employed people.

Initially, digital devices were mainly distributed in cafes frequented by young people, but now they are spreading to general restaurants and old shops.

When a small restaurant introduced a tablet PC, they were able to reduce one employee, greatly reducing labor costs.

Digitalization is an unstoppable trend. It’s an inevitable choice in Korea, which is digitalizing at the fastest speed in the world.

In fact, life has become much faster and more convenient for everyone except the slow-to-digitalize silver generation. It’s also impossible to slow down the pace of mechanization because of the elderly.

So what should we do?

In fact, the middle-aged and silver generations are making a lot of effort to adapt to digitalization.

But it’s hard to catch up because the speed of mechanization is much faster than the improvement in digital utilization skills.

Kiosk Phobia – Urgent Need for Social Consideration

The emergence of the term ‘kiosk phobia’ shows how serious this issue is for the silver generation. And it’s not just a problem for those over 65. It’s more heart-breaking for the middle-aged, who can’t blame it on age like the elderly.

The population over 65 is about 10 million. If they struggle with rapid digitalization and feel marginalized, it’s a problem we can’t ignore.

If it’s hard to control the speed of digitalization, there’s a desperate need for social consideration to make it easier for the elderly to access it.

The digital issues that silvers face in their daily lives are due to the different user environments for each device. If the user manuals in each store were similar or standardized, it would be much easier to adapt, but it’s not, so it’s confusing.

There’s a need for a unified or dramatically improved user manual. The text needs to be enlarged, and the screen layout and operation method need to be simplified.

In the transition period, it’s necessary to place helpers in the store and increase opportunities for digital adaptation education.

Some developed countries are said to control the speed of digitalization and show more consideration for the re-education of the elderly.

South Korea is a global leader in digitalization. If there are many people who feel marginalized and uncomfortable in the process, it’s not something we can just pass by.