A (19:29)
Well, I've been doing a little bit of reflecting on Australia's new. Well, not new, but their under 16 social media ban just went into effect as of time of this recording. And I've been reading with great interest the reactions from Australia about how things are going, especially from teens, whether or not this has been effective or they find it annoying or a relief. And some of the memes I've been seeing has been really focusing on the under 16s didn't need this so much as the over 65s do. And that was. That sort of brings me to actually the crux of what I wanted to talk about today, where there's a. There's a survey that came out, I think, over the summer from Cox Mobile, along with Common Sense Media, where they surveyed the youth, the sandwich generation, which are folks I think basically like us with both children as well as parents who are older that we're helping take care of. And then also they surveyed seniors, so. And they surveyed across these three groups what their main concerns about being online in this day and age are and what their concerns of safety are. And then something I want to focus on specifically is what they found out from seniors. When they talked to the seniors in this survey. They said most of them consider themselves digitally literate and seniors in this case are over 65s and that they use their devices for shopping, banking, social media and entertainment. And 41% of seniors surveyed said they reported spending five or more hours online every day, which that gave Me pause, because I'm going, how many hours do I spend online a day outside of work, at least of the retirees that I know who are not obligated to be tethered to a desk, how many hours do I think they're spending? And honestly, five or more does track for the people that I can think of where I'm just seeing them on their phones all the time. And that then made me look. After I thought about that, I went back and looked at some of the results from the sandwich generation, specifically folks closer to my age and their concerns about their parents or their elderly in their life. And they said that in this survey, more than a third of their parents had experienced phishing, scams, malware, or data breaches in the last year. And 60% of the sandwich generation said they're worried about the risk of identity theft of their parent or elderly loved ones. So I just, that just to me, it was just an interesting. I don't know, it was very telling that while the seniors said that they felt like they were pretty good digitally literate and they're also spending an unbelievable amount of time online every day, the sandwich generation, who are presumably looking out for these folks, are going, I am seeing something a little different from what the elderly are reporting. So that definitely gave me some pause. And the survey had some takeaways for the sandwich generation in conversation with the seniors, although seniors, of course, are very welcome to listen in about what they can do to enhance safety of the over 65s online. So I thought I would just go through those because again, I think a lot of us are having these conversations this time of year in general. So just something just to brush up on. So number one for the recommendation was encouraging strong passwords. Yes, table stakes. But recommending a password app if. Password manager app if you can, but maybe help set one up. If this is something they're having trouble with, or honestly telling them to write them down in a notebook that they keep near the computer, that's okay for a senior to do that. We don't have to scare people out of doing stuff like that. At that point, if someone breaks into their house and steals their password book, they have bigger problems.
