Channel the Confidence of a Twenty-Year-Old With Your Technology
Have you ever looked at twenty-year-olds using their tech and wondered, “Why can’t I have that same ease and confidence?”
If your technological devices cause you frustration and angst, you’re not alone. It seems that everyone is having issues with their tech, except young people. Have you ever looked at twenty-year-olds using their tech and wondered, “Why can’t I have that same ease and confidence?” Many adults feel nervous and even embarrassed when it comes to technology. It doesn’t have to be this way, though. There are ways to gain more confidence with using your phone, computer, email, apps, and more. Here, we’ll discuss valuable techniques and learn necessary vocabulary and icons you can use to minimize your frustration.
Click & Tap
The primary thing we all need to do is not be afraid to click or tap around on our screens. I guarantee younger people do not know everything about technology. They have to fiddle with their phones, just like we do. They have to Google how to do something, just like we do. They also tap and click around until they figure it out, knowing that they aren’t going to “break” anything.
Iconography
Here are some basic icons that will help you find what you’re looking for:
Can you name these icons?
You’ll see these everywhere on your devices in apps and on websites. Can you name them all? If not, start looking them up, clicking on them, or ask someone. Each one does something meaningful, and recognizing them will save you lots of time.
Back That Up
What gives younger adults the confidence to click around? Other than knowing that they can almost always “undo” something, they back up their data to an external drive, and/or sync their devices to a cloud service (iCloud, OneDrive, Google Drive, etc.). This allows them to restore anything that they’ve accidentally deleted.
Password Please
Many people in their twenties use a password manager. Some will go as far as paying for a robust third party app that stores everything. Lots, however, simply use the password manager that comes with whatever internet browser they use, such as the ones in Safari, Chrome, Edge, and Firefox. They don’t panic when they have to log in somewhere, frantically searching for a scrap of paper where they wrote down their credentials. Instead, the app automatically fills in the login info, saving time and anxiety.
Protection Services
Another way to have confidence when using your technology is to subscribe to an anti-malware service, such as Malwarebytes, Webroot, Bit Defender, and others. Additionally, when it comes to protecting yourself from scams, don’t answer unknown callers or believe emails and texts that seem too good to be true or cause alarm. Never call the phone number they give you! Look it up yourself, if you aren’t sure. Stop, take a deep breath, & question the logic of what they’re saying.
Adjust Your Expectations
The final step is to get in the right mindset. How many times today has your washing machine broken down? How many times in the last week? The last month? The last year, or even five years? I’m guessing, for most of us, it’s probably not at all. That’s what we all expect of our appliances–our dishwasher, oven, toaster, air fryer, etc. This is the mindset we have developed over the years. The problem is that we often take the same approach to our high tech. While these devices were supposed to save us time, money, and aggravation, they seem to malfunction or confound us every day!
One of the best ways to lower our anxiety over technology is to lower our expectations that our devices are always going to work easily, or just plain work. We need to start to anticipate that we’ll have to do some troubleshooting. Twenty-year-olds know that troubleshooting is part of using technology. That’s okay. We have the tools to do so now.
Tech companies have done a poor job making their products intuitive to all age groups. That’s on them—not you. The good news is, that with the confidence we gain by becoming familiar with the basics above, we can fix our issues more quickly and get on our way.