How older people are reaping brain benefits from new tech

By Paula Span KFF Soundness News It started with a high school typing curriculum Wanda Woods enrolled because her father advised that typing proficiency would lead to jobs Sure enough the federal Environmental Protection Agency hired her as an after-school worker while she was still a junior Her supervisor sat me down and put me on a machine called a word processor Woods now recalled It was big and bulky and used magnetic cards to store information I thought I kinda like this Decades later she was still liking it In the first year that more than half of Americans and older were internet users she started a computer training business Now she is an instructor with Senior Planet in Denver an AARP-supported effort to help older people learn and stay abreast of system Woods has no plans to retire Staying involved with tech keeps me in the know too she revealed Certain neuroscientists researching the effects of hardware on older adults are inclined to agree The first cohort of seniors to have contended not invariably enthusiastically with a digital society has reached the age when cognitive impairment becomes more common Given decades of alarms about machinery s threats to our brains and well-being sometimes called digital dementia one might expect to start seeing negative effects The opposite appears true Among the digital pioneer generation use of everyday digital tool has been associated with reduced pitfall of cognitive impairment and dementia noted Michael Scullin a cognitive neuroscientist at Baylor University It s almost akin to hearing from a nutritionist that bacon is good for you It flips the script that equipment is consistently bad declared Murali Doraiswamy director of the Neurocognitive Disorders Plan at Duke University who was not involved with the inquiry It s refreshing and provocative and poses a hypothesis that deserves further research Scullin and Jared Benge a neuropsychologist at the University of Texas at Austin were co-authors of a latest analysis probing the effects of device use on people over average age Related Articles Trying to get cat to take medication Do pediatricians recommend vaccines to make a profit There s not much money in it States move to protect vaccines in the face of attempts to remove mandates Operation Warp Speed was one of Trump s biggest achievements Then came RFK Jr and vaccine skeptics WHO chief says the mpox outbreak in Africa is no longer a global strength emergency They ascertained that those who used computers smartphones the internet or a mix did better on cognitive tests with lower rates of cognitive impairment or dementia diagnoses than those who avoided equipment or used it less often Normally you see a lot of variability across studies Scullin mentioned But in this analysis of studies involving more than seniors published in Nature Human Behavior almost of the studies discovered that system had a protective cognitive effect Much of the apprehension about apparatus and cognition arose from research on children sometimes focused on adolescents whose brains are still evolving There s pretty compelling content that difficulties can emerge with attention or mental wellness or behavioral problems when young people are overexposed to screens and digital devices Scullin commented Older adults brains are also malleable but less so And those who began grappling with machinery in midlife had already learned foundational abilities and skills Scullin noted Then to participate in a swiftly evolving society they had to learn a whole lot more Years of online brain-training experiments lasting a limited weeks or months have produced varying results Often they improve a person s ability to perform the task in question without enhancing other skills I tend to be pretty skeptical of their benefit reported Walter Boot a psychologist at the Center on Aging and Behavioral Research at Weill Cornell Medicine Cognition is really hard to change The new analysis however reflects device use in the wild he disclosed with adults having to adapt to a rapidly changing technological habitat over several decades He discovered the scrutiny s conclusions plausible Analyses like this can t determine causality Does system improve older people s cognition or do people with low cognitive ability avoid hardware Is tech adoption just a proxy for enough wealth to buy a laptop We still don t know if it s chicken or egg Doraiswamy revealed Yet when Scullin and Benge accounted for wellbeing instruction socioeconomic status and other demographic variables they still determined significantly higher cognitive ability among older digital equipment users What might explain the apparent connection These devices represent complex new challenges Scullin mentioned If you don t give up on them if you push through the frustration you re engaging in the same challenges that studies have shown to be cognitively beneficial Even handling the constant updates the troubleshooting and the sometimes maddening new operating systems might prove advantageous Having to relearn something is another positive mental challenge he commented Still digital apparatus may also protect brain healthcare by fostering social connections known to help stave off cognitive decline Or its reminders and prompts could partially compensate for memory loss as Scullin and Benge determined in a smartphone investigation while apps help preserve functional abilities like shopping and banking Numerous studies have shown that while the number of people with dementia is increasing as the population ages the proportion of older adults who develop dementia has been falling in the United States and several European countries Researchers have attributed the decline to a variety of factors including reduced smoking higher schooling levels and better blood pressure treatments Possibly Doraiswamy mentioned engaging with apparatus has been part of the pattern Of subject digital technologies present risks too Online fraud and scams often target older adults and while they are less apt to summary fraud losses than younger people the amounts they lose are much higher according to the Federal Business Commission Disinformation poses its own hazards And as with users of any age more is not necessarily better If you re bingeing Netflix hours a day you may lose social connections Doraiswamy pointed out Tool he noted cannot substitute for other brain-healthy exercises like exercising and eating sensibly An unanswered question Will this supposed benefit extend to subsequent generations digital natives more reassured with the instrument their grandparents often labored over The system is not static it still changes Boot announced So maybe it s not a one-time effect Still the change tech has wrought follows a pattern he added A new machinery gets introduced and there s a kind of panic From television and video games to the latest and perhaps scariest advancement artificial intelligence a lot of it is an overblown initial reaction he noted Then over time we see it s not so bad and may really have benefits Like largest part people her age Woods grew up in an analog world of paper checks and paper maps But as she moved from one employer to another through the s and s she progressed to IBM desktops and mastered Lotus - - and Windows Along the way her personal life turned digital too a home desktop when her sons needed one for school a cellphone after she and her husband couldn t summon help for a roadside flat a smartwatch to track her initiatives These days Woods pays bills and shops online uses a digital calendar and group-texts her relatives And she seems unafraid of AI the bulk earthshaking new tech Last year Woods turned to AI chatbots like Google Gemini and OpenAI s ChatGPT to plan an RV excursion to South Carolina Now she s using them to arrange a family cruise celebrating her th wedding anniversary The New Old Age is produced through a partnership with The New York Times KFF Vitality News 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