Over-65s might be more tech savvy than we thought

Over-65s are much more tech savvy than we once realized, as a new report reveals that this age group was much better at spotting ads and scam emails than their younger counterparts.

Older folks are often considered less tech-savvy than younger people, with some saying that over-65s are tech-illiterate.

I’ve been guilty of calling older people (specifically my parents) geriatric technophobes due to their lack of tech knowledge.

But a new report from the UK’s telecommunications watchdog Ofcom counters this narrative, suggesting that older people aren’t as technologically challenged as we once assumed.

The report shows that over-65s were better at spotting advertisements on popular search engines like Google.

While only half of the participants (51%) could identify the top search results as sponsored links, older people were much better at spotting them than the 16-24 age group.

Despite this, Ofcom reports that while we live most of our lives online, our ability to spot advertisements online hasn’t “seen any long-term improvement.”

Compared to younger participants, 92% of those over 65 could also spot scam emails and take action to protect themselves against these schemes, compared to the 24- 34 age group (70%).

However, when it comes to social media and spotting fake accounts, older age groups struggled to highlight which accounts were fake compared to younger generations.

Roughly 73% of over-65s could spot fake accounts, which is still relatively high, but doesn’t compare to 92% of 16-24 year olds.