It started with a high school typing course.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Her supervisor \u201csat me down and put me on a machine called a word processor,\u201d Woods, now 67, recalled. \u201cIt was big and bulky and used magnetic cards to store information. I thought, \u2018I kinda like this.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Decades later, she was still liking it. In 2012 \u2014 the first year that more than half of Americans 65 and older were internet users<\/a> \u2014 she started a computer training business.<\/p>\n Now she is an instructor with Senior Planet<\/a> in Denver, an AARP-supported effort to help older people learn and stay abreast of technology. Woods has no plans to retire. Staying involved with tech \u201ckeeps me in the know, too,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Some neuroscientists researching the effects of technology on older adults are inclined to agree. The first cohort of seniors to have contended \u2014 not always enthusiastically \u2014 with a digital society has reached the age when cognitive impairment becomes more common.<\/p>\n Given decades of alarms about technology\u2019s threats to our brains and well-being \u2014 sometimes called \u201cdigital dementia\u201d \u2014 one might expect to start seeing negative effects.<\/p>\n The opposite appears true. \u201cAmong the digital pioneer generation, use of everyday digital technology has been associated with reduced risk of cognitive impairment and dementia,\u201d said Michael Scullin, a cognitive neuroscientist at Baylor University.<\/p>\n It\u2019s almost akin to hearing from a nutritionist that bacon is good for you.<\/p>\n \u201cIt flips the script that technology is always bad,\u201d said Murali Doraiswamy, director of the Neurocognitive Disorders Program at Duke University, who was not involved with the study. \u201cIt\u2019s refreshing and provocative and poses a hypothesis that deserves further research.\u201d<\/p>\n Scullin and Jared Benge, a neuropsychologist at the University of Texas at Austin, were co-authors of a recent analysis<\/a> investigating the effects of technology use on people over 50 (average age: 69).<\/p>\n They found 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 technology or used it less often.<\/p>\n \u201cNormally, you see a lot of variability across studies,\u201d Scullin said. But in this analysis of 57 studies involving more than 411,000 seniors, published in Nature Human Behavior, almost 90% of the studies found that technology had a protective cognitive effect.<\/p>\n Much of the apprehension about technology<\/a> and cognition arose from research on children<\/a>, sometimes focused on adolescents<\/a>, whose brains are still developing.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s pretty compelling data that difficulties can emerge with attention or mental health or behavioral problems\u201d when young people are overexposed<\/a> to screens and digital devices, Scullin said.<\/p>\n Older adults\u2019 brains are also malleable, but less so. And those who began grappling with technology in midlife had already learned \u201cfoundational abilities and skills,\u201d Scullin said.<\/p>\n Then, to participate in a swiftly evolving society, they had to learn a whole lot more.<\/p>\n Years of online brain-training experiments<\/a> lasting a few weeks or months have produced varying results. Often, they improve a person\u2019s ability to perform the task in question without enhancing other skills.<\/p>\n \u201cI tend to be pretty skeptical\u201d of their benefit, said Walter Boot, a psychologist at the Center on Aging and Behavioral Research at Weill Cornell Medicine. \u201cCognition is really hard to change.\u201d<\/p>\n The new analysis, however, reflects \u201ctechnology use in the wild,\u201d he said, with adults \u201chaving to adapt to a rapidly changing technological environment\u201d over several decades. He found the study\u2019s conclusions \u201cplausible.\u201d<\/p>\n Analyses like this can\u2019t determine causality. Does technology improve older people\u2019s cognition, or do people with low cognitive ability avoid technology? Is tech adoption just a proxy for enough wealth to buy a laptop?<\/p>\n \u201cWe still don\u2019t know if it\u2019s chicken or egg,\u201d Doraiswamy said.<\/p>\n Yet when Scullin and Benge accounted for health, education, socioeconomic status, and other demographic variables, they still found significantly higher cognitive ability among older digital technology users.<\/p>\n What might explain the apparent connection?<\/p>\n \u201cThese devices represent complex new challenges,\u201d Scullin said. \u201cIf you don\u2019t give up on them, if you push through the frustration, you\u2019re engaging in the same challenges that studies have shown to be cognitively beneficial.\u201d<\/p>\n Even handling the constant updates, the troubleshooting, and the sometimes maddening new operating systems might prove advantageous. \u201cHaving to relearn something is another positive mental challenge,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Still, digital technology may also protect brain health by fostering social connections, known to help stave off cognitive decline. Or its reminders and prompts could partially compensate for memory loss<\/a>, as Scullin and Benge found in a smartphone study, while apps help preserve functional abilities like shopping and banking.<\/p>\n 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<\/a> in the United States and several European countries.<\/p>\n Researchers have attributed the decline to a variety of factors, including reduced smoking, higher education levels, and better blood pressure treatments. Possibly, Doraiswamy said, engaging with technology has been part of the pattern.<\/p>\n Of course, digital technologies present risks, too. Online fraud and scams<\/a> often target older adults, and while they are less apt to report fraud losses than younger people, the amounts they lose are much higher, according to the Federal Trade Commission. Disinformation poses its own hazards.<\/p>\n And as with users of any age, more is not necessarily better.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you\u2019re bingeing Netflix 10 hours a day, you may lose social connections,\u201d Doraiswamy pointed out. Technology, he noted, cannot \u201csubstitute for other brain-healthy activities\u201d like exercising and eating sensibly.<\/p>\n An unanswered question: Will this supposed benefit extend to subsequent generations<\/a>, digital natives more comfortable with the technology their grandparents often labored over? \u201cThe technology is not static \u2014 it still changes,\u201d Boot said. \u201cSo maybe it\u2019s not a one-time effect.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, the change tech has wrought \u201cfollows a pattern,\u201d he added. \u201cA new technology gets introduced, and there\u2019s a kind of panic.\u201d<\/p>\n From television and video games to the latest and perhaps scariest development, artificial intelligence, \u201ca lot of it is an overblown initial reaction,\u201d he said. \u201cThen, over time, we see it\u2019s not so bad and may actually have benefits.\u201d<\/p>\n Like most 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 \u201980s and \u201990s, she progressed to IBM desktops and mastered Lotus 1-2-3 and Windows 3.1.<\/p>\n 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\u2019t summon help for a roadside flat, a smartwatch to track her steps.<\/p>\n These days, Woods pays bills and shops online, uses a digital calendar, and group-texts her relatives. And she seems unafraid of AI, the most earthshaking new tech.<\/p>\n Last year, Woods turned to AI chatbots like Google Gemini and OpenAI\u2019s ChatGPT to plan an RV excursion to South Carolina. Now, she\u2019s using them to arrange a family cruise celebrating her 50th wedding anniversary.<\/p>\n The New Old Age is produced through a partnership with\u00a0The New York Times<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n KFF Health News<\/a> is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF\u2014an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF<\/a>.<\/p>\nUSE OUR CONTENT<\/h3>\n