By Jessica Norah Bowles-Martinez
The site opens by introducing itself as a weekly internet magazine
for seniors. It promises to be "controversial, entertaining and
informative." Right off I find myself expecting to hear about
issues like politics, sex, and perhaps a forum for debate. Then my
stereotypes of elders take over and I begin to reinterpret the description.
I imagine controversial to mean they cover tame subjects like, staying
up past 10pm, and entertainment to be playing cards, while informative
would imply comparisons of products like Ensure all presented by people
named Ethel using antiquated proverbs. I feel embarrassed as I recall
that my grandmother went white water raftering at 75 and now in her
80s she participates in walk-a-thons and political debates, and feel
ashamed for having these obviously false stereotypes ingrained in
me. This site also seems to fall into the trap by not always addressing
issues like sex or politics, which has a direct effect on their lives.
Instead, the page focuses on "fluffy" content more often
than it should.
The site contains articles ranging from subjects such as grandchildren,
alternative healthcare, relationships, unusual travel opportunities,
healthful recipes, and practical legal/financial advice, which it
apparently perceives to be the most important topics to the seniors.
After reading through the relationship articles, I was surprised at
how general they were, and quick to categorize the behavior of elderly
males and females. They never talked about sex directly but instead
deal with marriages, death, and general platonic relationships. Most
of the advice could be applied to maintaining friendships and seemed
to want to sidestep more important specific issues by giving an innocent,
overly optimistic, outlook on relationships. It sounded like what
you learn as a small child about "getting along with others"
without any assumption of physical attraction or desire. If this were
targeted at me I'd feel it was condescending as well as boring. It
is hard for me to tell if this is a universal sentiment, as I grew
up with sex being talked about frankly and openly, while its possible
that to people from a generation unaccustomed to such frank talk that
it would be seen as crude or insulting.
The page does seem to take the poor site of seniors into mind by having
the text in large font. It is also against a yellow background in
some parts, I do not know if this makes it easier for people with
certain vision problems to read or not. The disadvantage of the bigger
text is that it requires a lot more scrolling, which makes the point
that being able to read the text at all is more important than ease
of navigation. I tend to agree on this point for even if the site
required no scrolling if the text is impossible to read no one will
visit the site.
From what I've heard in class and from other statistics seniors tend
to feel lonely and isolated, yet this site did almost nothing to help
unite its senior readers. The closest thing was the area on World
War II where people could list their information and a picture in
the hopes that someone else they know would see them and contact them.
Compared to the teen pages I saw which had journals or online forums
where other readers can share about themselves as well as debate about
issues they find relevant, this site was static and boring. It may
be a place to read articles that have the perspective of seniors in
mind, but it is not a way to strengthen the senior community, it is
only the equivalent of a magazine and does not take advantage possibilities
of being online.
The site is simply a place to read articles that are intended for
seniors. It is no different from a newsletter in print form. Though
it does claim to have a large readership so its articles must be of
interest to a large number of seniors.