Elderly also have right to a digital life

Is modern technology making our daily life more convenient?

Many would say yes. With a smartphone in hand, one can do almost anything: watch a film, attend a meeting, open a bank account, pay utility bills, the list goes on.

Yet for about 249 million senior citizens nationwide, the answer would probably be no. Being unable to operate a smartphone, they can hardly benefit from the convenience. Worse, in many cases they suffer because public service departments have ended their offline services.

For example, in order to fight the novel coronavirus, many public places require a health code via a smartphone app. That makes life difficult for those elderly residents who do not use a smartphone.

That's why the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's recent plan is praiseworthy.

According to the latest information, the ministry plans to launch a campaign next month that requires some highly popular apps and companies to reform their services and products so that they can be accessed by senior citizens and people with disabilities.

Among the detailed moves, there are three that have attracted the most attention. First, China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom, as the three biggest mobile phone service providers, are required to upgrade their customer services so that seniors can get human assistance via a single click.

Second, WeChat, a popular social media app, and Alipay, a major payment app, are required to reform so that senior residents can more easily use them.

Third, the new versions developed for seniors should not contain any inductive advertisements so as to avoid the elderly wrongly clicking and losing money.

All these moves have hit the nail on the head. When people face trouble, the first reaction is to seek help from the service provider, but the majority of service providers now use automated systems to reduce costs. It might be acceptable for young people to do one click after another, but it can be difficult for seniors.

Some say that WeChat and Alipay are developed by private companies and they have little responsibility for society. That's wrong because they are already so big as to be essential for many aspects of daily life. With their great size comes great responsibility.

The most frequent disputes people have in relation to smartphones involve money. Wrongly clicking on an advertisement might lead to an unintended payment, while wrong operation might result in a loss as well. To solve this, it is necessary to let apps for seniors be without inductive advertisements.