Senior care and technology is going to be a gold rush over the next couple decades. Society is not prepared for the only generation who grew up on the internet to regress into mental infirmary while still believing technology is an essential need.

For those of you who haven't already had to deal with today's 70 year old MCI sufferers and technology, it is already a complete shitshow, and that generation lived half their adult lives without mobile technology.

Imagine finding 12 renewing subscriptions to malwarebytes and other security suites. Or having to burn credit cards every month because they can no longer tell the difference between ads/scams and actual needs. Microsoft, of course, helpfully shovels those scams straight to them via the operating system now. The corporations of America have figured out that milking our elders is good for a quick buck, and it is in their interests to make sure no safety nets are in place. Once they are required, they'll game whatever that system is too.

It is all the control battles our parents fought with their parents over driving, but now it is about the phone/tablet/computer, but not being able to take the phone away as a practical matter because the (first) world expects everyone to have them.

SSO and recovery keys are a problem for proxy account administrators - especially with the banking and medical sectors which still rely solely on SMS. Sites such as login.gov won't allow multiple accounts to have the same phone number. So if both you and your parents need accounts for social security, you as the caregiver can't use your phone as the second factor for their account.

For added fun, many organizations, including banks and the US Government/various federal pension boards, refuse to recognize a power of attorney letter, either. The entire modern situation leaves caregiver children having to commit technical TOS violation/fraud/perjury just to get accounts reset or to (re)gain access to submit address changes.

> For added fun, many organizations, including banks and the US Government/various federal pension boards, refuse to recognize a power of attorney letter, either.

Ouch! That's got to make things hard!

That's thankfully not a problem where I live. Here the problem is more that the banks might be a little over-eager to take agency away from seniors, since once they get a whiff of their grandson helping them with their banking and what not, they lock their account and claim to have broken their TOS or the law regarding not having other people control their account, and that if you want people to do that, you need that power of attorney.

Honestly, this is a lot better than the alternative of not being vigilant enough, and I'd honestly argue that it's better to let there be as little shame as possible in handing over your banking to your next of kind, so that when it starts getting really bad, it's not too late. But this obviously gets very individual very quickly. One senior will handle their banking just fine until their 105, while the next gets Alzheimer at 55, while the next starts to have to put a lot more effort into doing it right at 75, but they don't have any next of kin they can trust to not slowly empty their savings account once they get the power of attorney.

Thanks for bringing up the point about power-of-attorney, I'll have to dive into that as well.

I dread the day I have to get more involved in their healthcare from afar, precisely because of the technology gap. The money grab from big-pharma is going to unrelenting