Silversurfers and the world of technology
We’re all surrounded by technology, but let’s be honest, most of us only scratch the surface in terms of what we use technology for. Still, the days of using your phone just to make a phone call seem like a distant memory … and how many of you still long for a nice little button to click when you type rather than a touch screen?
The Silversurfers team were keen to understand exactly how good you are at using technology so we ran one of our Barometer surveys and were surprised by some of the things you told us!
Cool and confident
Well, you’ve got the hang of this technology thing, that’s for sure! Almost half of you (45%) said that your internet and tech skills were excellent or good and another 45% said your skills were “Okay”. But, you also think you could still do better with all of you saying you’d like to learn more, be it how to use your laptop better or how to understand more about social media. You’re also quite happy to do online training (80%) or use video guides (57%).
But you have missed a trick! When we asked you which type of handheld devices you use, Apple devices (iPhone and iPad 68% collectively) won hands down, although a lot of you (37%) use Android smartphones. When we asked you about which laptop/computer you use 52% said Windows PC and 48% said Windows Laptop. This would indicate that many of you use Apple handheld and Windows computers. If you had all your devices used the same operating system you would be able to communicate and share information/photos an so on very easily between them. The other main benefit is that you would just learn one way of doing things which would save you time and get you up an running more quickly when you upgrade your devices.
You’re nobody’s fool
We were also pleased to see that 58% of you wanted to know more about staying safe and secure online. With so many scams on the internet and via email now, we think this is really sensible. We have a few articles already about this on Silversurfers.com like these features on Online Safety and Staying secure on public wifi plus we’ll be researching and publishing more on this too to help our community
You love Facebook!
Social media has helped to transform many people’s lives, giving them a way to communicate with friends, family and other like-minded people. We were not surprised to see that 81% of you use Facebook every day.
But let’s also remember that you use technology for Email and messaging, social media, shopping and browsing closely followed by banking.
Technology is part of your lives
It seems clear from our Barometer survey that you are all using technology to enhance your day to day lives. It’s a way for you to stay in touch with your friends, organise your social lives and manage your shopping and finances, giving you more time to spend with your families or enjoying yourselves. But, if more of you standardised on one operating system (be it Apple or Windows), you would benefit considerably in terms of your time in learning new functionality and be able to share your information very easily across all your devices.
A big thank you to everyone that took part. We really do appreciate the time you spend time helping us to understand you better. And we will definitely research and publish more information about using technology and avoiding scams to help you stay safe and secure.
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