AgeTech, Aging, and the 15% That Won’t Let You Rest

Recently, my personal and professional lives collided. My dad put his phone down somewhere in the house and didn’t think to check it again.

Normally, this wouldn’t be remarkable. But on that particular day, Verizon happened to lose service to millions of customers for hours. Also, my mom was out of town. My sister and I had no way to reach him. No call. No text. No location ping.

We were about 85% sure everything was fine.

It was that other 15% that wouldn’t let us rest.

So we got in the car and drove 45 minutes — each way — just to make sure.

That small experience sits at the intersection of something I think about often, both personally and professionally: technology is already woven into the lives of older adults and their families. And the question isn’t whether it belongs there. The question is how it belongs there — and for whom it’s actually designed.

The Narrative We Keep Repeating

There’s a dominant narrative that older adults don’t like technology. That they’re resistant. That they’re “not good at it.” We’ve all seen the memes.

But that narrative oversimplifies something much more nuanced.

Pew Research reports that 61% of adults age 65 and older use a cellphone. That represents millions of individuals navigating digital tools in their daily lives. And usage continues to rise.

For the remaining 40%, the question shouldn’t be, “Are they too old to learn?”

The better question is: What is shaping their decision?

When you sit in conversation with older adults — not in a survey with pre-set response options, but in real dialogue — the story expands. You hear about recurring subscription costs that feel unnecessary on a fixed income. You hear about frustration with interfaces that assume visual acuity or dexterity that may not be present. You hear about pride — the desire not to rely too heavily on adult children. You hear about privacy concerns that feel rational, not paranoid.

Those layers rarely surface in adoption statistics alone.

Aging Is Not Homogenous — and Neither Is Technology Use

One of the central lessons of studying the life course is that aging is not a demographic category. It is a lived process shaped by roles, relationships, culture, income, health, and history.

My retired parents do not have the same technological needs that I do. I’m managing young children, professional responsibilities, digital scheduling systems, and multiple social networks. My digital ecosystem is dense.

Theirs is different. Not deficient. Different.

When we reduce “older adults” to a single user profile, we flatten the diversity of experience. In qualitative interviews, you see this immediately. Two people who are both 78 may have completely different relationships with technology — shaped by former occupations, caregiving roles, mobility, geography, and family dynamics.

Technology doesn’t enter a vacuum. It enters lives that are already layered with habits, histories, preferences, identities, and systems of support.

Human-Centered Design Requires Human Understanding

There’s a (re)emerging conversation around human-centered design in the AgeTech space. The language isn’t new, but the urgency feels different.

At its core, human-centered design acknowledges something simple:

The person drives the solution.

But understanding “the person” requires more than usability testing. It requires listening for context. It requires understanding not just what someone does with a device, but how they feel about using it. What adopting it signals about independence. What declining it protects.

In my work studying intergenerational systems, I’ve seen how often technology decisions are negotiated inside families. An adult daughter may see a monitoring device as reassurance. A father may see it as surveillance. Both are responding from legitimate emotional ground.

If we only measure adoption rates, we miss those negotiations.

What Older Adults Are Actually Saying

In the Southern Gerontological Society Priorities Survey, which I recently co-authored, the write-in responses were striking. Participants emphasized that representation matters. They want to be meaningfully involved in shaping the services and technologies that affect their lives.

Not consulted after the fact.

Involved from the beginning.

The report also highlighted a clear tension: there is support for integrating technology, especially when it reduces social isolation. But barriers persist — limited internet access, recurring costs, lack of familiarity, and educational approaches that do not align with how older adults learn.

Several respondents noted that when education feels overly complex or dependent on continuous help from others, engagement drops. Autonomy matters deeply.

These aren’t abstract concerns. They are lived ones.

Where Adoption Breaks Down

AgeTech is one of the fastest-growing innovation spaces. And yet many well-intentioned products struggle with trust, adoption, and sustained use.

From the outside, it can look like resistance.

From a qualitative, life-course lens, it often looks like misalignment.

Sometimes teams gather data but lack the interpretive framework to understand aging as experience rather than age as number. Metrics tell us what is happening. Stories help us understand why.

And the “why” is where adoption lives.

That 15% that wouldn’t let my sister and me rest? That wasn’t about a device malfunction. It was about uncertainty, relational distance, and responsibility. It was about what it feels like to care from afar.

Technology that accounts for that emotional layer — not just technical functionality — stands a much stronger chance of becoming integrated into daily life.

The Opportunity Ahead

There is enormous potential in the AgeTech space right now.

But the companies that will succeed long term won’t simply build for older adults. They will build with them. They will understand that older adulthood is not a market segment — it’s a spectrum of lived realities shaped by health, family systems, socioeconomic context, learning styles, and personal values.

And they will recognize that adoption is rarely about ability.

It’s about relevance. Trust. Meaning.

We are not witnessing a generation that is incapable of engaging with technology.

We are witnessing a generation that is discerning about how it fits into their lives.

And that distinction matters.