Challenges with Email and Social Media

by | Technology

Mike’s dad had Facebook problems last week.

My mom has email troubles all the time! We get the phone calls to fix things from out of town. We talk about a few simple tips to make life easier when you are tech support for your parents.

Chances are you can relate to this video about email and social media as we try to help our parents stay connected without making them or us a little crazy!

Read the full transcript

Transcript of Video: “Challenges with Email and Social Media”

Mike Barnes: It is so exciting to see so many people joining the Facebook group, although there’s a part of me that’s a little sad because it also means that there are a lot of people who are in the same situation where we are and are looking for help.

Kim Barnes: Yeah, there are so many topics to talk about. You know, my mom has Alzheimer’s, so that’s dear to my heart. I’m already trying to line up a lot of different people to talk about that and do interviews on that. Bear with us because a lot of the big topics are going to be coming in the near future, but we’ll go kind of light-hearted tonight and talk about something that’s kind of funny and kind of hair-raising, you know, makes you want to pull your hair out.

Mike Barnes: Right, exactly. Sometimes you just have to either laugh or you might cry or just get really, really frustrated. We’re talking about email and social media.

Kim Barnes: If your parents are on social media and trying to navigate through email as well, there are just challenges. Besides just clicking on links that you don’t want them to click on in emails because they might get scammed, and that’s a whole other video probably right there—all the scams that they can fall prey to. But just even like your dad recently got his Facebook account hacked again.

Mike Barnes: Basically, all of his friends—and he doesn’t have that many on Facebook—but all of his friends got requests to friend somebody who said it was his name with his picture.

Kim Barnes: There’s a name for that. I don’t even know what it is, phishing or scamming. Doesn’t matter what it is, but people try to do that to my dad. He didn’t know it, but I got a request, so I knew what was going on.

Mike Barnes: You knew you were already friends with him.

Kim Barnes: Yeah, I was already friends with my dad. So I went in, I had his email and his password, I went in, checked a couple of things to see who did it, alerted the people who had already friended him—it was like five of the people who’d already friended this joker. But the biggest thing—

Mike Barnes: Frustrating.

Kim Barnes: The biggest thing to think about, I know it kind of sounds simple, is to know your parents’ passwords. Know what the account is and the password so you can get in and fix things. Because every once in a while, I’ll be on the phone with my dad, “Yeah, Dad, okay, up at the top here, look for the three dots,” and he’s like, “Oh, oh, I’ve messed it up again. Let me start over.” No, no, no, no. It’s so much easier whether it’s email with my dad or your mom or Facebook with the other one of them. It’s so much easier if you can go in and fix it yourself. It just takes a lot of the stress out of the equation.

Mike Barnes: Well, and with Facebook, one of the things that I found is that my mom would always comment and say, “Oh, Mike sent me a great picture again.” And I said, “Mike sent you a picture?” And she said, “Oh, and so and so else did too.” And I said, “I don’t think he was emailing you pictures.” Then I finally realized she was getting Facebook notifications every time Mike posted something, and I’m not even really sure how she got that set up. And I know she doesn’t know how she got that.

Kim Barnes: It was only me.

Mike Barnes: It was only him. So she always thought he was sending her something personal, but it went to Facebook. So I finally went in because other people were getting notifications for her too. I actually went in and asked her if it was okay because it is tricky. You don’t want to start doing things necessarily without their permission. But I went in and turned off the notifications so she wasn’t getting that and thinking, “Oh, Mike sent me another picture.” That was just one little thing that I did that certainly keeps her email a lot quieter now. I don’t think she ever gets on Facebook anymore.

Kim Barnes: Yeah, because of that, she doesn’t really know how to get on without having that link to click on. So again, some of those are just things to sort of think about and figure out. I have a whole page of my mom’s passwords, and strangely, she still ends up changing them sometimes without realizing it. So I have to go in and change them back. But just being able to help them is so much easier sometimes just to go in and do it than it is to, as you mentioned, try to walk them through it.

Mike Barnes: Because again, it happens so often. It probably happens to you, but it happens to us. They get an email, there’s something wrong. With my dad, it’s just because of technology. He wants a little bit of help. With your mom, she needs help in other ways, but they need help. Rather than trying to talk to them on the phone and say, “Okay, read it to me. Okay, what does that mean? Who’s it really from? Check the address,” it’s just easier to go click, click, click. “Okay, I’m looking at it right now. It’s a scam. Don’t worry about it, Dad,” that type of thing.

Kim Barnes: So many different issues. We want to empower our parents to try to do the things they feel comfortable with. But when there are those little issues, what are the things we can do that might make our lives easier because we can just go in and fix it really quickly for them? I’m sure there are some days when I’m asking my son or daughter how to use the remote control because that’s new and not something I’m used to doing as well. Our parents aren’t used to the technology, so we have to give them a little grace and be able to help them and watch for those things like their account getting hacked, things like that that are sometimes inevitable.

Mike Barnes: Just make it easier on everybody.

Kim Barnes: If you have other ideas for suggestions of videos, we want to interview other experts and bring them in on topics that you find interesting and helpful. Also, if you have questions, post them in the group. We had somebody just yesterday who asked a question about looking for some online activities, virtual activities for their parent. Already, we had people giving resources, which is awesome. That’s exactly what we want to do.

Mike Barnes: Exactly. It’s a great group. Hope you continue to enjoy.

*This transcript is auto-generated. Please excuse any typos or mistakes.

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