Discussion keeps the world turning.
There comes a moment in life when the person who taught you how to tie your shoes asks you how to navigate an app.
Teaching parents to use phones, avoid scams or navigate applications has become a part of family life.
It's a regular thing.
But it's not just about tech.
It's about patience, role reversal, and watching the people who raised you grow older.
So why is something so seemingly ordinary also so hard to talk about?
After that, a university in China opened its gates to the public and cue the internet meltdown.
Wow, tourists with selfie sticks, students crying foul, get out of here!
And everyone asking, wait, wasn't this always a public space?
Or is that the wrong question entirely?
Because what's really at stake here isn't just the gates, it's who gets to belong where.
And who decides?
We're live from our studios here in Beijing.
This is Roundtable.
I'm Steve Hatherly.
Thank you so much for being with us today.
And for the show, I'm joined by Niu Honglin and Fei Fei.
First up.
At some point, many young people realize they've taken on a new role in the family.
That new role is tech support.
From teaching parents how to use mobile payments and navigation apps to explaining AI tools and spotting online scams.
Digital payback, that's what they call it is becoming a modern version of caring for family.
But these lessons are rarely just about the tech itself.
They often reveal something deeper.
Frustration, role reversals aging, patience and even new ways of understanding each other across generations.
So why is teaching our parents how to use tech so emotionally complicated?
And in the age of AI, can digital learning actually bring families closer together?
Nyong Lin and Fei Fei, good afternoon to you both.
When we teach our parents how to use new technology, I think that part of it is acknowledged.
But there's a whole lot of other stuff happening that maybe isn't acknowledged.
And we're going to try to talk about all of that today.
Precisely.
And that is why people in the academia world started to discuss and study this new phenomenon, trying to figure out the essence of it, its impact on the family, on the society.
And they even give it a name, calling it digital payback, literally meaning digital feeding back, because there is a Chinese story, a traditional Chinese story, and even a Chinese idiom called we translate it as the crow feeding its parents.
It's talking about One, the parent crows grow old and cannot find food for themselves.
You would see the young ones return to feed and take care of them.
And the Chinese people always find it very touching because It's happening in the animal world and it shows how much you care about the elder generation.
The concept of filial piety in Chinese culture is not restricted to learning new tech.
No, it's a very common and very broad concept.
But now it is used in the digital world because nowadays, with pension system and everything, you don't really have to feed your parents.
You go be with them, take care of them.
And, at the same time, Teaching them how to cope with the digital world becomes a very important part of it, and that is why we're calling it digital payback.
Yeah, and this can include teaching older parents how to use smartphones or, as I mentioned, payment apps or navigation apps or booking things online hospital visits, for example.
None of this, Feifei, is new, really.
Smartphones have been around for a very long time.
Apps have been around for a very long time.
Digital payments have been around for a very long time.
And that creates sort of two new problems.
First of all is digital technology has been upgrading very fast in recent years especially, for example, here in China.
We now have AI tools.
And sometimes these tools can be both very helpful and also very confusing to a lot of the grandparents especially.
And then another side of it is when it comes to entertainment, which is a very critical part of the elderly's daily life, is also tightly linked to digital technology.
And they also need to learn to navigate these apps.
It's not only about using them, it's also about, I think, for example, how to protect yourself.
Yeah, in some scenarios.
And another thing is about communication.
It's like parenting, when you are trying to teach a young kid about something new.
It's not a one-time job.
You need to repeat yourself multiple times with patience, with love, and also you need to consider their personality.
The same thing applies to elderly.
And that is why scholars have different theories when it comes to the digital payback.
And they say, in order to quote unquote train or educate your parents or the elder generation in the family about digital tools and apps.
There are three stages.
One is giving them access to these things, because some of them do not even have the basic ability to use a smartphone.
So you do that first, giving them access, meaning that you put on the apps, you set everything for them.
So with simple clicks, they can realize using certain functions.
And then the second would be giving them the skill they need.
That means maybe having the ability to download the apps they really need by themselves, and maybe using their smartphone camera function to create the things that we really want to create.
They really had in mind.
And the third one would be digital literacy.
That includes what Fei-Fei has just said about being able to tell the true information from the wrong ones, being able to even starting to learn new things, new skills using digital tools by themselves.
Going beyond just the basics of knowing how to open the app.
By June of 2025, and that's why this is important.
The country had more than 160 million internet users aged 60 and above.
And as more and more seniors go online for whatever reason, and a lot of seniors are going online these days to play games or to
Simply doom scroll.
We assume that's something that's restricted to teenagers, but that is not the truth at all.
And as this becomes modern day reality, families are increasingly facing the realities of the digital generation gap in everyday life.
There are some specific examples.
And I think we could say that in some parts of China this might be a more pressing issue than in other parts.
Shandong province would be one example.
Yeah.
And surprisingly I didn't know this before the show is that Shandong province has the largest elderly population in China.
With nearly 25 million people aged 60 and above by the end of 2024, which account for more than 24 of its total population.
Almost a quarter of the population for that province.
It's not the biggest portion when it comes to the elderly proportion in the total population, but it's also growing very fast.
And they did a survey.
The Elderly Life News conducted a two-month survey across eight cities in that province.
And they formed the survey report on the use of smart devices among older adults in the province.
And they found that nearly 90 of respondents said they often or sometimes use smartphones or other smart devices like tablets or computers.
And the digital divide exists, with more than 10 of seniors said they cannot use any smart devices at all or another.
More than 8 said only occasionally or marginal use.
And that could be attributed possibly attributed to the fact that they don't know how to use those devices.
Yes.
And within those 90 of frequent users of smart devices, over 50 spend one to three hours a day on their devices, mainly for communication or entertainment.
For example... close to 90% use WeChat for chatting.
That's understandable, I guess.
For example, apps like Douyin or Kuaishou can also be on the list.
Those apps would be on the easier end of the spectrum, relatively speaking.
I would think right, because you do not really need to do anything with it as long as you get information or you just register.
It would do.
And if we take a look at the overall situation when it comes to younger generation helping the elderly in the family, you can see that a recent survey conducted by China Youth Daily and its youth media platform.
The survey collected over 3000 valid responses from students at 142 universities nationwide.
And according to the findings, I think it's related to what we had just talked.
Over 95 of respondents said that they taught their parents, grandparents or other older family members how to use electronic devices.
But if you take a look at how they do it, it's usually over 91 did it while they are at home because of summer vacation or winter vacation when they're home with their families, which makes sense.
But at the same time, we have over 30% guide their older relatives through voice or video calls.
And also over 20 said they send screenshots or create step-by-step visual guides because it's a faraway situation.
They cannot talk to them face-to-face.
I mean, there's many angles that we can discuss this from, but this new complication in the rise of AI and constantly updating apps, where the tech has inevitably become more complicated,
It's created an opportunity now somehow for younger children to connect with their parents.
Let me rephrase.
Not younger children like 9, 10 years old.
Younger adults?
20-something?
Not even younger adults.
Even 40-somethings ah, that's true to connect with their parents again, because it's an inevitability of life that sometimes you will drift away a little bit emotionally, so you always talk about the same type of stuff right, um?
But this would create a new opportunity okay, mom?
Okay dad, let's sit down together.
I'm going to show you how to use this app, And there are plenty of examples out there where kids, no matter their age, are now making, like you said, these step-by-step guides and having these video chats with their parents to help them understand how it works.
I see that as kind of a positive side effect of this story.
It should be, because when they talk to their parents about these things that they're familiar with yet, their parents fear a little bit or feeling unfamiliar.
The role in the family shifted a little bit.
And because when you think about the digital tools we use every day, we find it not as intimidating.
We see a little icon of a envelope and we know it's related to message somehow.
It might be an email.
It might be a short message.
It does not matter.
But to really elder generation, they do not understand the icons.
That's intimidating.
And even when they see a button written deliver or send it out, they do not want to click it because they do not know send it out properly.
What does it really mean if i if i click it well, i get a re-affirmation of whether or not it's.
Is there another step?
Is there a yes or no?
Or is it just sent and they don't know what will happen?
So the feeling would be a bit strange.
And you are trying to give them the information and confirm with them again and again.
And the younger generation in the family becomes the one with the knowledge and with a little bit of the kind of like the parent's role in this situation.
Reverse parenting in a way.
Digital guides in the family, yeah.
There's actually a wonderful program that's being taught, and the teachers came up with a really smart way to convey the technical messages to their elderly students.
I'll save that for a little bit later.
But yes, what I said was this should be a wonderful opportunity to connect or reconnect with parents on a different type of conversation.
But not everyone sees it that way.
It is the kid becoming the parent in a sense where they may become frustrated.
Yeah.
Oftentimes, right?
Yeah, because you know teaching can be training some of your patients, especially when you are talking to.
You know seniors, they have their different personalities.
I would say some seniors would like to embrace new technologies like downloading a new app, learning how to make videos and post them on Douyin.
Some others would be more on the refusal side of things.
Like they just plainly refuse.
I'm old.
I don't want to learn.
This is a new thing.
That's true.
Yeah, we're talking under the assumption that elderly people are lined up around the block to learn how to use the latest apps, but that's just not true for everyone.
I don't know.
I don't think it's Refuso.
I think it's the lack of ability to accept the knowledge or to master the skill as smarter, as faster as when they were young.
That's getting them frustrated.
And that can be the attitude coming from.
I do have friends.
Her parents would be like she wanted to teach her mom about upgrading some of her apps on her tablets.
She said it's quite simple.
It's just you need to be mindful about.
For example, you need to tap on that upgrade button on the screen so that you can continue using this app.
If you don't update it in a timely manner, sometimes you just can't use that app at all.
And her mom's like, why can't you do that for me?
I don't want to learn.
That's one scenario.
And then another scenario which happened, I have to say shamefully, in my family occasionally was that I would take care of their digital devices.
I would upgrade the apps.
I would have the setting for them.
So that it's easier for them to use occasionally, so that basically, I maintain the digital devices in the family so my parents can use it.
But that actually deprived their chance to learn how to do that themselves.
Right.
And that's why there are so many opportunities now, classes for older people to learn.
There's actually a university student-led volunteer group right here in Beijing.
It's called Sunset Glow Renewed.
And it's dedicated to helping seniors navigate the digital world.
And they've been doing this for a long time.
Over the past 15 years, the organization has offered more than 15,000 free classes.
And they've reached millions of older adults across communities, not only here in Beijing, but all across the country.
Yes.
And when it comes to these kind of classes, I think I've also saw reports saying that in the beginning phase of it when, for example, community colleges or community centers start to launch these kind of classes, sometimes they don't have any students in the classrooms.
And that is also one of the barrier or obstacles when we're talking about trying to close this gap, this digital divide, is that, first of all, a lot of seniors didn't realize that they can learn and there is a place for them to learn.
And there are people who can help them about a lot of their questions and teach them hands-on.
And then some of the students even went out to the streets.
You know, just talking to grandma auntie sitting by the street side sunbathing herself and sort of dragging her into the classrooms.
And then sort of that ignites an interesting sparkle among those elderlies and they start to learn.
And about the organization you mentioned, Sunset Glow Renewed, because they do it systematically and they teach a lot of elder generation in the society.
They have their own way of doing it.
They explain things not in technical terms, but in the term that the elder generation excuse me would be able to understand.
They say one click is like saying hi.
Yeah, this is what I was talking about before.
Yes.
They've come up with this genius way to explain the functions of the tech to the group.
Yes, they say one click is saying hi, you're confirming whether or not this is the app you're gonna use.
And two clicks would be saying hi and then shaking hands.
You're confirming you know this person, you're making friends with them, you're actually opening it and using it.
And putting in the address would be like dialing.
You give the phone number so that they know where you're going.
So when you're putting in the phone number, you know you're dialing to a friend, for example.
But when you're doing it on the Internet, you're going to the address you need.
And also after dialing the phone number.
When you click enter, now you're you're actually making the phone call.
So they're describing the technology in everyday terms.
Yeah, and then it makes sense, right?
And that group.
I think I read a quote from one of the maybe founding members who said In the beginning we were teaching it in a very technical way.
It didn't work.
Not only did they not understand, they didn't care and they didn't have interest at all.
So they came up with this other way of explaining things.
There are other issues at play as well too, and that's why I said in the beginning this is such an onion to me, because the reluctance for the elderly to want to learn.
Was it your friend's mom who said, why can't you just do this for me?
I don't want to learn.
Well, where does that answer come from?
I don't want to learn.
And I think for a lot of people that might be from a sense of shame.
Now, what I mean when I say that is, oh, well, my eyes don't work as well as they used to.
I can't really see the screen, but I don't want to admit that to you, and you've taught me this three times.
I know you've done it but i still don't remember, i still cannot figure it out, but i do not want to say it to you.
So i'm just gonna say you do it, i don't have any interest, i don't care, but it's just i'm frustrated with myself.
Now, that is the psychological side of things that that's not acknowledged.
Perhaps on a broader scale, I would say, when it comes to the design of these apps, for example, the font size we talked about this multiple times on the show is that some of the font size is just too small, too small for any of the elderly to be able to read them.
And I think another thing is that, when it comes to the design of these apps, they have their own aesthetic standards.
For example, when it comes to where do you find your setting in these apps can be very different.
And when it comes to these elderlies, for example, they spent several days learning about where do I change my settings in this app.
When they open another app, everything changed.
And you have to start from scratch.
And that can be very, very frustrating.
So that's another question when it comes to tech companies.
Do they need some sort of elderly-friendly design?
They do.
Yeah, so that it's easier for them.
And it's more than just bigger fonts.
Precisely.
Ease of use.
Yes.
So it's not so complicated.
All right.
So that's from the elderly side of things.
Now I want to talk about the kids who are helping their parents.
The figures from we'll go back to Shandong province as as this example.
When it comes to learning digital skills, 70% of seniors rely on their children for guidance.
This is from Elderly Life News from late last year, by the way.
45% try to learn on their own, but only 27% or so have participated in formal training programs.
They want to learn things like basic operations and mobile payments and financial management and online healthcare services.
That was part of the survey result as well.
That's the same survey that we were talking about before.
But that statistic to me right there stands out as the big one.
70% of seniors rely on their children for guidance.
And that means, I think that can be challenging for them.
The same data from the Shandong province is that close to 66 of them struggle to learn without guidance.
So that's why they need it.
And about half of them worry about making mistakes that can lead to losses.
There was...
So when they're trying to communicate with their children, under their guidance, to learn to navigate through these apps, there's also a fear deep down in their hearts about what if I made a mistake.
What if I wasn't good enough?
It's the same as when we were students.
Exactly.
That's what I was thinking.
Because, as a parent, I started to realize that you need to teach your kids everything from standing up to walking, to jumping, to hopping.
They do not know anything.
And when you're doing it with your parents, when you're doing the digital payback.
You forgot about it.
You assume that I need to teach them how to use this app, but you forgot.
Sometimes you need to teach them how to reboot, how to restart.
You need to teach them after a while, you need to, you know, turn it off and turn it back on again.
And sometimes you even need to tell them where to plug in the headset.
These basics are also very important.
There was a story.
I mean, there are many stories online on this particular topic, but there was one that stood out to me.
Miss Wong, who is a young woman who works in Beijing.
She admitted that she once completely lost her patience while teaching her parents how to use their smartphones.
And what she was doing was she was explaining to her a very simple copy and paste function.
And she explained it again.
Then she explained it again.
And her parents still couldn't remember it.
And then she ended up raising her voice in frustration.
Now, later on, she realized the error of her ways.
She felt quite guilty about that.
But she realized as well that this is part of her irritation that came from something deeper.
And this is the next layer of the onion.
She didn't want to accept that her parents were getting old.
That's true.
It's a very difficult realization, for many of us at least, also to acknowledge that our parents are entering that phase of life that they are sort of becoming the baby in the family.
Well, simply speaking, they're weaker than you.
Yeah.
And that also comes in another situation, which is becoming more and more common.
That is with the use of AI being happening everywhere, fake information.
AI, digital avatars telling your parents wrong information about policies, about medical advices, about you should really buy this magical pillow from me because it cures everything.
And all these things, Children are also trying to prevent their parents from being conned by these fake information.
There's a lot of scams out there.
A lot of scams.
And they are so advanced now, too.
I was searching about that this morning for knowledge's sake.
My new side hustle.
Now they can use AI.
The scammers can use AI to imitate family members' voices.
What they'll do is they'll go on social media and they'll get voice clips and then they'll use the AI to replicate that voice almost perfectly and then call the parents and discuss.
Everything.
Yeah.
And they can also create an avatar wearing police officer's costume to share information.
Quote unquote share information about certain things and getting the elder generation trusted and then start selling them stuff.
And the reason that I'm mentioning this is that these are the kind of triggers that...
A lot of younger generations started to realize that I should start talking to my parents about these things, about technology.
Maybe some of them are not as... How do I put it?
It's like they can use their cell phone.
They can use many apps, but they're not digitally literate enough to tell these wrong information from the right ones.
And it's not only about getting closer to your parents anymore.
It's about helping them from being hurt by these.
Yeah, all fair points.
For me, My mom is pretty decent with technology.
My dad, well, I'll just put it like this.
I've had multiple conversations with my father's forehead.
Wow.
Because video chatting, he just puts the phone up and I'm like, dad, just lower the phone.
He's like, what?
Just put it down a little bit.
He's like, what?
I was like, never mind.
I've had full on conversations with his forehead before.
That never bothered me.
That wasn't the moment for me that made me feel, oh, my parents are old now.
I didn't care.
And I think I didn't care because my parents don't care.
My dad doesn't care that he doesn't know about the latest AI advent.
He doesn't care.
He's not interested.
It's not a part of his daily life.
So therefore, because they don't care, I don't really care.
All we need to do is have video chats with each other and that satisfies everyone.
So that wasn't it for me.
For me when that moment struck.
I was living in Korea at the time and I lived at the top of a pretty steep hill.
That's where the apartment building was.
And I was walking with my parents and halfway up the hill I turned back and I look and they weren't there and they were a little bit further away.
And I said, what are you doing?
And they said, oh, we just need to take a break for a sec.
And it was that exact moment that I realized, oh.
I'm stronger than they are now.
And that was a difficult that was a difficult moment.
I'll be honest with you.
And it passed pretty, pretty quickly.
You get used to that concept.
But it's a moment that's going to come in every child's life, when you surpass the teacher in that sense.
And maybe for a lot of people nowadays.
That moment would come when you are teaching your parents about how to use a new technology.
But I'm curious really about one thing that is, in this day and age, our generation is really really familiar with all sorts of technology and with technology getting smarter and smarter, which means Dahmer and Dahmer do not really need to learn them anymore.
Just use them with common sense.
True.
I'm not really sure, because for this generation, we see more and more people knowing the importance of teaching their parents how to use this, how to get access to the digital world.
And you have volunteers doing it.
You have government organizations doing it and everything.
But do you think in our generation, when we get old, do our kids need to do this?
Of course.
Of course.
You know, aren't we growing with the technology so we are not left behind?
Well, yeah, but we are growing with the tech that is available to us now.
Yeah, but the tech is getting, it's thumbing it up so we do not have to learn.
That was kind of my hope.
But who knows, you know, the technology.
Who knows?
You know, our parents, when they were our age, their technology is also, was very pretty decent.
You know, the beeps, the big mobile phones also seems quite... What was the beeps?
Very...
The beeper?
Oh, beepers.
Yeah, the beepers.
Sorry.
So at that time, those seemed very, very advanced.
Sure, because they were.
Yeah, yeah.
But now it seems like vintage.
I think a lot of young people are talking about vintage electronics and those are on their list.
The original cell phone was the size of a brick.
It was the size of a shoe.
But at the time that was mind-blowing technology, kind of hoping with ai.
It does not need me to learn how to use it, i can just talk to it and it can do anything like a robot.
Yeah, that was my dream.
So my children do not need to tell me how to engage with the new technology, because i just engage with it like i engage with any other people.
I saw a headline yesterday.
I won't say companies or anything, but I read a headline yesterday.
Robot butlers are going to be coming to our homes early next year.
The company is going to start with their employees first to see how that goes.
But obviously, it's not far behind where those are going to be living alongside us.
In our homes.
But to your point, I think that when we continue to, you know, decades later, then there's going to be brand new mind blowing tech.
Yeah.
And when we get to that age where our parents are now, we will have difficulty understanding that mind-blowing new tech and it will have to be explained to us then.
It's just a cycle, and it keeps going and going.
Yeah, exactly.
But the good side of it is that when you learned, actually learned to grasp some of the skills, navigating these apps is just very encouraging.
My mom.
When she traveled with her friends to another country, she was the only one to know how to use Uber.
She was the only one to know how to order a cappuccino from a local cafe.
She was so proud.
I was like that all the time.
All the patients that have to sit down with you and teach.
It's worth it.
Was it hard for you?
Oh, so you've gone through this.
I've gone through that.
Was it hard?
It was hard.
There was time of me thinking, I've told you like five times in the past week.
And then I start to remember my dad used to say the same thing to me when I was learning physics.
I had that too.
And the surprising element and happy surprise was that, after teaching my mom how to use certain things, the next time I tried to teach her I realized that she has learned something that I didn't teach her.
She learned it by herself.
And I was so happy about that.
Like a proud mama.
In a weird way.
By the way, my dad, he knows how to use the camera now.
If I'm honest, I kind of miss those conversations with his forehead.
If that makes sense, somehow, someway.
