The Child Becomes the Parent

Nearly everyone who is in a technical field provides technical support for their relatives, and perhaps even their friends. I got a t-shirt at a conference once that says, "No, I will not fix your computer." I don't actually wear it, because, truth be told, I will fix your computer. I might (okay, will) whine about how messed up it was afterward, and how can anyone possibly be productive with a computer set up that way, and why aren't you on Windows 10 yet? but I will fix your computer.

Especially, I will fix my mom's computer. 

I don't mind - she gave birth to me and refrained from killing me when I was a teen - that has to count for something!

I've got a list started of all the things I will be taking care of, technology-wise when I next visit her. Recently, though, it occurred to me to add one more thing to the list: her router. I have to confess I've never looked at her router before. Bad security person! Bad!

Here are three articles that list and reinforce the dangers lurking in home routers: 

I'm really hoping Mom doesn't have an ISP-provided router: apparently those are one big security hazard waiting to happen, mostly because they have credentials that cannot be changed, but are well-known by bad folks. Also, I don't ever recall Mom saying something about "firmware". Yikes. I think the router is older than 2012. My mom isn't eating cat food but she can't really go throwing money around so I have to come up with a good business case for getting a new one. Oh, I know I could use scare tactics - or, heck, Merry Christmas! Here's your new router you didn't know you needed! but my mom is an intelligent woman and needs to be treated like one...

Which brings me to a larger point about parents and technology and support: there is so much snark going on out there about how clueless folks over a certain age are. I've even seen my own age group included in the clueless group (yes, the older members of GenX are apparently speeding toward senility %-/) Moving forward, I call upon all geeks, regardless of age, to not treat folks who are older as clueless by default. Becoming older might mean they say "huh?" more often but it doesn't mean they've lost the ability to understand how things work. If we treat them like children (which is funny, because if you've ever seen a kid have their first go at technology they are fearless, persistent, and ultimately successful) they might start thinking this current tech stuff is too hard for them to learn. It's not. It's not brain surgery, nor is it rocket science:

What if we, the kids, are abducted by space aliens? Do we really want to set up our older relatives for failure by teaching and then reinforcing helplessness? What if we did treat them like actual children behave? Encourage them to play around with the technology and figure it out. As long as stuff is backed up, does it matter if everything needs re-configuring? Do you make that sighing noise (you know the noise) and get impatient when you're teaching little kids how to do something? Okay, after you've had coffee? I read a book once that said you should treat people like you'd treat the Pope, for instance. If you had Pope Francis over for dinner and he accidentally knocked his glass over, would you yell at him and tell him he was a clumsy oaf? (if so, hope you can dodge lightning quickly ;-) No, you would clean it up and try to make sure you didn't put the next glass by his elbow or something. If your parents or other older relatives do something with their computers - and I do include getting ransomware in this - don't yell at them and treat them like they are awful stupid people. Help them fix it and then help them understand how to help themselves. Help them get a backup system in place so if ransomware happens they don't have to figure out Bitcoin give into the demands. Help them set up a router firewall (and it doesn't hurt to have a software firewall system, too) properly so that countermeasures are in place to catch malware before it catches them.

Be the sort of tech support parent you wish you could have, because one day the younger cohort will want to help us out with those fancy brain implants ;-)