It is estimated that in Spain there are almost two million people over 70 years of age who live alone. Normally forced by circumstances, not by choice. Do these people communicate with others, do they have friends, do they go out? They probably do it while they are healthy, and less and less as they get older. It then happens that isolation makes an appearance, that they only have younger relatives to talk to, especially sons and daughters.
Friends have also been getting older, the pleasant meetings, the outings to the movies, the theater, for a snack, to have a coffee have been spaced out, they have diminished until they ended. Today it is very cold or very hot, it is raining, my knee hurts, my back hurts, I can't move. Just conversations on the phone, although there is less and less to say.
There is, yes, a resource, a novelty: communications through new technologies. Older people digitized, less closed in on themselves, or older people condemned to solitary confinement. WhatsApp, Twitter, Instagram, videos, those devices that are so harmful to children and young people when they become addicted can be like May water in the hands of lonely adults.
Exchange of conversations, images of young grandchildren that it is not possible to see as often as desired, openness to the world in general. It is necessary to teach the elderly to manage social networks, they must have them at hand to mitigate their loneliness, to find enjoyment in their use.
For the rest, along with the new, we must value a device that has been rejected so many times like the television. Years ago it occupied the place that now corresponds to mobile phones, it was convenient to restrict the hours of television consumed not only by children and young people but also by adults. Not anymore, now it occupies a secondary space in addictions, and instead has come to constitute an appreciable company in old age or when one is walking towards it.
Blessed are the television images and voices always available, communicating, alleviating unwanted loneliness. From which it follows that gadgets are beneficial or harmful not only according to their use but also according to the condition of each person.
