It is estimated that in Spain there are almost two million people over the age of 70 who live alone. Usually forced by circumstances, not by choice. Do these people communicate with others, do they have friends, do they go out? They probably do while they are healthy, and less and less as they get older. It happens then that isolation makes an appearance, that they only have younger relatives to talk to, especially sons and daughters.
The girlfriends and boyfriends have also grown older, the pleasant gatherings, the outings to the cinema, the theater, to have a snack, to have a coffee have become more spaced out, they have decreased until they come to an end. Today it's very cold or very hot, it's raining, my knee hurts, my back hurts, I can't move. Only conversations on the phone, although there is less and less to say.
There is, yes, a resource, a novelty: communications through new technologies. Digitized older people, less closed in themselves, or older people condemned to incommunicado. WhatsApp, Twitter, Instagram, videos, these devices that are so harmful to children and young people when they become addicts, can be like putting oil in a lamp in the hands of lonely adults. Exchange of conversations, pictures of the little grandsons and granddaughters that it is not possible to see as often as desired, openness to the world in general. It is necessary to teach elderly people how to handle social networks, they must have them within reach to mitigate loneliness, to find enjoyment in them.
On the other hand, next to what is new, it is necessary to value a device that has been blasphemed as much as the television. Some time ago it occupied the place that now corresponds to mobile phones, and it was convenient to restrict the hours of television consumed not only by children and young people but also by adults. Now no longer, it occupies a secondary place in addictions, and instead has become an appreciable company in old age or when it is moving towards it.
Welcome to the ever-present television images and voices, communicating, alleviating unwanted loneliness. From which it is inferred that artifacts are beneficial or harmful not only according to the use that is made of them but also according to the condition in which each person is.
