Recently, I saw a post on Xiaohongshu asking if there was a TV that was convenient for the elderly.
In my impression, the TV can be viewed by turning on the power button, and the operation is very simple household appliances, why should it be specially marked "easy for the elderly to operate"?
Unless the current TV is too complicated for the elderly.
Today's smart TV, for the elderly, is not just a streaming terminal, but a sci-fi product bound to advertising marketing, membership fees, and rogue apps.
Ten years ago, old people could enjoy watching TV while sitting, and now their right to watch TV has been taken away.
It's harder to watch TV than going to the hospital.
For example, some people say that grandpa was driven crazy by the membership mechanism of TV, and wrote the TV series on paper, and ticked everything that could be broadcast.
Others say that TV at home even costs money to watch CCTV.
Someone even downloaded the study power country for his grandfather in order to watch TV comfortably.
As long as you download the app to learn about the strong country, find the watch TV section on the home page, click on which station you want to watch, there are no ads, no complicated operations, the elderly love to watch news broadcasts, trendy TV series, there are.
And the problems that the elderly encounter while watching TV are far more than the above.
A simple and convenient TV that should entertain the public has become a fish bone in the life of the elderly, stuck in the throat and eyes, difficult to swallow.
Watching TV is like going to the execution ground, driving the old man crazy with TV, how many steps in total?
First, flashy functional plates, cumbersome systems to operate.
Today's smart TV, not so much a TV, is a hung mobile phone, its operation logic is no different from a smartphone, all through the index to find programs.
The old man could not understand how there were more bells and whistles such as "×× TV", open-screen advertisements, channel partitions and other bells and whistles on TVs that used to be able to play films as soon as they were turned on.
Source: Little Red Book blogger "Shin Shin Baby"
After turning on the TV, how to operate it is also a problem, smart TV, usually equipped with two remote controls, respectively control the set-top box and the TV.
The simplest change of platform is also a problem for the elderly.
Some helpless old people will write a channel list by hand and enter the channel they want to watch according to the channel number.
Source: Little Red Book blogger "Dreamweak"
Many people say that the elderly in the family want to watch TV, but they can't teach it, and they are angry because TV dumps the cost of learning on them.
Some people also launched a tutorial for the elderly to watch smart TV, which received more than 200 likes.
The second step to drive the old man crazy is to pay extra for membership, so that the old man does not understand the logic of spending money.
Today's smart TVs usually have two kinds of membership: one is a TV member, which is used to unlock the extended functions of the TV, such as HD channels, Dolby sound, etc.
The other is TV series membership, which is used to unlock TV series with specific copyrights, such as TV series exclusive to iQiyi and Tencent.
And the system of these members is even more complicated, for example, if you have a gold membership, want to watch certain TV series, and have to do a platinum membership.
As soon as a member is established, the TV will pop up a paid window, and the elderly who can't even change the station, facing the window of scanning the QR code to pay, are very helpless - they don't know how to pay, and they can't find a button to exit.
Some elderly people accidentally subscribe to membership, deduct money every month, do not know how to cancel, and have to wait for the help of grandchildren back home to cancel the subscription or apply for a refund.
The third step in driving the old man crazy is the huge amount of TV commercials.
Today's TV programs, the elderly want to watch less and less TV, more and more advertisements, the channel's programs are bombarded with advertisements in turn.
TV series, it seems to be interpolated during commercials.
For example, some UP owners said that now Shanghai TV is selling advertisements for Dalian Grandma Zhang's sea cucumber 80% of the time.
What's even more outrageous is that every time the TV is turned on, there is an open-screen advertisement with a duration ranging from 15 seconds to 40 seconds.
Now any mistake in the operation may make the old man unable to watch TV.
The cause of all this problem is mainly in the radio and television industry.
With the decline of the television industry, the unit price of TV station advertising continues to fall, and in order to maintain costs, the number of advertisements can only be increased.
In the era when Internet copyright is king, traditional radio stations have not caught up, and the quality of programs is naturally getting worse and worse.
So it fell into a vicious circle, the worse the less earned, the less earned the worse.
In the field of smart TVs, part of the price of smart TVs contains Internet functions, and the original price may be 800 yuan, and the bundle is sold for 600 yuan.
Most smart TVs seem to be the most advanced and convenient products of the era, but in fact, businesses often default to one thing:
It is that its users naturally have the ability to avoid ads, intelligent indexing, and find the programs they want to watch under complex mechanisms.
It is young people who have this ability, not to mention that young people complain about some "smart" TVs for a day or two.
Some people say that a smart TV is like a super tablet where you have to pay for everything and just want to ask for money every day.
Some people say that the current network TV is a big pit, thinking of defrauding the people every day of three melons and two dates.
Some people are even beginning to miss the old days of antenna TV, when they could only watch a few channels.
But now, the main audience for television is the elderly.
Whether it is a traditional TV or a set-top box TV, or a network intelligent computer, without exception, it is ignoring the viewing needs of the elderly.
And the difficulty of watching TV is just a microcosm, and "suitable for the elderly" has become a pain point in this era.
"Suitable for the elderly" has become a pain point of the times
QR code, electronic money, scan code payment, the wind is booming, go out a mobile phone, do not need to bring anything else, most people's life is so convenient.
But for the elderly, all of the above can be torture in modern society.
Some elderly people go to the supermarket to buy things, and the use of cash is rejected by the store staff; Or the elderly are humiliated by the clerk because they can't pay with QR codes.
At the beginning of the epidemic, the elderly did not buy masks online, and could only make their own masks with orange peels.
On June 4, 2022, an elderly man in Shanghai was forced to get out of the car because he could not show his health code.
During this time, the driver said: "Hurry up and get it, people are waiting for you." Two minutes later, the old man still failed to scan the code, so he had no choice but to get out of the car, and said "don't delay everyone." Finally, the bus closed and left.
Even now, after the Spring Festival in 2023, which is finally open, grandparents sent away their children who accompanied them for a short time, and wanted to turn on the TV that could accompany them for a long time, but found that they were all advertisements and couldn't understand it.
During the Spring Festival, "Crazy" was very popular, and some readers left messages in the background saying that Dad and a person who didn't watch TV watched "Crazy".
But this also brings trouble, some elderly people do not understand the membership mechanism, and at the same time log in to too many devices, freezing the account.
And there is nothing suitable for the consumption of the elderly, in fact, social consumer goods have completed a round of elimination of the elderly group.
I don't know when the old man became a fragile item of this era.
All consumer goods focus on maintaining the physical safety of the elderly.
For example, the Zhilijian brand elderly shoes that are known to be specially developed for the elderly, mainly anti-slip, comfortable and so on.
The old man's treasure was born because he was afraid that the old man could not see it, and the old man's mobile phone with huge buttons and sound can be used for a month at a time.
Or an anti-fall suit that bounces off like an airbag when the old man falls.
The above products, there is no problem, the elderly do need physical protection, but in fact, we all ignore the needs of the elderly in entertainment.
We also stuck in wrong demand estimates, thinking that the elderly were using the things of their time, such as listening to review books, opera, and watching "News Network".
But they also want to use the latest things and watch the latest TV.
They also want to learn to use WeChat so they can chat with their children often and use the latest technology to solve problems in life.
Sometimes, understanding across generations leads to ironic and warm stories.
For example, the 2019 advertisement "What is Page".
He told the story of his grandson returning to the village for the Spring Festival and calling his grandfather Li Yubao to say that he wanted a Page.
Li Yubao asked around, finally knew what was Page, and used a blower to make a "Page".
Although the functional needs of the elderly for products - simple and practical, are contrary to the trendy attraction law of the mainstream market, we still hope to leave a way between "convenient" and "trendy" for the elderly.
In the past 40 years, technology has changed with each passing day, and society has been rolling forward, from access to the Internet in 1994, to face recognition, from 3G to 5G, from card swipe to cardless payment, but only three decades.
These thirty years may be the majority of many readers' friends' lives, or older than the age of some readers.
But for the elderly, this period is probably less than half of their lives.
For them, the TV is the window, and now, for the elderly, this last window is gradually closing.
A young man walks down the street, the world is clear for him, and the air shines with the holy light of freedom and convenience.
An elderly man, sitting in a room, lives in a sticky, sluggish, increasingly obscure wave of information.
And civilization has always been the civilization of people, not in going fast, but in not expecting to get rid of more people.
We should all think about how to go slowly.
It not only allows the elderly to have the right to salvage youth, maintain traditional hobbies, but also gives them tolerance in science and technology, leaving a way to link the past to the new trend.
Don't let the intelligence of modern society become torture to lock up the elderly group.
Design/Visual Elaine