Dairy Milk and Age UK

I came across this amazing marketing campaign by Cadbury UK for Age UK. They have taken the words off their chocolate bars and donated the money to help elderly people who regularly go a week without speaking to anyone.

It really makes you think...

Please visit Age UK to find out how you can help to support and inspire elderly people. https://www.ageuk.org.uk
 

What a clever and touching campaign! I hope it is a success for them.

I hope it makes people think about the older people in their lives and maybe call them more often. 

#0: Good idea.

One of the easier ways to help older people stay in touch with family, friends, relatives, and others, is by helping them into the social media world. Show them how to use Instagram, Telegram, Snap, or even email on their phone, computers, or tablets. Help them follow people they know and show how to write and comment. If they don’t have a new enough device, perhaps one of your retired ones will do for them to start with.

This doesn't replace the need for face-to-face contact, but it complements it. All of my oldest relatives use social media. I have found that Telegram groups with both young and older people work very well to stay in touch and informed. One of my Telegram groups is comprised of 17 people between the ages of circa 16 and 78. While my grandfather still lived, the oldest member was 98. 🙂 We share photos, videos, stories, and lots of other things. To date, we have shared over 10,000 images and films. Best of all, it's free. 😀

#3 bridging that technology gap for the elderly is really important, for instance, I find a lot places now do things cheaper online (e.g cinema tickets) which isn’t fair if they can’t access it.

I’ve tried a lot to teach my nana to use her phone, she can text now but she really struggles, do you have any tips on how to teach them?

Unfortunately, better devices often are easier to use, but more expensive. An old-school phone with hardware buttons is harder to write texts on than a newer model with larger touch buttons and a big screen. If possible, I would suggest getting a decent device to really enjoy using it. The base model iPad is a really good, not too expensive, device for most people (provided that you have access to a wireless network or the SIM model). It’s big enough to be easy to read on and showing photos in great detail. Writing texts is comfortable with large buttons. They have good cameras to take everyday pictures and participate in FaceTime or Skype calls. It can run hundreds of thousands of apps, and there are almost unlimited sources of information and tutorials about using them.

#4 My mum managed to teach my nan how to use an iPad after a couple of days! What she did was sit there with an iPad of her own, and basically got my nan to mirror what she was doing so that she could eventually do it herself (the main use was for Skype and messaging). Then she wrote some instructions in case she got stuck, but it worked out pretty well!

I’ll have to give it another go, I tried to get her using a amazon fire tablet previously, perhaps an IPad will go down better 🤔😅