I feel conflicted on this. My personal experience is that seniors tend to reject new things, especially things like this, with increasing vehemence as they get older.
Even as a kid, I found it almost impossible to get adults to even try many things and, if anything, the situation seems even more intractable now, as people come up with reason after reason to stay with entrenched behaviors…
So studies like this… Not sure I really believe them.…
Seniors these days have tech experience through work, their cell phones etc. My dad is turning 80 next year, and he is honestly more of an early adopter than I am. He was one of the people that basically helped digitize the USAF, as they transitioned to using mainframes programmed with punch cards, and all the way to the PC revolution about the time he retired. For a while his job was figuring out what all they could use computers for in SAC. My mom has a sewing/embroidery business since she retired, and the software she uses makes most CAD programs looks simple.
My grandfather, 100% agree, no way he’d have tried it. Even getting him to use email was a non-starter years ago.
There will always be people who embrace new stuff, regardless of their age. And there will always be people who basically think that everything invented after their 30th birthday is made by the devil himself to destroy us all.
I think that VR has huge potential in that regard. It just has to be controllable in an intuitive way.
My grandparents (all dead now, the last one died last year) were blown away by new tech (like that… what was it called… “Internet”) and how we could show them pics and vids of stuff and dig up all kinds of media that they had not seen in 50+ years. We could see how it brought back memories and we kept talking about those things with them.
I am absolutely sure that my grandparents would have tried VR for several things. Like experience walking or driving through their old home town (that was just rubble after 1945) or that place in Italy they visited in the 1960s.
Even virtual Rome sure beats a 4x4 meters retirement home room.
This feels relevant and also reason to actually view this with positivity.
Subjecting the mind to something nostalgic might have some legitimate benefits.
Us kids who grew up in the 90s are just going to get a friggin’ Chuck E. Cheese or something when that time comes for us.
Now, I know exactly what you meant, but in my mind?
Get my kitty gif outta of the way early this year…
As a card-carrying senior citizen (not sure the exact number) I’ve always liked new things - if they were useful, not, on balance, harmful that is. It’s the people, not the [new] tools, that cause all the ruckus.
Beside, my feeling is those cranky old folks were likely cranky young folks too…though I do have regular bouts with cynicism as the number 70 starts to approach - I still remember things (a curse almost 
)
I guess I have to admit a personal bias. I’ve had a lifetime of people elder to me telling me they were too old, for this or that, or to learn this or that, or to try this or that, or to change a behavior, or to actually do anything different than what they were raised to do by people usually already long dead.
I think its made me a bit brittle on the subject, and maybe a bit cynical on human beings general mental elasticity as they get older.
I’ve always been afraid I will slowly become like that without even noticing…
My Dad is probably the biggest Luddite that I know.
Refuses to use a computer, unless it is to load a CAD program on his CNC mill… go figure 
Hates all modern driver aids (“I want to drive the car, I don’t want it bloody driving me”) and laments that he can’t get a phone that is “just a phone” anymore.
Yet when they visited for the first time after I got my G2, I put him in a Tomcat over the Persian Gulf and didn’t think I would get him out of the seat. And this is someone who also hates flying.
I will admit to both of those at the ripe age of 42. If the car is going to do the driving it can do ALL the driving and I can sleep. Otherwise it should do none of the driving so people don’t expect it to do all the driving when it can’t. For work purposes a phone that can only make/receive phone calls and possibly text would be amazing. I don’t need to be on a zoom meeting on my phone, just call me!
I’m afraid that appears to be a thing, in general. Guess it’s just a matter of when it starts to appear. I have a harder time remembering some things as time goes by - a different topic though perhaps.
I joke with my wife (she hates this one), "Well honey, when I recognize it coming on I’m just gonna take up sky diving - one day I’ll just forget [that] something and it’ll be over, quick (so she won’t have to babysit me)
Now, what did I have for breakfast again?
Yeah, I’m weird that way - I want the freedom of travel (when I get REALLY old and they take my wheels away) and if a gizmo will allow it I’m all for it. This all assumes everyone else is in a self-driving car
Ouch. Think I said that, again, just last week to my wife
I foresaw the possibility of that ‘thing’ running a persons life not long after they went BIG. But in the end you have been given little choice in the matter, due to ‘culture’ changes. How they are used/abused is the issue.
The upside? I left my I-Phone at home once but needed to call my wife for something semi-urgent, so I stopped in a mini-mart and they let me use their phone, for free! No digging through the car trying to find change for the pay phone! Yee Haw.
Six months ago I would have been firmly in the @jenrick & Dad camp.
For 90% of the driving I do (single lane country road) I still agree 100%. But as soon as I hit that freeway; on goes the adaptive cruise, lane departure assist and overtake assist.
Tell me about it. It can cause issues… We don’t have cell/mobile phone coverage where we live.
