‘How do I end a call?’: the elderly Japanese people determined to master smartphones | Smartphones

Young people aren’t the only ones with their gaze fixated on tiny screens. But for these users in Tokyo, clicking and scrolling is nothing but second nature.

“I can’t deal with all the featured apps,” says one of them. “How do I know when I’ve finished a call for sure?” someone else asks.

These are common concerns among four women and one man attending a beginners’ smartphone class at a public facility for elderly residents in Nerima, in the northwestern suburbs of Japan’s capital.

Yasushi Nishioka has a patient guide to navigating the countless functions and settings that can make the smartphone a portal to a new world of hyperconnectivity, as well as a vortex for digital dystopia.

“Please don’t feel like you have to remember everything,” says Nishioka, a retired programmer at an IT company. “It’s just a matter of holding it and getting used to it.”

Respondents, most of whom are in their 70s, say they are afraid of their devices, which consist of three iPhones and two Android phones. But they are determined not to spend the next years in analog isolation after the shutdown of Japan’s 3G network.

The country’s telecom companies have slowly dragged legacy networks into darkness. 2G service shut down completely in 2012, and by 2022 au, a popular carrier, no longer offered 3G, and rival SoftBank followed suit in 2024. At the end of March, NTT Docomo became the last to pull the plug on 3G, citing the need to retire inefficient base stations to reduce electricity consumption.

While some flip phones are still compatible with 4G, the move affected an estimated half a million people and more than 400 phone models, the first car navigation systems, vending machines that rely on 3G for cashless payment systems, and unstaffed parking lots that use the network for remote management, according to the Mainichi Shimbun news site.

Docomo and other carriers are helping subscribers — diehard flip phone users and smartphone enthusiasts — by offering classes that include sessions on taking photos and videos and shopping safely online.

Unless they embrace the smartphone that only works on 4G and 5G networks, flip phone loyalists will lose voice calling and email functions and their contracts will be canceled along with their phone numbers.

of japan Garakai phones – a combination of Galápagos and keitai denwastands for mobile phone – it was ubiquitous before the first iPhone was released in 2008.

Today, for two hours, Nishioka walks his students through the basics: how to turn their phones on and off and control the volume, along with tips for panning and zooming in and out. It then turns to cashless payments, QR codes, and two topics of common interest among participants: health trackers and weather forecasts.

“If you only use your phone as an admin, it gets boring quickly,” he says, promising that next week’s session will be devoted to entertainment, social media, and photo and video content.

All participants express safety concerns Growing problem in JapanThe large population over the age of 65 is often the target of online scams. “If you have any doubts, ignore the message or call,” Nishioka says, before sharing an app that filters out suspicious people.

“When I bought my smartphone, I turned it on and the number of icons was so confusing that I had no idea what to do,” says class participant Hiroko Kanda. “It’s taking me a while to get used to it.”

Another, who preferred to remain anonymous, reluctantly bought his first smartphone three months ago. “I didn’t have the confidence to make the switch,” he says, placing his flip phone next to his iPhone. “I still use it Garakai It’s on 4G… but I really like the weather and travel planner apps on my new phone.”

The reasons for entering this venture are not very different from the reasons that keep young people umbilically attached to their devices: booking tickets to musicals, joining WhatsApp groups, learning a foreign language and making travel plans.

“There’s one thing that really stands out among the things that annoy people about smartphones and often cause them to give up,” Nishioka says, before laying out a complaint that has united novice and experienced users across generations: “Managing their passwords.”