Should you expect parents to have email?

[Ax^]

depends how old they are i suppose my da is 65 years old and has a work email

now if only he could read, and yes he took lessions to learn at 50 but as he also dyslexic

he has just learn to live his life with out the skill

 

[PTK]

It makes sense to ditch it completely. The Luddites wont miss it once they've been dragged into this century for a couple of weeks.

I will miss it, because it means I will have to keep an electrical device plugged in all the time in order to receive phone calls.

 

[bellaozzydog]

I'm currently chasing absentee students and would love to drop an email over to the next of kin.
Problem is that for a bunch of them I only have mobile numbers.
I don't know about anyone else but frankly I hate ringing up a bunch of people and playing voicemail tennis when a quick email would do the trick.




It is the year of our Lord two thousand and twenty one.
We are in the 51st year of the UNIX epoch.

Is it now ok to expect people to have an email address?

While I do get that some people can't afford a pc or smartphone even £5 phones can access email.


Edited to add

And if they do have one should they be expected to give it to their kid's teacher.

And if it is sexybabe69blazing420@ballz.net either man up to it or make a work safe one .

I think it’s an evasion

 

[krtek a houby]

Poor old Da has never really got to grips with emails and texts, he can't tell the difference and posting by snail mail takes forever because of covid and distance.

Thank feck for the phone. Although even that's a struggle these days

 

[Saul Goodman]

I will miss it, because it means I will have to keep an electrical device plugged in all the time in order to receive phone calls.

You should only have to plug it in for about an hour a day.

 

[Orang Utan]

I will miss it, because it means I will have to keep an electrical device plugged in all the time in order to receive phone calls.

how old are you? ‘an electrical device’ is up there with Not The Nine O’Clock News’ ‘digital watch’

 

[8ball]

Yes, I find it hard to imagine that any adult especially a parent could function without email in modern society. Even my 86 yr old Dad has an email. But like killer b I suspect that you haven't got it because they haven't told you.

Bollocks. I work in a very high-tech company and I know a couple of fellow employees (not IT-based ones) that don’t have a computer or a smartphone.

I also help run a cringingly middle class film festival where we run everything online and we often get requests about ticketing, times etc. by people who are really into films and generally culturally savvy yet don’t own either of these devices, some much younger than you might expect.

One thing technology certainly does do is convince some people that no one could exist outside their little bubble.

 

[8ball]

i don’t think i know anyone who uses their landline when they have mobile. we’ve just got rid of ours cos only scammers and saleswankers call it

Yeah, I unplugged mine when they moved the socket (to try and isolate an internet problem), and I don’t miss it.

 

[Saul Goodman]

Bollocks. I work in a very high-tech company and I know a couple of fellow employees (not IT-based ones) that don’t have a computer or a smartphone.

Most of us know of somebody like that. Granted, they're usually pushing a shopping trolley full of cats and squashed coke cans but they do exist.

 

[8ball]

Most of us know of somebody like that. Granted, they're usually pushing a shopping trolley full of cats and squashed coke cans but they do exist.

I was more surprised by the sheer number once I was doing the film festie, and also about a couple of people at work. They’re not ‘strange’ people in any way at all, and no older or not much oldet than either of us (tbf I’m guessing on your part but I’m mid/late 40s).

 

[Roseygirl]

Most of us know of somebody like that. Granted, they're usually pushing a shopping trolley full of cats and squashed coke cans but they do exist.

Says the man with the trolley full of cats

 

[klang]

Two of my daughters have exchanged my roof and hearth for that of another man, neither of them have a landline telephone just mobiles (they have broadband obvs) TBH there are times when I wonder if it is still worth me keeping a landline phone, it's only the fact that mine and Mrs Q parents are not totally keen on mobiles that makes me retain one.

the good thing about landlines is the spam calls. there are lots of them, they don't cost anything, and break up my day.

 

[Epona]

It makes sense to ditch it completely. The Luddites wont miss it once they've been dragged into this century for a couple of weeks.

Tbf though, I can afford a smart phone, I cannot afford a data plan. I can't use the internet on my phone outside of the range of my wifi router

(I am basically rooted to only having internet access at home. Texts and phone calls I can receive anywhere, email messages I can't, they have to wait til I get home).

 

[farmerbarleymow]

i would have hated my teachers to be in touch with my parents via email. Would have been impossible to intercept. Letters are easy enough to catch, land lines could be unplugged.
Getting regular and honest (unfiltered by me) updates would have caused my parents an unreasonable amount of stress.

Yeah, thank god e-mail wasn't around when I was at secondary school - they might have grassed me up for bunking off all the time. I had to falsify the actual attendance figure in the annual report before handing it my mam. She didn't notice the obvious forgery, and went mad when I admitted it some years later after leaving school.

 

[rutabowa]

Tbf though, I can afford a smart phone, I cannot afford a data plan. I can't use the internet on my phone outside of the range of my wifi router

(I am basically rooted to only having internet access at home. Texts and phone calls I can receive anywhere, email messages I can't, they have to wait til I get home).

Tbh there is wifi nearly all over the place now, and I think the plan is to just have it everywhere. And I only pay like £7.50 a month for phone contract and that is still easy enough data for WhatsApp and email etc, as long as you don’t watch videos it’s fine.

 

[rutabowa]

Bollocks. I work in a very high-tech company and I know a couple of fellow employees (not IT-based ones) that don’t have a computer or a smartphone.

I also help run a cringingly middle class film festival where we run everything online and we often get requests about ticketing, times etc. by people who are really into films and generally culturally savvy yet don’t own either of these devices, some much younger than you might expect.

One thing technology certainly does do is convince some people that no one could exist outside their little bubble.

I think it is more common (and possible) for people not to have smart phone etc if they are successful and rich tbh; they can afford not to be contactable. In more economically deprived parts of the world where people have to hustle all day to survive then smart phones are really essential and ubiquitous, and older people there just learn cos they have too. They don’t have the privilege of being able to make the moral decision not to have one. The problem isn’t smart phones; the problem is economic inequality.

I guess I’m mainly talking about in cities, but that is where the majority of people live

 

[8ball]

I think it is more common (and possible) for people not to have smart phone etc if they are successful and rich tbh; they can afford not to be contactable. In more economically deprived parts of the world where people have to hustle all day to survive then smart phones are really essential and ubiquitous, and older people there just learn cos they have too. They don’t have the privilege of being able to make the moral decision not to have one. The problem isn’t smart phones; the problem is economic inequality.

I guess I’m mainly talking about in cities, but that is where the majority of people live

These aren’t rich people, or people making a ‘moral decision’ not to have a smartphone or PC while being updated on the world by their cultural attache. They are people like cleaners and janitors and pensioners and people who have always worked how they worked without any particular need or interest in always being contactable by message or phone beyond the one in the shop / general workplace.

What’s it like working at Vice magazine, by the way?

 

[AnnO'Neemus]

But surely the same is true of the phone?

I often get next of kin who don't speak English or do so very poorly.

I do get there are exceptions to any rule but this applies to all forms of communication.

Is expecting email worse than expecting calls or letters?

Digital exclusion is a thing.

Earlier this afternoon I was looking at jobs vacancies and saw a job ad for a digital inclusion project working with young people.

Did it escape your notice in the early stages of the pandemic how many media reports there were of schools struggling to switch to online teaching because so many families don't have computers/laptops or internet connections at home? Did you miss all the stories about appeals for donations of devices, schools appealing for funding, the Conservative government doing their usual shitty thing of announcing '£x million pounds to provide schools with laptops' and then the subsequent stories about baffled headteachers who explained they needed a hundred laptops but had only received six or somesuch nonsense?

I mean, I don't have school age children, I'm not a teacher, I don't work in schools or even in the wider education sector, but even I was aware all that was going on.

 

[Shippou-Sensei]

Digital exclusion is a thing.

Earlier this afternoon I was looking at jobs vacancies and saw a job ad for a digital inclusion project working with young people.

Did it escape your notice in the early stages of the pandemic how many media reports there were of schools struggling to switch to online teaching because so many families don't have computers/laptops or internet connections at home? Did you miss all the stories about appeals for donations of devices, schools appealing for funding, the Conservative government doing their usual shitty thing of announcing '£x million pounds to provide schools with laptops' and then the subsequent stories about baffled headteachers who explained they needed a hundred laptops but had only received six or somesuch nonsense?

I mean, I don't have school age children, I'm not a teacher, I don't work in schools or even in the wider education sector, but even I was aware all that was going on.

This was very true for laptops.

Wasn't really the case for phones in my experience.

The next 9f kin contact number is a mobile number in 99% of cases.

I'm not sure if I have seen a mobile that can't do email.

I aknoledg there may beva few cases where some one may not have a device capable of doing email but as I said previously you can get a divive that can do email for less than a tenner.
Its not free I know but the barrier for entry is lower than that of a laptop or Internet connection

Also I teach digital media.
I won't turn away a student who doesn't have at least a smartphone but I do strongly recommend having one to be able to do work at home.

 

[AnnO'Neemus]

This was very true for laptops.

Wasn't really the case for phones in my experience.

The next 9f kin contact number is a mobile number in 99% of cases.

I'm not sure if I have seen a mobile that can't do email.

I aknoledg there may beva few cases where some one may not have a device capable of doing email but as I said previously you can get a divive that can do email for less than a tenner.
Its not free I know but the barrier for entry is lower than that of a laptop or Internet connection

They might wonder why you want to send them emails to their phone when they might reasonably assume you could, y'know, just phone them on their phone.

 

[Shippou-Sensei]

They might wonder why you want to send them emails to their phone when they might reasonably assume you could, y'know, just phone them on their phone.

They might wonder why but it's not like I'm trying to send them semaphore or a telegram. They probably should know email. It has been around longer than most of the parents have neen alive.

 

[8ball]

They might wonder why but it's not like I'm trying to send them semaphore or a telegram. They probably should know email. It has been around longer than most of the parents have neen alive.

So has semaphore.

Lots of people don’t really use the email apps on their phones on a day to day basis. Sure, all smartphones can do it, but people use Facebook and Whatsapp and all manner of messaging apps a lot more on a day to day basis and might only get on the email every now and then.

 

[killer b]

I'd much rather be contacted by email than phone - why would I want to actually speak to one of my child's teachers?

 

[killer b]

Are people just being weird about this for the sake of it? obv there are a very small number of parents who don't have an email address, and different contact arrangements would need to be made for them, but as a default way of contact for the vast majority of parents email is clearly the most sensible method. It is at my kid's school, and I assume at most schools.

 

[Shippou-Sensei]

I'm surprised so many people think that using email is not a reasonable request.

I'm aware that not everyone uses email but a quick Google says that 86% of people use it.

Internet access – households and individuals, Great Britain - Office for National Statistics

Internet access in Great Britain, including how many people have internet, how they access it and what they use it to do.

www.ons.gov.uk

I'd have thought that if you were sending you child yo a college you might reasonably expect the occasional email.

 

[moochedit]

So has semaphore.

Lots of people don’t really use the email apps on their phones on a day to day basis. Sure, all smartphones can do it, but people use Facebook and Whatsapp and all manner of messaging apps a lot more on a day to day basis and might only get on the email every now and then.

Most phones alert you about new emails though.

 

[8ball]

Most phones alert you about new emails though.

… which I have turned off due to the amount of automated crap turning up…

 

[rutabowa]

These aren’t rich people, or people making a ‘moral decision’ not to have a smartphone or PC while being updated on the world by their cultural attache. They are people like cleaners and janitors and pensioners and people who have always worked how they worked without any particular need or interest in always being contactable by message or phone beyond the one in the shop / general workplace.

What’s it like working at Vice magazine, by the way?

ha i don't work for anything like that. why you being angry like that? how do you know these cleaners and janitors don't have smart phones? I'm just describing what i have seen directly.

 

[Epona]

Tbh there is wifi nearly all over the place now, and I think the plan is to just have it everywhere. And I only pay like £7.50 a month for phone contract and that is still easy enough data for WhatsApp and email etc, as long as you don’t watch videos it’s fine.

See when people say stuff like it only costs £7.50 a month I feel like they don't really understand what being properly poor is like.

I understand that people don't get it.

 

[PTK]

You should only have to plug it in for about an hour a day.

No, you would not. At the moment, my landline is connected to the telephone network directly. The proposed system would require it be connected to the network via a router. The router would have to be plugged in. Thus, if there was a power cut, my landline would not work. Ah, but there would be battery backup. So we would need a router with a battery backup. I have a router for internet access at the moment, but I would need to obtain a new one with battery backup. That seems rather wasteful.

However, if there was a power cut for longer than 24 hours (and the increasing frequency of extreme weather makes this more likely) people would have no phone connection at all (being unable to charge their mobiles).

Furthermore, cash machines, traffic lights, and railway signals would also need routers with battery backup. For these services all rely on current landline technology. That seems unnecessarily wasteful. It also makes them more vulnerable. There would be more to go wrong, and a prolonged power cut may knock them out.
Landlines are a good backup if your mobile fails, or cannot be charged. Mobiles are a good backup if your landline fails.

The situation is being created in which all telephonic communication could be cut off by a power cut.

I am unhappy about my landline being dependent upon a router that is more likely to break down than the existing system.

Furthermore, the new system will consume more electricity than is currently consumed.

The existing landline system is a simple, robust system. It is not progress to replace it with a more complicated, less robust system.

Openreach is rolling in profits, and it would be no problem for them to maintain the existing landline system.