Baby-boomer grandparents stay plugged into grandchildren

Like a lot of grandmothers, Sheri Williams doesn’t get to visit her grandchildren as often as she’d like. In part, that’s because she has a full-time job and nine grandchildren spread across several time zones. The youngest one lives in Arlington, Va.; the oldest lives in Hawaii.

“I can’t just drive down the street,” she said.

Instead, Williams, a 63-year-old medical administrator in Springfield, Ill., relies on technology to get a virtual dose of kisses, hugs and updates. She checks Face-book for the latest photos and family news, and shares milestones (and endures tantrums) with her 14-month-old grandson in Arlington via Skype. For her, the interaction is almost as good as it is in person.

“I get to say, ‘Hey, buddy,’ and see him break out in a smile,” she said.

Although most grandparents still communicate with their grandchildren by phone, evidence suggests that a growing number of them, baby boomers, especially, are turning to online tools to connect. Given the constraints of distance and time – a majority of boomer grandparents are still working and many of them live hundreds of miles from their grandchildren – technology is often the only way to stay connected to family, and they are increasingly comfortable using it.

Sure, most people are using more technology these days. But grandparents have a special incentive to adapt to technology, said Amy Goyer, a family expert at AARP, because they want to “stay in touch with their families.” A recent survey by the organization showed that 20 percent of grandparents interviewed used technology to communicate with their grandchildren at least once a week.

A 2012 MetLife report found that almost one-third of grandparents email with their grandchildren, and almost a quarter communicate via Facebook. The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project found that in 2014, 65 percent of adults ages 50 to 64 use social-networking sites, up from about 24 percent in 2009.

“Staying in touch with family members is one of the main motivations for using social media,” said Mary Madden, a senior researcher at Pew, “and that’s especially true for adults aged 50 to 64.”

Another reason for increased tech use among older Americans is that many of them become grandparents when they are relatively young: about 50. Also, about two-thirds of boomer grandparents are still in the workforce, said Wendy Manning, director of the Center for Family and Demographic Research at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.

That may make them more familiar with technology than the grandparents of a generation or two ago. Bill Ferris, 69, a professor of management at Western New England University in Springfield, Mass., said he started using Skype about four years ago when he taught a class from London. He then began video chatting with his grandchildren, who live in Chicago and South Hadley, Mass.

“It’s more fun than the phone,” said Ferris, who also uses video technology to talk to his 85-year-old mother-in-law, who lives in Belize, and his 95-year-old father, who lives in another part of Massachusetts.

Linda Drake, 60, was a social worker in Denver when she first started texting.

“It was a valuable tool” to stay in touch with teenagers she was working with on the job, she said, “and it made me seem cooler.” When she retired four years ago, she was glad to have her smartphone. Teenagers don’t like to talk on the phone or email, but they do text.

Drake now texts regularly with her six grandchildren, who range in age from 10 to 15 and are scattered from Virginia to Colorado. She also uses Instagram, sharing photos of her dog, vacations and other activities, which she likes because it allows her to stay close to her grandchildren without seeming intrusive.

When using the app, she said, “I use the name Denverdogz, not Grandmalinda.”

When her 15-year-old grandson posted a picture of himself hugging a girl, “I may have ‘liked’ it,” she said, but she knew better than to leave a comment. Instagram is a better way to communicate as her grandchildren get older, she noted.

“I want (them) to know that I love them, and I want them to know a little about me,” she said.

Expressing this in person is challenging not only because of distance and work schedules, but because of the gap that develops as the kids grow older. Teenagers are more likely to respond to a text from Grandma than talk to her on the phone.

“The immediacy of texting and Instagram, and the way that each of us feels from those fleeting interactions, keeps the relationship more vibrant,” Drake said.

Her 12-year-old granddaughter, Colleen, who lives in Arlington, showed her how to download emoticons, “which I love,” Drake said. Now “Colleen and I will go back and forth with emoticons”: smiles, applause, winks. Colleen says she loves texting with her grandmother.

“It’s fun because I don’t get to see her much,” she said.

She likes telling her grandmother about meals she has eaten or asking her for help with a family recipe via Face-time.

Communicating by Facetime is “so easy and so pleasant,” said Elizabeth Amin, 69, a retired radiologist in Louisville who uses the app to visit with her toddler granddaughter in Washington, D.C.