How older adults (people aged 65 or more) get help from family and friends when facing security and privacy challenges on their mobile phones?  Our ACM MobileHCI paper was just published and will be presented in the upcoming conference, by Tamir Mendel, Debin Gao, David Lo, and Eran Toch: “An Exploratory Study of Social Support Systems to Help Older Adults in Managing Mobile Safety”.

In the paper, we interviewed 18 older adults about their existing support experiences and used the think-aloud method to gather data about a prototype for providing social support during mobile safety challenges.

Our findings point to the potential of mobile technology to increase older adults’ ability to mitigate mobile safety challenges through active learning from close social connections. We discuss how to support technology can address helpers’ intolerance and overcome the challenges of physical distance.