What I Learned from People who Decline to Use Technology

Afifa Zaheer
3 min readSep 21, 2021

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I understand the hesitation, trust me I do. We all have our personal dos and don’ts. And there is nothing wrong with that. But here is the deal, you need to draw line where it gets a little too much and then it becomes a pain in the butt for people around you.

I have been working for almost five years now, and I have jumped across various industries. That allowed me to interact with people who different ages. All the way from kids who are 15 to people who just celebrated their 90th birthday. And conversing with each one of them has been a challenge on its own. The younger generation wants nothing but fast paced service, technology based solutions and every task away a phone tap. On the other hand, the older generation and sometimes even Middle Aged folks reject anything that involves using the Internet. They don’t want to use the new tools and machines that have been introduced to enhance the experience. To eliminate human work and make it better for everyone.

This article is to talk about those folks and how they are overdoing it.

Like I mentioned earlier, staying away from technology and the internet is not a bad thing. However, there are some tasks and activities that now require you to sign up online. For instance, Online Banking. During the pandemic people had too much time on their hand and so, the number of fraud that began to happen on people’s bank account was beyond measure. One of the solutions that banks provide to customers is creating an Online profile on their mobile app so customers can track each activity, file disputes from the peace of their homes, lock their debit cards for a while in case they lost it and can’t find it.m, check balances in case they suspect some discrepancy in their accounts and the list goes on.

What I encountered during the year of 2020 and still encounter during 2021 is the rejection I receive when I try to assist my clients through technological tools. They get defensive and wish not to even listen to what I have to tell about it. So many times I have tried to answer their questions and provide more clarity on Online Services but they snap at me and shut me down. And when I tell them there is only so much I can do without the integration of Online Banking, I get yelled at for having such rules and regulations. They don’t know, I am not the one in the hot seat of making such decisions. I am just the girl who delivers it.

Such folks always say, “I don’t want the bank to know everything about me through the Internet, I don’t want to expose my identity and have it stolen” Sir, in this age and time it is almost impossible to not have a virtual presence. The purpose of using the Internet and technology is to make sure we are providing clients with peace of mind. The banks aren’t open 24–7 , but Online Banking allows that liberty to access accounts and review them anytime, anywhere.

Conclusion, you may be against using these tools and resources for reasons that make sense. And to some degree they are true, no denying in that. But it’s a part of the bigger picture now. Your identity is out there is so many ways that you can’t even count it. When you buy a house you’re automatically in the county’s website. When you purchase a phone line through a carrier, your name appears when you make calls.

Whether you like it or not you have to find the happy medium between how much of technology you can use and would not use. Because of you don’t then the newer changes of this world and professions is not going to sit well with you.

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Afifa Zaheer
Afifa Zaheer

Written by Afifa Zaheer

Writer | Poetess | Financial Consultant. A South-Asian Woman Mastering the Art of Metamorphosis as an Immigrant.