Senior Tech Tip: Through the Looking Glass

If you and the people with whom you want to place a video call are all using Apple devices, then Apple’s Facetime software is the easiest option. (photo courtesy Apple)

by Russ Alman, Communications Director

Earlier this year, I was enjoying a video call with my two-year-old granddaughter, Naomi, and my daughter, Alexis, remarked that she has to make sure to keep her  iPhone locked because Naomi has figured out how to access the camera. Just as she said this, Naomi grabbed her iPhone and ran off with it. I continued to see an interesting angle of Naomi as she held the phone below her chest and toddled across the room. I would have laughed harder if the wobbling view of her nostrils hadn't started to give me vertigo.

I have affectionately named this view “NaomiCam.”

This has gotten me to thinking... Naomi's generation is the first that would never know a time when you couldn't pick up a computer device and instantly connect with anywhere in the world by video call. My daughter and her family live in Yakima, and I can say with confidence that I have spent more time interacting with my granddaughter though live video than in person. Without the convenience of video calls, I would only be able to interact with her “face to face” when there was time to make the four-hour roundtrip. But thanks to video calls, she is just a button press away.

Similarly, my son, Aaron, has been living in South Korea for the past 5 years, and while he can only rarely make it back home, we regularly video chat. The most difficult part of arranging a call is accommodating the time difference since Seoul is 16 hours ahead. Other than that, the call quality is just as good as it is to Yakima. While my son is in his late 20s and does remember a time before video calls, he doesn’t remember a time before cell phones.  Or the internet. Or email. Or cable TV. (I am old enough to remember.)

​At the other end of the spectrum, this fall I helped my mom and dad move from western Montana to Wenatchee. It took some patience, but I was able to get my 80+ year-old parents proficient enough with video calling that I could give them a live walkthrough of their new apartment, show them furniture and supplies that I bought, and tour the retirement community with them so that they were already familiar with the layout of the facility before they got here. We even did group calls with my brother in Minneapolis so the whole family was in the loop.

In each generation, new technology comes along that supplants previous tools. We have gone from smoke signals and semaphore to live video in less than 200 years, and each successive generation will continue to see more advanced and interactive communication tools.

For those of you who have not yet made a video call, I encourage you to give it a try. Any smartphone, tablet or laptop manufactured within the last 5 years should meet the requirements. The only confusing part will be deciding on which platform to use.

Unlike something like email, which uses a universal standard that can be read with any email application, video calling is generally application specific. In nontechnical terms, that means that all the parties involved in the call must be using the same software. It would be nice if all the companies that make video chat software would agree on one standard, but don't expect that anytime soon.

If you and the other person/people you are trying to communicate with have iPhones, iPads or other Apple products, then you can use Facetime, Apple's proprietary application. If, on the other hand, your partners are using different brands of devices like Android phones and Windows-based laptops, then everyone will need to agree to use one application.

For personal calls, I use Messenger (made by Meta/Facebook) because it's widely used and dependable. Anyone who uses Facebook will likely have this software already installed. 

There are many other video platforms out there, including WhatsApp, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and Zoom to name a few, but for personal use, I recommend sticking with ones that are likely to be most widely used and designed for simple one-on-one or small group calls.

Whichever software you use, I promise you that the first time you make a video connection with a loved one or a friend you haven't seen in person in a long time, you'll understand why video chat has become so popular. It will be worth the effort.

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