Digital Kodomo BASE is a nonprofit for children, so I assumed our readers were mostly children and their parents. Then the other day, I learned a shocking fact: our oldest reader is probably in their 90s!
The man and his “unintended use”
It all started with an email from an elderly woman who wanted to donate a computer.
She had carefully looked into whether the computer she had could be sent to us. Along the way, she told me about a man she knew who is in his 90s.
This man in his 90s was, by her account, so afraid of computers that he did not want to touch one. Yet after studying on Digital Kodomo BASE’s “Kids IT Lab,” he set up two-factor authentication all by himself.
Two-factor authentication is that thing where, when you log in, you enter a code sent to your phone. Adults stumble over it too. Plenty of adults never set it up because they are not sure how.
And a man in his 90s did it on his own. Reading the email, I let out a little shout.
He apparently calls his studying on a site for kids an “unintended use.” That is perfectly fine. Please use it as much as you like.
“You have to look at it at least once”
This man turned out to be a relative of the woman’s friend. In fact, he was the one who had told the woman and her friend that they “have to look at it at least once”—meaning the Digital Kodomo BASE site.
When someone in their 90s tells you that, you cannot really say no.
Both the woman and her friend use a computer every day for work, but hardly ever otherwise. When something goes wrong, they look it up on YouTube and try to fix it. In her own words, they are “the type of people who always spend an enormous amount of time and end up exhausted.”
She first opened the site out of a sense of obligation to the man. But as she kept reading, she found herself sitting up straighter, and before long she was absorbed.
When she read “Kids Study Lab” (our study site), she found herself bowing to her computer.
In all the time I have been building this site, I do not think anyone has ever bowed to the screen before.
Packing it up
As for the computer, she found out it had been forced up to Windows 11, and at first she gave up on donating it.
We wipe every computer we receive and reinstall the operating system, so I replied that she was welcome to send it anyway.
But once she started packing it and took a closer look, the CPU was not what she had thought. With her reading glasses not quite up to the task, she had misread the model number. When she realized it, she apparently wanted the ground to swallow her up.
There is no need to feel that way. Your kindness alone made me very happy.
Tuition
Instead, she made a donation. She said it was “meant as tuition.”
She modestly said it was far too little for tuition, but this is the first time we have received a donation this large from an individual. We will put it to careful use.
She also wrote: “I don’t know what I can still learn at this point, but I have come to think I will try, just a little.”
After the man in his 90s, it looks like we will have one more senior reader.
There is no age limit
Her email also said something like this: with this, parents who grew up struggling with schoolwork can learn together with their children. Parents can also read it first and then teach their children.
To be honest, somewhere in my mind I had always hoped that not only children but their parents’ generation—adults—would read it too. We choose words that elementary school children can understand, but we try to write content that adults will find worthwhile as well.
Still, I never imagined that elderly people would be reading it. It was a happy surprise.
When I write an article, I cannot see the faces of the people reading it. Yet it reached a man in his 90s I have never met, he recommended it to his relative and friends, one of them made a donation, and that donation will in turn reach a child somewhere.
Something small that I do is affecting people I do not know, in places I do not know. I was amazed to find that the butterfly effect is real.
Parents reading first and teaching their children. Grandparents reading together with their grandchildren. And of course, reading quietly on your own is very welcome too.
This site has no age limit.
Adults, people in their 90s—please feel free to come on in.
Postscript Before publishing, I asked the woman who emailed us to read this article. This is the reply she sent.
“I am truly glad that you have opened the site to us older folks. I had been reading it with a vague feeling that I was intruding, but from now on I will read it with my head held high and tell the people around me about it.”
(This story is shared with permission, and names have been withheld.)