Getting Older? There’s an App for That

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While Silicon Valley chases immortality pills and uploads consciousness to the cloud, Boston has quietly become ground zero for actually living longer, better lives. As part of our April issue on longevity, here are some easily accessible tools helping to make aging more graceful.

There’re apps that can help you…

1. Read the fine print.

Whether it’s the aggravatingly small font in The Economist or the appetizer menu at a dimly lit restaurant, we all get to the point where squinting at something held at arms’ length just no longer works. Savvy seniors download Speechify, a text-to-voice AI tool that reads words of any size and offers up a variety of voices and accents to suit your aural preferences. Want to have Gwyneth Paltrow narrate Game of Thrones or Snoop Dogg read you Edith Wharton? This is the app for you.

2. Play smart, age slower.

Don’t let anyone tell you Wordle is a waste of time. One of the best ways to kill an hour is also proven to improve executive function, processing speed, and verbal and working memory. That’s right—crossword puzzles, sudoku, and other “brain games” can keep your brain sharp for much longer, so fire up that Wordle app and get guessing.

3. Hear without fear.

Remember those big, clunky hearing aids that nobody wanted to wear because they branded you as old? Those days are over. Practically invisible, today’s hearing aids feature improved technology and can be customized through smartphone apps. For severe hearing loss, prescription devices are still recommended, but over-the-counter options from brands such as Massachusetts’ own Bose offer effective alternatives.

4. Lean on convenience.

As MIT AgeLab’s Joseph Coughlin points out, companies targeting the elderly are missing the mark. After all, nobody wants to identify with the “I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up!” crowd. The reality is that the same convenience tech embraced by college kids and young professionals works for older adults, too: ride-sharing apps (Uber and Lyft), food-delivery services (DoorDash and Grubhub), and on-demand help (TaskRabbit and Geek Squad).