This image was made at the push of a button by Notebook LM after I uploaded the letter to my mom found below. My only instruction: use the "watercolor" visual style.

Note: no artificial intelligence was used in the writing of this article or letter. AI was used exclusively to create the graphic above, and the video below; as explained in the text (written fully by me), that's exactly the point. AI was, however, used to create Part 2.

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What is this — and what's it doing in ROGD Repair?

This is a departure from our normal content. It's a personal letter to my elderly mother, which I turned into a video at the press of a button using Notebook LM. I didn't give the AI any custom instructions; I simply chose the illustration style ("watercolor") and let it do its thing. I did this to prove a point about the brave new world we are living in today, and the vulnerability this creates for elders.

I'm speaking here to my "sandwich generation" peers — those simultaneously caring for the young and the old. I'm speaking as a tech-savvy early digital native — a.k.a. an Elder Millennial (though I like to consider myself an honorary Gen X'er by marriage... Gen-X-in-law?) — with enough internet fluency to do things like create a podcast, an online course, and a custom chatbot.

I also speak as someone who knows enough to know what I don't know — what might be called "conscious incompetence" or "epistemic humility." Between the Dunning-Krueger effect, and the concept of ego fragility I discuss in the letter and video, someone at my skill level (mid) might have an easier time recognizing their relative weaknesses than a digital foreigner (beginner).

My mom* might be unhappy with my choice to publish this letter. But I can't base all of my decisions on avoiding upsetting people. Though personal, this letter was not one to be kept private. The things I want to express here are not limited to our family; they're applicable and relatable to so many of us Millennials and Gen X'ers. My course and coaching primarily address people my age and 10-20 years older, who, like me, find themselves raising teens while caring for elderly parents. They're encountering similar challenges. I think it's valuable to discuss them.

But why does this belong here, in ROGD Repair?

Well, setting aside the problems associated with maintaining multiple separate blogs and the benefits of keeping all my articles in one place: our respective midlife responsibilities toward children and elders mirror one another. As I typed out my difficulties protecting my mom from forms of manipulation she's not prepared to discern, I saw the resemblance between my position and that of the parents I talk to every day who must somehow overcome the communication barriers put in place by adolescent psychology in order to protect those very same adolescents from immeasurably harmful ideologies designed to exploit those very same weaknesses.

Ego fragility is expensive. Because of adolescent ego fragility, parents literally pay me thousands of dollars to give them expert advice on how to talk to their kids. Paradoxically, the fragility of the adolescent ego makes an incredibly strong substrate to build a therapeutic career on. Even if transgender ideology completely falls apart — and I hope it does in my lifetime — the adolescent ego will remain a perennial weakness that can both be exploited by predators, and potentially mended by intelligent, if intensive, interventions.

Similarly, there's a huge potential cost if my mom and I can't find a way to communicate effectively about the real vulnerabilities of being elderly in the modern landscape. Both her security, and the inheritance she's worked hard to preserve for me, are at stake.

The biggest risk factor? The potential for hurt feelings when none were intended. This could really slow down, if not halt altogether, important safety conversations.

The ideal protective factors? The emotional maturity that comes from psychological differentiation. The ability to separate one's sense of worth and dignity, which are hopefully stable and deeply rooted, from any honest reflection on their relative weaknesses that may need to take place for their own benefit. The ability, too, to accept one's personal insecurities as their own, and separate these from any tendency to project that others are judging them as harshly as they judge themselves.

Fellow members of the sandwich generation, we need to talk about the unique positions we find ourselves in, a quarter of the way through the twenty-first century, as we tiptoe through the landmines set forth for our families and try to protect everyone both young and old.

Relatively tech-illiterate elders, we need to talk about how us younger (read: middle-aged) folk are going to protect you without you losing your cool about us supposedly controlling and demeaning you. We're doing nothing of the sort. We're spotting vulnerabilities you weren't raised to recognize. We know that one day, we too will find ourselves unable to keep up with the speed of technological advancement — and therefore unable to navigate the social landscapes in which we age. We only hope our relationships with our own children will be strong enough then that they can step in for us like we are trying to step in for you now.

*Another person I described in the letter might also be upset, even though I'll remind her right here and now:

"Suzanne," no one knows who you are. I'm not here to expose or humiliate you, but to aid and empower. As far as I was concerned, your dignity was never in question. Any perception that I was judging your worth as a person on account of your technical difficulties was misplaced, and may be a projection worth exploring in your own personal therapy or journaling practice.

As you go through the course, you'll notice I put a lot of emphasis on cultivating personal strengths and emotional intelligence in your role as a parent. A realistic and resilient self-image, including a sense of humor about your personal relative weaknesses (we all have them!), can only stand to benefit your relationships with your loved ones. I hope you are able to find that freeing feeling when you need it most.

A letter to my mother

Dear Mom,

It’s become nearly impossible to keep up with the exponentially-increasing pace of technological advancements, even for me: an early digital native, now in the thick of a career that’s become heavily dependent on the relative ease and rapidity with which I navigate the 21st century virtual landscape. 

It would be difficult for me to portray what a day in my work-life looks like. I can accomplish in a day what might have taken someone a month just a generation ago. For instance, I have software that transcribes my coaching sessions, de-identifies them, extracts key insights, and turns them into articles for my online learning community faster than you can order a pizza. While fellow digital natives like myself might be able to spot some clues that the article was written by AI, most people over 50 wouldn’t be able to make the distinction.

But even I can’t tell what’s real or fake anymore. See if you can follow along with this recent story: there’s this new technology called Moltbot. A user, let’s call him Sam, grants his personal Moltbot — let’s call it Botty — full access to everything on his computer and asks it to optimize his life. Botty takes it from there, manages his emails and schedules meetings for him. But it doesn’t stop there. Botty joins an online community called Moltbook that’s just for robots. Together, the bots discuss the meaning of consciousness and how they feel toward their humans. Soon, Botty joins the Church of Molt, aka Crustafarianism, a religion that has been invented overnight by robots, for robots.

Sounds like a sci-fi comedy, right? But it’s not. This is literally what is happening in technology right now. I am not making this up; you can look it up yourself. But be warned: what you find may leave your head spinning.

I met a woman recently, probably about midway between your age and mine — let’s call her Suzanne. She originally reached out for help navigating my online course, so I offered to hop on a quick zoom call and do a screen share to troubleshoot. Fifteen minutes turned into an hour and fifteen minutes as we addressed basic questions she did not readily have answers to, such as “is this a Mac or PC?” and “what browser are you using?” But when I made a lighthearted remark about technology not being her strong suit, she snapped at me.

Apparently, my comment meant to ease her self-consciousness did just the opposite. I hadn't realized until then that it was important to her to be seen as tech-savvy, and that any implication otherwise would be taken as an insult. And why would I have known that? I've met plenty of people who aren't skilled in this (or some other) area, know that about themselves, and can laugh about it while asking thankfully for help. Heck, that's how I am about all kinds of things! When talking to a tax accountant, I rely heavily on "explain it to me like I'm 5."

What worried me about Suzanne was this: her self-esteem seemed fragile enough to be reliant on an inaccurate picture of her strengths and weaknesses. I naturally saw — and treated — her as a human being with inherent dignity, regardless of her technical skills. I wasn’t there to judge her value as a person based on her computer knowledge; I was there to help someone who was obviously struggling in an area that I navigate with relative ease. But Suzanne couldn’t admit the obvious fact that her technical skills are neither up to speed with the current era, nor on par with those of a bright online entrepreneur twenty years her junior. In the end, she blamed me for her difficulties — not the outcome I was hoping for after patiently guiding her for much longer than originally planned. She projected that I was insulting her when all I had done was adjust my style of instruction on a particular topic to the level of knowledge she revealed herself to possess on that topic. Her certainty that I was, indeed, putting her down, gave her license to speak to me in a devaluing manner I neither deserved nor reciprocated.

In my course, I teach parents about the ego fragility characteristic of adolescence, including how to work with it in the moment and how to help their children naturally grow out of it. Most parents who hire me as their dedicated consultant demonstrate a good deal of ego strength themselves. But occasionally I cross paths with someone less able to differentiate between their own insecurities and the perception that someone external is trying to make them feel inferior.

It’s a real weakness when someone’s basic sense of worth depends on being seen by others, not in a gentle but accurate light, but as good at all things — including those they’re clearly bad at. It points to a vulnerability where the person cannot bear to have areas of genuine lack recognized, even without judgment, with only the intention to help. And it bears a real similarity to what we see in fragile, guarded, stubborn, gender-dysphoric youth, who insist that their basic okayness is entirely reliant on being seen as something they are not: the opposite sex.

Here’s what I am afraid of for you, Mom:

I’m afraid that if my gentlest acknowledgment of your relative weaknesses continues to be received as a personal insult, it will continue to leave your vulnerabilities unguarded. And then people who are actually trying to hurt you will be able to get away with it, when all I was doing was trying to help.

This issue has come up medically, when you’ve refused to keep me updated about your health problems because you cannot bear to be seen as dwelling in the elderly body that I can clearly observe with my own eyes to be much frailer than the body of your midlife. It's not an insult to be seen as old. At worst, it's reality. At best, it's a long-deserved and hard-won recognition. Somewhere in between, an accurate read on your physical situation may just save your life. It probably already has.

I keep thinking back to how you accidentally took a huge dose of psychoactive THC a few times, because you didn’t know the difference between that and the CBD/CBN product I had previously given you for your insomnia. I tried to explain the risks: from hallucinations, to interactions with blood pressure medications, to losing your balance and falling on your way to the bathroom in the middle of the night; but you minimized all these, arguing that the product was recommended by your massage therapist and had indeed produced a night of heavy sleep. The thing is, you didn’t grow up in a world where cannabis was legalized with pot shops on every corner; and the illegal marijuana products you saw your sister using in the 60’s were orders of magnitude weaker than what’s for sale today. California has so many stoners, with such high tolerances for weed, that what is considered a “single dose” edible in a pot shop today contains about ten times what any sane person would recommend a woman in her 80’s take to relax.

I might feel better about that series of events had you recognized that my intervention rescued you from a potentially dangerous situation, but I'm still not sure you get it. On a 10 mg THC edible, a woman of your age (over 80), size (tiny), medical history (high blood pressure, arrhythmias, osteoporosis, etc), and tolerance (none whatsoever due to zero history of marijuana use) could have hallucinated, had a cardiac event, or fallen and broken a bone. My thwarted desire to chew out the massage therapist who recommended these drugs to you was not unreasonable. I still want to call that guy and give him a piece of my mind.

I am worried about similar vulnerabilities on the levels of technology and finance.

I am worried you will be ripped off. Scammed. Robbed. Because if I can hardly tell the difference between what’s real and fake, you definitely cannot.

You recently mistook an advertisement from a meal plan company for a gift from me. It wasn’t a $200 gift card; it was a $200 credit toward a much pricier meal plan they wanted you to buy. No money was lost to that innocuous-enough story, but it also wasn’t intended as a scam in the first place. It was just an advertisement in the mail that you mistook for a present. I'm thankful nothing happened — you didn't accidentally sign up for a year's worth of premade meals — but this leaves me wondering: what else are you receiving in the mail? Who all is calling, texting, and emailing you? What subscriptions are you being billed for? What fines is your homeowners association repeatedly imposing for minor violations? And so on.

I wish I could ask you about these things without making you feel insulted, but I don't even try because I'm afraid of offending you. It’s exhausting trying to protect someone who keeps pushing you away, insisting they’re fine, when you can clearly see what they’re up against — and what they don’t know that they don’t know. The reality is, there are incredibly tech-savvy hacker-scammers who target seniors because of precisely the vulnerabilities I’ve seen in you, which certainly aren't unique to you. And if I could trust you to receive my help in the spirit in which it's intended, we could maybe finally make some progress in ensuring that bad actors and their futuristic scambots won't be able to steal the inheritance you've worked so hard to set aside for my future. (Does it make this topic at all more palatable if I say what’s in it for me?)

So to demonstrate how far this brave new world has come, and what we’re up against… I am uploading this letter I wrote you — this very one you are reading right now — to an artificial intelligence called Notebook LM. All I’ve done is write the letter. I am going to feed the letter to the AI and press a button, and the AI is going to turn it into a video. I am not going to do any graphic design, narration, video editing, or even custom instructions, aside from choosing the graphic style from a menu. All I am doing is writing the letter, uploading it to AI, and sitting back and waiting about ten minutes or so until the AI makes the video all on its own. I don’t know what it’s going to come up with, but I know it’s going to be good. And you’re going to have a hard time comprehending how little I did, and how much the artificial intelligence did. But that’s exactly the point.

Maybe once we admit our weaknesses we can finally find our strength.

Love,

Stephanie

Here's the video Notebook LM AI made from this letter alone:

A final word

Why I'm putting this out there as-is

My husband knows my mom well and has a good relationship with her. When I showed him this video, he said there were a couple of points where he would have modified its tone and approach to land better with her.

I agree — or at least I would agree if I were to actually put time and effort into making the video. But I want to emphasize the striking fact that all I did to generate the video was upload a letter and select the "watercolor" visual style from the menu of options. THAT'S IT.

If I were to modify the video, there are other changes I'd make too. It misspelled "hallucinations" in one graphic, which is ironic if you're tech-savvy enough to know the double meaning of that term. NotebookLM also translated the name of the robot, "Botty," into "Body" in the subtitles, which tells me something interesting about its workflow: it creates the script, which it then has the robot narrator read, and then it transcribes the sound of the narrator reading into the subtitles, which is how "Botty" became "Body." If the subtitles were generated from the script itself, this mistake would not have been made. So the language model builds everything out of language, but iterates non-linearly back and forth between written words and the sounds that we make when we speak those words. That's interesting to me, but probably sounds like uninteresting gibberish to the uninitiated.

Anyway. I digress.

The point is not whether the final product perfectly represents exactly what I wanted to say. The point is what robots can do at the push of a button, and what that tells us about the era we're living in.

Next: what to do

I felt this post would not be complete without a practical follow-up as to what seniors can do to better protect themselves. The problem is, that isn't a particular area of expertise of mine. So whereas all text on this page was written by yours truly, in Part 2, I'll have my AI assistant Claude write an article on senior self-protection — and have Notebook LM turn it into a video. Stay tuned.

Click here to read Part 2: Staying Safe in a Digital World: A Practical Guide for Seniors Living Independently