Reminders for Older Parents: 9 Million of Them Cannot Run Your App
Updated: 1 day ago
If you have set up a reminder app on a parent's phone, you already know how it goes. The app needs an update, the notification permission gets switched off, the icon moves, and the reminder quietly stops. Three public datasets explain why this keeps happening, and point to a simpler channel.
The phone older adults actually have
Pew Research Center's 2025 mobile fact sheet, based on a survey of U.S. adults from February to June 2025, breaks phone ownership down by age:
Ages 65 and older: 95 percent own a cellphone, 78 percent own a smartphone, 16 percent own a cellphone that is not a smartphone
Ages 50 to 64: 98 percent cellphone, 90 percent smartphone, 7 percent basic phone
Ages 30 to 49: 99 percent cellphone, 96 percent smartphone, 3 percent basic phone
Ages 18 to 29: 99 percent cellphone, 97 percent smartphone, 2 percent basic phone
Among older adults, the gap between "has a phone" and "has a smartphone" is 16 points. Among their adult children, it is 2 or 3. A reminder tool that needs an app reaches almost every 35-year-old and misses one in six 70-year-olds. A tool that works by text reaches 95 percent of both.
How many people that is
The Administration for Community Living's 2023 Profile of Older Americans gives the denominators:
57.8 million Americans were 65 or older in 2022, 17.3 percent of the population
16.2 million older adults living in the community, about 28 percent, lived alone in 2023 (5.7 million men, 10.5 million women)
6.5 million were 85 or older
Applying Pew's percentages to ACL's count is straightforward, with the usual caveat that the two surveys cover slightly different years and the result is an estimate, not a census:
57.8 million x 95 percent = about 54.9 million older adults reachable by text
57.8 million x 78 percent = about 45.1 million reachable by a smartphone app
57.8 million x 16 percent = about 9.2 million who have a phone that can text but cannot install anything
Nine million people is a lot of parents to leave out of a reminder plan because it was built around an app store.
What they need reminding about
The CDC's National Center for Health Statistics tracks prescription use in the past 30 days. For adults 65 and older, between 2001 to 2004 and 2017 to March 2020:
Taking five or more prescription drugs: rose from 33.3 percent to 43.0 percent
Taking three or more: rose from 59.8 percent to 67.7 percent
Combine that with the living-alone figure. If the medication rates apply evenly to people who live alone, which is an assumption, then of the 16.2 million older adults living alone:
About 11.0 million (67.7 percent) manage three or more daily prescriptions with nobody else in the house
About 7.0 million (43.0 percent) manage five or more
Five medications is at least five times a day when the right thing has to happen, often more with split doses, and the only prompt is memory or a pill organizer. The pill organizer tells you whether you took it. It does not tell you that it is time.
Why a text fits
Three properties of a text message line up with the numbers above.
It reaches the 95 percent, not the 78 percent. A basic flip phone receives it the same as a new smartphone.
There is nothing to maintain. No update, no permission toggle, no icon to find. A text arrives in the same thread as messages from the family.
The parent does not have to set it up. You can.
That last point is the practical one. With Reminder Textapp, a reminder is a sentence texted to a number: "blood pressure pill every day at 8am" or "physical therapy Tuesday at 2pm". The reminder goes to the phone that texted it, so the simplest arrangement is to sit with your parent once, send the recurring reminders from their phone, and leave it. Each reminder arrives as a text saying what it is for. Replying "done" clears it, "remind me later" repeats it in an hour, and asking what is coming up shows the next five, which is also a useful thing for you to check on a visit.
The honest limits
A text reminder assumes the phone is on, nearby, and charged, which is its own household project. It does not confirm the pill was swallowed. And for a parent with significant memory loss, a reminder is a prompt, not a substitute for a person. The data here is about the large middle group: older adults who are managing fine, take several medications, often live alone, and are more likely than anyone else to be carrying a phone that only texts and calls.
For that group, the numbers favor the channel that already works on the phone in their pocket.
Try it by text
From your parent's phone, or your own, text Hi to (720) 315-7147 to start Reminder Textapp. Then text the reminder in plain English, including "every day" or "every Monday" for recurring ones. It works on any phone that can text, basic or smart, with no app and no account. The first 20 messages are free. Details at textapp.co/apps/reminder.
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