How to Include Grandparents Who Aren't on Social Media (Without the Guilt)

My mum isn't on Facebook. She's never sent a WhatsApp message. She couldn't tell you what a Story is, and honestly, she's not alone. But it also means that everything from the first day of school photos, the birthday celebrations and random daily moments, lives in a feed she can never see.

She found out her granddaughter had won her major volleyball tournament because I mentioned it three weeks later, by accident, when we were talking on the phone. I'd said I would send photos and then forgot.

That moment stuck with me. Not because Mum was upset about it, but because I realised how much she must be quietly missing. The small things. The in-between moments. The stuff that doesn't feel important enough to pick up the phone about, but that adds up to a whole life she's not part of.

If you're reading this, I suspect you know exactly what I mean.

The Real Problem Isn't Distance, It's the Format

We talk about "staying connected" as if it's just a matter of effort. Call more often. Send more messages. But that framing misses the actual issue.

The way modern families document their lives (Instagram, Facebook, group chats, voice messages, reels) is fundamentally inaccessible to a generation who didn't grow up with any of it. It's not that they don't want to be part of it. It's that they don't feel at ease with technology, none of it makes sense to them.

You can't send your mum a link and expect her to know what to do with it. You can't add her to a WhatsApp group if she doesn't have WhatsApp or never even heard of it. And you can't fix years of technological distance with a "I'll get you a smartphone, Mum, you'll see everything then."

The problem isn't that she's not trying or doesn't want to be involved, it's that the format doesn't work for her. If your own parent won't use a smartphone at all, we've written a fuller guide to staying connected with an elderly parent who won't use a smartphone.

What Actually Works

I've spoken to a lot of families about this, partly because I built something to solve it, and partly because I genuinely wanted to understand what people had already tried.

What doesn't work: setting older parents up with tablets and walking them through apps. The technology becomes the focus instead of the connection, and the moment you leave, they lose confidence and stop using it. I know this for a fact.

What does work is giving them something in a format they already understand. Paper. Something that arrives in the post.

Older Australians, particularly those over 75, grew up with letters. They know exactly what to do with something that arrives in the post. They open it, they read it, they put it on the coffee table, and they tell the next person who visits: look what I got from the family.

There's no learning curve and no password to forget. No "press the button on the right, no, the other right, yes, that one." It just works.

The Letterbox Moment

I started sending Mum a printed family newsletter every month. Photos from the kids, a few paragraphs about what we'd been up to, some of the funny things that had happened. I printed it properly, an actual saddle-stitched newsletter, and posted it to her.

The first time she called after receiving it, she told me she felt like she was finally part of our life again. That's when I knew other people's parents and grandparents could benefit from it too.

Practical Ways to Bridge the Gap

Here are a few starting points for your first gift to them:

If you have five minutes a week: Keep adding little things that happen. Not big events, small ones. "Samantha has had the lurgy for a week." "It rained so hard we couldn't get the caravan up from the back yard." "We found a café near us that does Mum's kind of cake." Record them or type them throughout the week, they'll keep getting added to the current month.

If you have ten minutes a month: Turn your notes into stories, edit them or add more to them, drag in some photos, link them or don't, doesn't matter. It's just that simple, you can even add some puzzles and at the end of the month it all gets formatted into a beautiful newsletter and posted to whoever you decide. No design skills needed. No printer ink to run out of.

The Thing Nobody Tells You

Small, regular contact beats the occasional grand gesture. It just does.

A proper phone call once every three months feels like an event. A newsletter every month feels like being included in a life. The difference isn't just frequency, it's the feeling that you thought of them without needing a special occasion to do it.

Mum has told me that reading her Family Press newsletter is the highlight of her month. Not because it's a lavish production. Because it means she knows what's happening. She knows who won at Ten Pin Bowling or who bought a new TV. She knows that we went to the markets on Saturday and what we ate. She feels like she was there, even when she wasn't.

That's what it actually looks like to keep someone in the loop. Not a clever technology fix. Just regular, physical proof that you were thinking of them.

Family Press turns your voice memos and photos into a beautiful printed newsletter, posted to whoever you love. Start your free trial and your first newsletter is on us.