GetSetUp Classes for Older Adults Boost Connection

Many seniors feel lonely and isolated even when there isn’t a pandemic.

Loneliness can be a challenge for elderly adults — never more so than now, after more than a year of pandemic-related social distancing measures. Recently, some U.S. states have been turning to online learning platform GetSetUp to improve connection and independence among their elder populations. The online community, which includes more than 650,000 older adult learners from more than 160 countries, presents classes — taught by older adults — in areas including physical fitness, mental wellness, social health and digital connectivity.

Recently, the New York State Office for the Aging and The Association on Aging in New York partnered with GetSetUp to offer 50,000 classes to older New Yorkers. “This partnership will expand our ability to reduce isolation, depression, and anxiety by significantly expanding virtual programming into the homes of isolated older adults to keep them connected,” NYSOFA Director Greg Olsen said in a press release. It will also “allow us to build more programming and classes, taught by older adults, providing them with an economic opportunity,” Olsen added. In October 2020, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services also joined with the platform to bring classes to its 2.5 million older adults.

The classes are “taught by other seniors who are retired, patient, empathetic,” co-founder Neil D’Souza told Forbes. “Most adult learners are not DIY,” he said, noting that older adult teachers avoid lingo and other approaches their younger counterparts might assume everyone knows. “They require some level of personalization.”

Seniors Discover Wide-Ranging Activities Through GetSetUp

Physical health classes include yoga, tai chi, healthy cooking and more.

GetSetUp, which was founded in San Francisco in 2019, offers more than 40 classes each weekday, and more than 10 classes on the weekend. A membership costs between $0 (for one group class) and $19.99 (for unlimited group classes and unlimited social hours, among other benefits) per month; private classes are available for an additional cost. Mental health topics cover dementia, coping with stress, and meditation; digital connectivity classes might involve an orientation to Zoom, or how to use various other platforms and devices; and social health offerings bring older adults together to discuss books, gardening, pets or travel.

One class on GetSetUp’s website offers “Home and Kitchen Hacks to be More Efficient.” Another is titled “Relax with Classical Music.” An interest group created by Rosie Tyler, meanwhile, discusses the transitions that come with aging. “The one thing we can be certain of in life is changes,” Tyler said in a blog post. “Especially when you retire — you are transitioning from working to not working. Transitioning often to a loss of income compared to a healthy paycheck.”

Tyler wanted to create a peer support group of older adults who understood each other’s challenges and experiences. She’d recently retired and moved from California to Las Vegas to be close to her children, all while grieving the deaths of her two younger brothers. There, she discovered GetSetUp classes through her local YMCA. “It gives seniors a way to connect and learn new information that they can then put to use,” she said.