Why do grandparents in the 1990s all know ~rare characters~ but we now all use ~simplified Chinese~

Not to mention ninety-year-olds, now seventy-year-olds, they started school in 1956 or 1957. At that time, they were catching up with the reform of Chinese Pinyin, which replaced the original Chinese Pinyin with 26 English letters. The state-owned Chinese Pinyin. They caught up with traditional Chinese characters and quit textbooks, and started learning simplified Chinese characters. However, traditional Chinese characters did not disappear all at once. It took several years to slowly retreat from newspapers and periodicals. The 90-year-old people who are now in their 90s were the users of traditional Chinese characters back then. Of course they can recognize traditional Chinese characters now. On the contrary, they are very unfamiliar with the ‘Hanyu Pinyin’ we use now. This is also the reason why it is very difficult for the elderly to use computers and mobile phones.