[HN Gopher] Grandparents are glued to their phones, families are...
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Grandparents are glued to their phones, families are worried
[video]
Author : tartoran
Score : 173 points
Date : 2026-03-15 17:43 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| Simulacra wrote:
| Maybe a solution is to spend more time with grandparents, so that
| they have something more than just technology to keep them
| company.
| p2detar wrote:
| Yes, but no. From personal experience, even around
| grandchildren, TikTok/FB have precedence. It's getting
| sickening and we need to educate our parents about the harm
| that "the algorithm" causes. I just ask myself whether we are
| even in the position to do so.
|
| edit: typo
| joe_mamba wrote:
| I'd love to. The issue is grandparents are in a town with no
| jobs ruled by a corrupt government that only steals and
| embezzles money and provides no benefits to local taxpayers.
|
| There's a reason youth migrate away to live with roommates in
| overpriced big metro areas. That's where all the white collar
| jobs are created for college educated people. And everyone in
| the last 20+ years has been groomed to go to college and take
| white collar jobs, plus deindustrialization and offshoring of
| manufacturing jobs meaning there's not much in-between well
| paying white collar jobs and dead-end neo-slavery food delivery
| jobs. Maybe I'll be a plumber one day and move back to my
| grandparent place if Claude takes my job, who knows.
| analog8374 wrote:
| I know a lot of old bored retired people.
|
| They need something physical and social. Like softball or
| something. But compatible with their decripitude.
|
| I hook them up with each other. There are parties.
|
| Still working on the softball part.
|
| Ideas are welcome
| rationalist wrote:
| > I hook them up with each other. There are parties.
|
| OnlyGrandparents.com?
|
| (I looked it up, the domain name was registered six days
| ago!)
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| OnlyGrans.com is available for only $50k
| Wistar wrote:
| That's worth about $5
| alwa wrote:
| If anybody wants to do something with instagran.org, I know
| somebody who would be willing to part with it for a good
| cause...
| behringer wrote:
| bulletball
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| If someone would like to and is willing to make the time,
| that's fine, but you don't owe them this if they are not a good
| person or worth spending time with imho. Connection and
| community is earned, not a given. My lived experience is there
| are some good old people you strive to make time with, some who
| are fine but I wouldn't go out of my way to make time for, and
| some who are just terrible people who are going to die alone
| because of who they are. Your life experience and decisioning
| process about how and with whom to spend precious, non
| renewable time may differ.
|
| Don't set yourself on fire to keep someone else warm.
| serial_dev wrote:
| It's all fine, but in that case also do not worry about this
| hypothetical old person spending time the way they like to.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Certainly, how they spend their time is their choice,
| concepts of free will and all that.
| foobarchu wrote:
| Doesn't always help. My mother (of grandparent age but
| coincidentally had 5 kids who didn't want to procreate) stares
| at her phone 95% of the time when I visit. I'll be telling a
| story and she's on Facebook, doesn't even look up. She's even
| been called out in it by my sibling who lives with them, to no
| avail.
|
| Luckily she doesn't fall for right wing propaganda all over the
| Internet, but she sure does fall for every single piece of
| Trump rage bait out there.
| AngryData wrote:
| As the old saying goes, you can lead a horse to water but you
| can't make him drink.
| eYrKEC2 wrote:
| In our household, the worst offenders of phones at the dinner
| tables are the grandparents.
|
| It's as gross as 2 knuckles deep in your nose.
| gedy wrote:
| Sure, but I've seen since the 70s old folks just staring at TV
| all day, so it's not just a mobile phenomenon either.
| HerbManic wrote:
| Very true, phone addiction is that taken to a new level but
| the same underlaying issues remain.
| susam wrote:
| Fortunately, I could never get used to the small screens of
| mobile phones as a serious computing or web browsing device. So
| my use of my mobile phone is limited to basic tasks like making
| calls, sending messages, and sometimes, reluctantly typing emails
| when I don't have a laptop handy.
|
| My primary computing and web browsing device remains my laptop,
| with Emacs and Firefox being my main tools. One thing that does
| manage to distract me sometimes is YouTube recommendations. As a
| result I have written a little userscript for myself to disable
| shorts and recommendations:
| https://github.com/susam/userscripts/blob/main/js/ytx.user.j...
|
| So far the userscript has been successful. As a side effect of
| disabling the recommendations sidebar, the video panel expands to
| occupy a larger part of the screen which I quite like. Here is a
| screenshot: https://susam.github.io/blob/img/userscripts/ytx.png
|
| Also, I still depend heavily on physical textbooks, a rollerball
| pen and a stack of plain A4 paper for most of my learning and
| exploration activities. This routine has helped me to stay away
| from modern attention media too.
| nicbou wrote:
| Try Unhook (desktop) and Untrap (iOS). At this point, my
| YouTube experience is just the channels I subscribe to, and the
| video player. It reduced my usage to almost zero.
|
| I'm not exactly curing cancer, but my media consumption is more
| moderate and mindful now.
| nomel wrote:
| Same thing can be achieved (mostly) by disabling youtube
| watch and search history. It causes the home page to be
| blank, and all recommendations under any video are usually
| from your subscriptions, related your subscriptions, or
| directly related to the video.
| politelemon wrote:
| This is the simplest and most effective solution, Cheers
| nicbou wrote:
| These also remove suggestions and comments
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| You don't want any recommendation or algorithms at all.
| This is intended to make you waste time.
|
| If I want to watch a video I go on my subscribed list,
| check what's new and decide what to watch. Don't need some
| fancy algorithm to tell me what I should do.
| l72 wrote:
| Just add channels you like to your rss feed. It works great
| with freshrss.
|
| Or if you want to get fancy use tubearchivist with the
| Jellyfin plug-in.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| TIL tubearchivist has a Jellyfin plug-in. Cheers.
| nicbou wrote:
| "Just" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here
| serial_dev wrote:
| Screenshot not found.
| asib wrote:
| If you press t key you will get a full width video player.
| pcblues wrote:
| Writing with a pen has a lot of unseen benefits.
|
| Fine-motor skills connected to memory, etc.
|
| Doesn't take much to find the science.
|
| Also, avoiding interruption is good for your train of thought.
|
| If a train of thought doesn't matter, then stay online and
| leave your phone able to interrupt you.
|
| It's your "choice" (tm)
|
| Seriously, try everything including the things you don't think
| will work for your sense of peace, so you know, IOWA (I over-
| worry always)
|
| Peace to you all.
| oldeucryptoboi wrote:
| I tried something like that with Chrome Extensions but it
| doesn't age well. WHen it worked, it surely saved me some time
| to do more productive things:
| https://github.com/oldeucryptoboi/Homer
| incompatible wrote:
| I'm also such an old PC (Linux) person. However, I'm using the
| phone more these days, either to read books while I'm out and
| waiting and have nothing else to do, or to listen to audiobooks
| while I'm walking or working on menial tasks.
| 50208 wrote:
| Seniors are the most vulnerable people on the internet, the most
| likely to be fooled by disinformation, the most likely to vote,
| and are one of the biggest threats to civil society. Boomers are
| destroying what previous generations have built.
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| _> the most likely to vote_
|
| Well... who's fault is that.
| HNisCIS wrote:
| It's because election day is a weekday and the rest of us
| have to keep up with the grind. It's entirely because they
| don't have jobs
| ViktorRay wrote:
| Early voting exists in many states. Even in these states
| you'll find that younger folks hardly vote.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| It's been this way for 100+ years (probably much longer)
| and people found a way to vote. It's easier than ever in
| most places today, with early voting, mail-in voting,
| whatever other options are available.
| dabinat wrote:
| In some states it's easier now; in some it's much harder.
|
| https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-
| opinion/chao...
| k2enemy wrote:
| And also the most likely to fall victims to scams. An elderly
| family friend lost millions to a pig butchering scam.
| allendoerfer wrote:
| Here in Germany they also ignored the demographics, so our
| social insurance systems (retirement but also health) are
| heading towards a catastrophe, because there is no capital
| backing them. They are fundamentally relying on the next
| generation being bigger or at least equal. This has turned them
| essentially into Ponzi schemes. The taxpayer has to jump in,
| making the state less and less able to do anything at all. Of
| course they now collectively avoid responsibility and slowly
| milk the young - their own children - dry.
|
| It is truly the most egoistic generation ever.
| heraldgeezer wrote:
| You are describing every pension system in the world.
| tossandthrow wrote:
| Well, he explains all deferred spend.
|
| Deferred spending is quite unnatural. That I can work 1
| hour today and buy youghurt in 2 years is an artifact of
| our system.
|
| But this also relies on someone making that youghurt in 2
| years from now.
|
| It is that key dogma that will likely be under pressure for
| future pensioners.
| allendoerfer wrote:
| ChatGPT thinks, that in the US social security makes up
| about 30-40% of the retirement income of a typical
| American, while the German system makes up about 80-85% of
| a retired German. Home ownership rate in Germany is also
| way lower.
|
| Germany is an outlier in that there is no capital backing
| for that generation whatsover. The problem has been known
| for 30 years, they just chose to ignore it.
| mech422 wrote:
| It's going to be interesting when the Millenials retire -
| IIRC, that generation was almost as large as the boomers.
| Gen-Z/Gen-Alpha that are going to be supporting them are a
| LOT smaller.
| boelboel wrote:
| Are they the most egoistic generation ever? The ones who
| decided to go on this path weren't the boomers but the
| generation before (as with some other things boomers are
| blamed for). A capital backed social insurance system is a
| "ponzi" scheme in different ways from a PAYG system it's
| really not some holy grail. The problem is just demographics
| wortelefant wrote:
| Taking grandmas unpaid care work for granted - no longer
| possible. Outrage!
| gammalost wrote:
| More: If you want to spend time with your grandkid please do
| not just sit besides him, phone in hand. If you do not want to
| then that's fine
| retrac98 wrote:
| My parents generation are the most screen addicted people I know.
| Absolute slaves to Facebook's algorithm. It's really
| disheartening to see.
| blakblakarak wrote:
| My Dad's got early stage dementia and Facebook is an absolute
| nightmare. The apps infested with AI slop and the algorithm
| seems to fill his feed with stuff designed to get him worked up
| (currently badly behaved cyclists even though he no longer
| drives).
| gzread wrote:
| Mine got Israeli propaganda and kept texting me so often
| about Hamas and Muslims that I had to block him.
| talon8635 wrote:
| Mine got Iranian propaganda and kept texting me so often
| about IDF and Jews that I had to block him.
| KoftaBob wrote:
| Iran's a sideshow compared to Tel Aviv's Hasbara spin
| factory.
| Aurornis wrote:
| It's definitely not limited to Facebook. About half of the
| 50-70 year olds in my family and my wife's family are screen
| addicted without Facebook. They live on questionable news
| websites, messenger apps, Nextdoor, and some others.
|
| It's strange to hear a 60-something rant about how evil
| Facebook is and then go on to regurgitate countless conspiracy
| theories they picked up from whatever websites they're reading
| this month.
|
| The parents who scroll Instagram and Facebook feel downright
| tame in comparison.
| pndy wrote:
| For about 2-3 years now youtube itself is flooded with
| countless channels producing generated content. Whoever are
| the people behind this they know what they're doing and what
| kind of stuff will give them views and attention from
| vulnerable audience.
|
| There's fueling political and social rage with "news",
| casting doubts on family relations with "true life stories"
| (daughter-in-law threw me out of my house), religious
| "coaching" (dead since end of 60s Padre Pio gives you life
| lessons and "secret" prophecies), worthless tips and tricks
| (don't eat this nut if you're 50yo woman or your hair will
| fell off), lewd promotion with twist on history (sexual
| violence in every thumbnail) or tourism (women in country of
| x are "ready" all the time). So on and so on.
|
| So I'd say it's not that much strange if you look closely
| what kind of the content older people can walk onto. And this
| is just youtube.
| parpfish wrote:
| I shouldnt be surprised that my mom is obsessed with her
| smartphone. As a kid, I remember her talking with friends on
| the landline phone for what seemed like HOURS
| atomicnumber3 wrote:
| It's weird. I was born with the internet being largely a
| business or academic tool, with normal people barely having a
| reason to have an email address.
|
| When I was in high school, flip phones could let you text
| friends, as long as you didn't mind your parents later using
| your soul to pay the phone bill.
|
| When I was in college, the most addictive thing the internet
| could offer was foul bachelor frogs and rage comics.
|
| Along the way, I learned how dangerous even those unrefined
| sugars were. It was like chewing coca leaves or sugarcane.
| Enough t get you a buzz, but not enough to ruin your life. So I
| know not to touch the algorithmic fentanyl feeds of TikTok and
| the like.
|
| But good god, nobody younger or older had any protection from
| this. My parents and spouses parents, and my zoomer cousins
| both basically got handed giant bags of refined gigasugar
| without even the vaguest warnings. I'll refrain from likening
| it to opiates against because they are on a whole different
| level, but good god it does seem more dangerous than even
| refined sugar.
| parpfish wrote:
| old folks and children both face the same problem with the
| internet-- their initial exposure is to the _current_ internet
| that has been ab tested into a hyper-addictive hellscape and
| they are cognitively unprepared. Jumping straight into the deep
| end before you know how to swim.
|
| Whereas genX and Xennials had the privilege of wading into a
| pre-social media internet during their formative years which
| served as a vaccine of sorts. We are by no means immune to tech
| addiction and disinformation, but we seem much better equipped
| for spotting trolls/ragebait and giving the side-eye to
| addictive dark patterns in apps
| exo762 wrote:
| Amazing opportunity! One more demographic to save via age
| verification laws, with a side dish of reliable personalized
| advertisement profiles.
| alansaber wrote:
| Reminds me of Chade and The Skill from the Robin Hobb books
| ellyagg wrote:
| My aunt is 80 and thank goodness she has an iPhone. She's
| bedridden and spends all day on it. She has no children but I
| lived with her for a while when I moved out of my parent's, and
| we text often.
| colechristensen wrote:
| The concern is what you're doing when you're getting older but
| still able.
|
| The decline is accelerated by muscle weakness which is
| accelerated by sitting around all day looking at screens.
| borski wrote:
| Someone bedridden is not the focus of the article or
| conversation; once you are no longer capable of being active,
| it is obviously true that you'll partake in more sedentary
| activities.
| impure wrote:
| I was reading up on some RCTs on social media and mental health
| recently and one of the surprising findings is that social media
| is actually worse for older people.
| krackers wrote:
| That makes sense, they haven't "built immunity".
| tietjens wrote:
| Can you share some things you were reading?
| impure wrote:
| This is the one I read: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science
| /article/pii/S266656032... which says how older participants
| benefit more from restricting social media use.
| alwa wrote:
| Not OP, and I've been looking at more meta-analyses than
| RCTs, but:
|
| * Lei et al 2024 metaanalysis, generally positive
| associations but no causal evidence for psychosocial effects,
| especially when the social media use is family-directed -
| https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-
| psycho...
|
| * Balki et al 2022, metaanalysis, same thing: good for
| reinforcing existing real-human social connections,
| overcoming barriers to/increasing regularity and frequency of
| contact, acquiring access to resources; isolating to use
| outside that context; regular and frequent contact much more
| effective than occasional or episodic:
| https://aging.jmir.org/2022/4/e40125/
|
| My overall impression seems to be what common sense tells us:
| to the extent it lets you overcome aging-related obstacles to
| interacting with real people, great; to the extent it's brain
| rot, it's isolating.
| xnx wrote:
| I really wish iPhone/Android had better parental controls so I
| could monitor my dad's screen time and the type of content he was
| allowed to see on YouTube.
| Cpoll wrote:
| The recontextualisation of "parental" is very amusing.
| tromp wrote:
| As nicely illustrated in this Young Sheldon episode fragment:
| https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Nd90rFPYVnc
| fhdkweig wrote:
| I would have gone with South Park's murder porn episode in
| which the kids accidentally got the parents interested in
| Minecraft.
| gcanyon wrote:
| Time to sign off HN, I guess :-)
|
| On a serious note YT shorts are on my radar for "things I spend
| too much time on that deliver minimal value."
| hsuduebc2 wrote:
| In my opinion it's best from short content feed out there but
| it's still useless. Too much AI slop in there. Needles to say I
| did get some interesting creators in there but I believe people
| I'm searching for are using YouTube as long videos platform and
| do not properly use the short term format.
| kevin061 wrote:
| Before smartphones and TikTok it was casino TV at 3AM, TV
| infomercial shopping, and the like.
| nolist_policy wrote:
| Wait till you see the grandparents glued to the TV.
| everdrive wrote:
| This feels similar to how you'll see rows and rows of elderly
| people mindlessly pushing the slot machine buttons in casinos. It
| makes me wonder if impulse control starts breaking down for that
| crowd.
|
| Of course, I also wonder if non-digital natives also just have
| less of a thick skin for this sort of thing.
| reactordev wrote:
| Social media is a cancer and more people need to realize this. No
| amount of platforming will fix this. It's designed to extract
| behavioral traits about you. It's designed to spy on your
| shopping and browsing habits. It's designed to build a model of
| you. Everyone fell right in.
| visarga wrote:
| > No amount of platforming will fix this.
|
| The problem with social media is precisely the platform, it
| ranks what keeps people addicted, seeing more ads. Creators
| conform to the Algorithm and produce slop to capture some of
| that scarce attention. Nobody cares about users. Same shit
| happens on Google Search, YouTube, Amazon Search, Google Store,
| App Store... all platforms produce shitty feeds and search
| results. And before them we had TV and newspapers as slop
| making platforms.
| WastedCucumber wrote:
| The article in question:
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2025/12/do-your-paren...
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Before smartphones they sat at home and watched game shows and TV
| evangelists, and listened to Rush on the radio. Which is worse?
| Nux wrote:
| Smartphones.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Rush on the radio was poison for my impressionable brain.
| Thankfully the Internet came along and exposed me to outside
| perspectives.
| pcblues wrote:
| "But is this shift actually worth worrying about? Or are younger
| people just projecting their own anxieties about screen time onto
| their parents and grandparents?"
|
| False dichotomies can either be the worst thing that happened to
| humankind or a pathway to a new way of understanding each other.
| pndy wrote:
| Over 3 years ago I was in the hospital - they put me on shared
| room with other men of various ages. The oldest ones liked to
| talk for hours, doing all sorts "memberberries", elaborated
| expertises on current state of European, world affairs. Because
| what the hell else you can do when you have vertigo or tampons in
| your nose and you need to lie down.
|
| Anyway, the oldest over 80-something man was given some older
| Samsung phone by his great-grandson with instruction to launch
| tiktok whenever he feels bored. And bloody hell, that thing
| looped so much content with every launch but this man still tried
| hard to find something remotely interesting. I wouldn't say he
| was glued but that's a random guy who liked to attend his orchard
| and bees, going fishing etc. - he had something to do in the real
| world.
|
| I'm witnessing more elderly people around me actually struggling
| using touch-capable devices - it's like they're smacking fingers
| in frustration that there's no tactile sensation. They were told
| that there are buttons to press/tap but there's no feedback
| they'd expect. For them smartphone screen is no different than
| tv.
| tossandthrow wrote:
| It is well known that smartphones can be difficult to use with
| dry skin - like most elderly have
| HackerThemAll wrote:
| Old people are wonderful relays from paid trolls and propaganda
| to their peers, unwittingly spreading and amplifying lies and
| political agenda in social media. They're often retired, having
| entire days at their disposal, wasting them on forwarding sh*t
| back and forth.
| hsuduebc2 wrote:
| I must admit. My parents we're right the whole time. Staring at
| the screen for a whole day is truly unhealthy and they should go
| to play outside instead.
|
| This whole thing is beyond ironic.
| CompoundEyes wrote:
| I see it a different way. Parents reach a period in life where
| their kids strike out on their own and want little to do with
| them beyond a safety net. That's normal and natural and the
| parents move onto a new phase too. In fact they might just not be
| that into you anymore. It's ok if visits upset their routine and
| holidays are somewhat irritating. Same for being not overly
| enthusiastic about taking on care giving roles for grandkids.
| They're still individuals and it's not like old age causes
| someone to lose their inner world. They've seen a lot and not as
| much is novel likely. They're facing loss, mortality and decline.
| If they feel compelled to scroll let em scroll. I'm so glad
| assistive technologies and a11y will be there when I'm decrepit
| so I can have something more stimulating than TV. Maybe ask
| grandma to play some Lethal Enforcers the next time you visit
| you'd be surprised -- mine did.
| tossandthrow wrote:
| I think this misses the point.
|
| Excessive scrolling is like excessive eating, smoking, or
| snorting coke.
|
| It is not healthy and not indicative of a full filling life.
| rafaelmn wrote:
| > That's normal and natural and the parents move onto a new
| phase too.
|
| Is it really ? I would say the "natural" way of things is older
| generation gets supported by children and they help take care
| of grandchildren while their children are working. The whole
| late retirement/both parents working situation we have these
| days is reliably leading to a population collapse.
| antonymoose wrote:
| Really couldn't have put it better. When I was a child my
| grandmother retired and relocated 800 miles to help with my
| mother with childcare. Why? Because it's why you do. It's
| what all of her family did as far back as anyone could care
| to remember.
|
| This world where your boomer parents retire to a beach house
| to drink margaritas, smoke designer weed, and play pickleball
| and ignore their offspring is the real aberration here.
| watwut wrote:
| It used to be that YOU help elderly parents. And they they
| are the patriarch ruling familly and his wife at that time.
| When the grandma did that help with children, it was at her
| terms - she was the decision maker to large extend.
|
| That arrangement is not working from both sides. Younger
| generation wants autonomy and expects parents to not try to
| run things, not to demand more contact then they want etc.
|
| Which makes sense. But you cant have it both ways - both
| autonomy/independence and service.
|
| Younger generstion has their period of low responsibilities
| - before they create familly. It is shifted to later years
| tgen it used to ... but it is weird to then get jealous
| over their parents having some free time after work.
| antonymoose wrote:
| It used to be a two way street, actually. The broader
| family was just that, a unit.
|
| Now it's little independent atomic cells doing whatever
| with little to no regard for the bigger picture.
|
| Ultimatel, it's the Boomer me generation that broke this
| tradition. It's not weird for a millennial to look back
| and say "How nice of them to have their cake and eat it
| too" as I raise children alone and deal with the dilemma
| of how to treat their greed and selfishness as they age
| and demand of us while contributing little.
| wisty wrote:
| Millenials are the "stereotypical manchild who hates his
| parents because he's too much like them" generation. (I'm
| a millenial too)
| carlosjobim wrote:
| That's not how it was. When the patriarch became too old,
| he'd give the farm and the "crown" to the eldest son -
| who would have more physical and mental strength than
| him.
|
| Thirty or forty year olds in the past wouldn't take any
| orders from their fathers or mothers. Of course they
| would help them, as they are family. But the elderly
| would absolutely have to step aside, and those who were
| in their prime would call the shots.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Daughter in laws butting heads with mother in laws (and
| father in laws) is a story portrayed in many cultures'
| popular tv shows/movies. As are parents who own
| everything on paper, making them the ones with actual
| power, butting heads with their children.
|
| It is only in the previous 100 years where young people
| all over the world have the power to support themselves
| without anyone else's help, which is why the preference
| for independence was revealed.
| mitkebes wrote:
| People also used to marry younger and have children
| sooner. When people were getting married and starting to
| have kids in their teenage years, it meant that new
| grandparents would only be in their mid-30s or so. That
| put them in a much better spot to assist with the
| grandchildren.
|
| Now many people I know are waiting until their 30s to
| have children, meaning that the grandparents are already
| 50-60s.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| > the "natural" way of things is older generation gets
| supported by children and they help take care of grandchildre
|
| It's an ideal. Structuring society to require it falls down
| often because:
|
| - people have kids later, making them too old to help
|
| - disease and addiction can make grandparents unfit
|
| - young families often must move to where work is, even if
| far away
|
| - deeply in debted grandparents may be unable to afford to
| help
|
| - grandparent's own care needs compete with those of their
| grandchildren, i.e. sandwich situations
|
| - cultural expectations unfairly burden some over others,
| usually women
| MattGaiser wrote:
| > Parents reach a period in life where their kids strike out on
| their own and want little to do with them beyond a safety net.
| That's normal and natural and the parents move onto a new phase
| too.
|
| This is at best extremely cultural. It is certainly not a
| global norm and not really viewed as desirable, just necessary.
|
| Average American doesn't move very far at all from their
| parents and America is where the idea of time limited parenting
| is most prevalent.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/12/24/upshot/24up-f...
| tcskeptic wrote:
| My parents moved from Texas to Chicago this year to be near my
| sister instead of me (their son) because in their very
| traditional minds they need to be taken care of by a daughter
| in their old age. I get to send checks. I thought it was a
| terrible idea, they have friends and family here and Chicago is
| very cold. That being said they moved into a community of her
| 11 kids and their spouses and their kids -- probably 30+
| relatives in their orbit. And they are surrounded by people who
| love them and help them. It's really been good for them. Much
| less scrolling and much more conversation, group meals, board
| game playing, storytelling.
| jkestner wrote:
| Your sister has 11 kids? Smart of your parents, then. That's
| a good pool of caretakers for them to live around. But I'm
| surprised they didn't move sooner to help raising that many
| kids.
|
| I live in Texas now, and think I'd ultimately prefer Chicago
| too. Don't have to drive as much to find stimulation, and the
| cold preserves.
| borski wrote:
| Except that doomscrolling causes aged folks to deteriorate in
| health faster than being active in some way, just like for
| everyone else.
|
| If it were simply that they weee living their own lives, I
| don't think _anybody_ would take issue with that.
|
| But they aren't - they are spending their lives on their
| phones, doomscrolling, which is much more likely to cause
| accelerated aging.
|
| No, I don't have a study for this, but it is not a secret that
| being active and _not_ on your phone improves health outcomes.
| wisty wrote:
| Phones are like alchohol or fentynal. I might dabble a bit but
| if I see a loved one constantly zonked out on the couch I
| worry.
| d41dev wrote:
| This is something ive started to notice, the older generation
| becoming victims to doomscrolling, my dad being one of them. What
| makes it worst is that unlike kids who group in the social media
| world, and therefore have some ability of discerning between
| whats real and fake, the older gen are so gullible when it comes
| to fake news, propaganda, and ai generated content.
|
| Not only that but they then go on to spread this false news among
| there whatsapp friends
| crims0n wrote:
| Older generations have an implicit trust for what is on screen
| because they grew up in an era where getting something on
| screen was not easy, and thus had an implied credibility.
|
| Take advertising as an example. Before Google Ads and the so-
| called democratization of advertising, it was _expensive_ , and
| you didn't get an ad on a TV program or a national publication
| without some level of quality and/or trust behind your product.
|
| Similarly, content was not easy to produce and certainly not
| cheap to get in front of eyeballs in the limited medium that
| was television. People were selective in what they watched so
| in order to _be_ watched it needed to meet a minimum threshold
| for quality.
|
| These days however, the barrier to entry for advertising and
| content are so low that any implicit trust should be
| ridiculous. Unfortunately for our parents and grandparents
| however, that is what they know - and old habits die hard.
| Ritewut wrote:
| I've been saying this for a while. For all the talk about kids,
| seniors are the ones addicted to phones. Doomscrolling on Tiktok,
| Facebook, even locked into mobile games. Its very depressing.
| epolanski wrote:
| +1, I see so many 50 to 70 year old folks using the phone way
| more than Gen Zs.
| urbandw311er wrote:
| Yes, this! We spent so long (and rightfully) worrying about
| what it was doing to our kids, we forgot that there was a whole
| other generation equally unprepared for this.
| lencastre wrote:
| Sunday, passable weather but still sunny, wonderful river view,
| restaurant at 50% capacity, outside tables full. In comes grandma
| and grandpa with granddaughter on a stroller. They sit, he starts
| smoking, gives a tablet to the granddaughter who goes through the
| entire meal with that in front, and grandma spends every pause
| scrolling whatever on her phone. Grandpa switches smoking and
| feeding himself through the whole time they were there. Not a
| word spoken at that table. Unreal.
| anal_reactor wrote:
| I just don't like talking to my family so phone addiction
| becoming more and more acceptable is really helpful here
| because if I'm just playing on my Steam Deck that counts as
| family time.
| oliwarner wrote:
| My Grandad lives alone and has in the past 12 months really
| gotten into YouTube. He's long used it to learn the latest
| practices in plumbing, electrics, gardening and woodwork (he's a
| _seriously_ capable 86yo, always has been) and honestly our
| subscriptions are very similar...
|
| But he's addicted to shorts. Doomscrolls endlessly in his
| downtime. Doesn't question whether obvious GenAI is real or not,
| and having looked over his shoulder a few times, most of it is
| horribly fake. Loves showing my kids what he finds.
|
| I'd rather he have this than boredom, but also it does mean he
| doesn't need to socialise outside the family. If I worry about
| anything, it's not knowing and addressing any extreme or views
| he's lapping up. I know first hand how insular interests can be
| once you express one on YouTube and it can get pretty shitty
| pretty quick.
|
| As others have said, this is exactly the same worries we have for
| our children except I feel we have some control. No devices or
| screen time and content limits. It's all very easy. It's harder
| to address that with your parents' parents.
| svilen_dobrev wrote:
| to curb the doomscrolling (laptop is as bad as phone) , i gave my
| father a big old Lego box - a Volkswagen beetle (which stayed for
| years, assembled by my kids.. which don't play that anymore. So i
| disassembled it). He had never tried those. Took him a week to
| build it, rearranged the room, studied the book like plant-specs-
| long-time-ago.. Then i gave another one, of similar size ~1500
| pieces. i have one more ready-to-give "set". And then i plan to
| give him the rest 40kg well-sorted-but-in crates Lego, and the
| heap of model-books ~100+ , and let him do whatever he wants..
| hoping he'll start improvising one day. Though.. may need a new
| empty room :/
| ishtanbul wrote:
| I see a lot of elderly people watching AI content on youtube
| shorts, one after another. The monotonic voice is a dead
| giveaway. Their feeds have optimized around it because they
| cannot tell the difference. Its sad.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| There's an awful lot of ageism inadvertently on display in these
| comments.
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