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Meet the real screen addicts: the elderly

• singingwolfboy 1y ago
  https://archive.is/Xe0yW https://archive.is/Xe0yW
• spacedoutman 1y ago
  I see this every day, elderly brain rotting watching fake ai generated videos on youtube. Youtube and big tech will have to answer for this eventually.
  • lynx97 1y ago
    If I know one thing for sure, big tech will never have to answer for anything.
    • deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
  • ssnistfajen 1y ago
    If they didn't have to answer for iPad babies then unfortunately they won't have to answer for this either. I've resolved to accepting the fact that most people are just content with any form of brain rot because the alternatives are too mentally taxing. Technology has just enabled brain rot to distill into its current form, but the demand has always been there.
    • throaway180 1y ago
      Switch demand to desire and you're closer to the truth.
    • ZephyrBlu 1y ago
      I wouldn't really call it "demand". It's more like one-shotting humans with a product which maximally stimulates them through what is basically a psychological hack. We were not built with the capacity to handle the sheer amount of stimulation the modern world has. You have to put in a lot of effort to not succumb to natural desires that would have been adaptive behaviours until recent history.
      • noduerme 1y ago
        Succumbing to constant distraction, even if a natural desire, would never have been a successful evolutionary strategy for an individual organism. Spending large amounts of time absorbing and repeating bullshit has proven to be a pretty successful group survival strategy throughout human history, though.
      • kakacik 1y ago
        Lets call it a next great man-made filter. Weak personalities will take a hit and have a lesser life compared to their potential, the ones more mentally resilient or with good parents (or both) gain a clear advantage in basically all aspects of life. Waiting around for state regulations to cover our asses has always been a bad move, and its same now. They will come but too little too late, one has to fight for oneself and closest ones in true capitalist spirit, and this is indeed distilled capitalism at work. Its jungle out there, and servants of the biggest predators form like 50% of this very forum (go ahead and downvote some meaningless number in DB, but take a good look in the mirror and ask yourself how good human being you truly are). I can't bring myself to feel much sympathy for the ones that fully realize this, and yet go full speed to their addictions, even push it to their kids since good parenting always take a lot more continuous effort. We keep discussing this mind cancer for a decade here, its not something shocking on any level for anybody who gives a fraction of a f*k about their quality of life or mental health. The rest has bread and games for the poor, version 2025.
  • jbjbjbjb 1y ago
    The article suggests there’s evidence that screen time has the opposite effect. A little surprising but I guess for a lot of people it is more stimulating than watching the news or soaps all day
    • tonyedgecombe 1y ago
      It says it’s unclear which way the causation goes.
  • makeitdouble 1y ago
    Did anyone ever have to answer for all the shit that is/was on TV and news rags? If no one ever did, why would YouTube be different ?
  • kotaKat 1y ago
    Even normal television has gone to full on elderly brainrot, and the TV personalities are behind it. Go watch an episode of 25 Words or Less on your local broadcast station and watch how much slop is peddled on the show between the colorful noises (dear God those horns in the jingles are pure torture). They've fully tied in slop mobile games (some Solitaire game) into main gameplay advertising, they pull in horribly grainy live video from elderly "superfans" joining along from home, it's all just one giant slop machine before the evening news.
  • pajamasam 1y ago
    Why don’t they search for topics that interest them though? Surely not all of them are tech literate enough to scroll, but not search. My friend’s dad in his 70s watches nature documentaries and people like ItchyBoots on YouTube.
  • bamboozled 1y ago
    They are lobbying harder than ever before, look at the recent inauguration and who was there. Thy will never answer for any of it. They control information. They control the narrative.
  • gverrilla 1y ago
    Their answer is yes.
• khelavastr 1y ago
  Doctors who're legally entrusted to handle addiction care...aren"t. It's a total scandal.
  • mikepurvis 1y ago
    Surely the responsibility here is broader than treating it after the fact? Perhaps it’s an over the top comparison but most places outlaw dangerous drugs— you can treat the after-effects but by that point a lot of the damage has already been done. Making tech companies answerable for having developed algorithms that serve up hours of obvious brainrot content at a time would go a long way. (And like with many of these things, holding senior executives personally liable helps ensure that the fines or whatever are not just waved away as a cost of doing business.)
    • FlameRobot 1y ago
      Yes it is an over the top comparison. I am a recovered / former addict (alcohol). I would never compare the two. I was spending too much time on Twitter a few years ago. I deleted my account. The problem was solved. It took me an entire year to accept that I had a serious problem and then another 9 months to finally stop drinking. The brewery, the bar nor the bar ever made me drink. I chose to drink. I also was the one that chose to stop drinking. BTW drink is as dangerous or more dangerous as many illegal drugs IMO. > Making tech companies answerable for having developed algorithms that serve up hours of obvious brainrot content at a time would go a long way. You get recommended what you already watch. Most of my YouTube feed is things like old guys repairing old cars, guys writing a JSON parse in haskell and stuff about how exploits work and some music. That is because that is what I already watched on the platform.
      • mikepurvis 1y ago
        Right, and recommendations for old car repair videos that you watch a few of per week is reasonable. The argument I’m making is that it’s not beyond the pale for YouTube to detect “hey it’s been over an hour of ai bullshit / political rage bait / thirst traps / whatever, the algorithm is going to intentionally steer you in a different direction for the next little bit.”
• noduerme 1y ago
  Just got back from Reno, and I can confirm that there are hundreds of old ladies there addicted to playing video games all day. (But I grew up in Vegas, and this ain't news... The Economist should check their local slot parlor, or fruit machines or whatever they call it there).
  • yapyap 1y ago
    Oh yeah, the videos of the (mostly elderly) sitting in front of a slot machine just pulling the lever like a zombie are dystopian. And in the even worse cases they don’t even get up to go to the bathroom anymore. They just let it all loose.
• ekjhgkejhgk 1y ago
  Meh. I see this in my own mom, now. But 20 years ago before phones were huge, she already spent an absurd amount of time each day watching soap operas on TV.
  • simonh 1y ago
    My maternal grandparents spent day after day for most of their retirement sitting in front of the TV.
• ceronman 1y ago
  The elderly, the kids, the teenagers, the adults. Screen addiction is a pandemic. The biggest one humanity has ever seen. The richest, most powerful organizations are spending billions every month to make it more addictive, to reach more people.
  • zwnow 1y ago
    [flagged]
    • dns_snek 1y ago
      This is an incredibly ignorant take on addiction. It's never a choice - by definition. > Its incredibly easy to quit too, people just lack discipline. Hey, do you want to chat about how when I tried to quit nicotine, I went through 2 weeks of physical and mental hell, how exhausted I felt not being able to sleep more than an hour without waking up, still feeling exhausted, with mental fog so severe that made quitting feel impossible?
      • deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
      • FlameRobot 1y ago
        > This is an incredibly ignorant take on addiction. It's never a choice - by definition. It isn't that clear cut either way IME. I had a big drinking problem. I was the one that choose to start drinking. I was the one chose to stop drinking. Nobody forced me to go to the bar or the off-licence. I accept for other people it isn't that simple. > Hey, do you want to chat about how when I tried to quit nicotine, I went through 2 weeks of physical and mental hell, how exhausted I felt not being able to sleep more than an hour without waking up, still feeling exhausted, with mental fog so severe that made quitting feel impossible? I had similar issues when I quit drink. Sleep was irregular, I went hot and cold for the first month. I had this like weird wave feeling go through me one night (it the only way I can describe it). I think that took like a month or two.
• deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
• Traubenfuchs 1y ago
  My mom fell for an SMS scam and can‘t recognize obvious AI videos where cats on two legs dance with human babies. Old people can‘t be left alone with internet devices and online banking. I wonder if I will ever become that dumb too when I am old…
  • palata 1y ago
    > I wonder if I will ever become that dumb too when I am old… It's not very nice to call that "being dumb". Imagine that you live for 60 years in a country speaking English, and in a matter of a couple years, most of society switches to Mandarin. You may well struggle learning Mandarin as a 60 years old, and you wouldn't like being called "dumb" by young people who grow up with it.
    • logicchains 1y ago
      It's factually accurate; the converse of the Flynn effect (IQ increasing over time), plus the negative effect on intelligence of lead in the paints and fuels that they were exposed to, means that particular generation is on average lower IQ than the younger generations.
      • rixed 1y ago
        I'm not sure I understand your point. First, older generation having lower IQ than newer is neither the Flynn effect nor its reversal. The Flynn effect compares historical test results to current ones; not old people vs young people but old people when they passed the test long ago with young people passing the test now. If elderly people are loosing IQ points it's most certainly because of age not because they have had a lower IQ all along. And the reversal of the Flynn effect states that younger people are actually the one having the lower hand on this comparison.
      • palata 1y ago
        I wonder what this comment says about your IQ.
    • wat10000 1y ago
• KernalSanders 1y ago
  It's a pity that they are missing a hugely troubled audience - elderly hooked on YouTube, specifically. It's an ugly addiction that mirrors what we've seen with alcoholics and schizophrenics, whereby they point a finger at anything but the actual problem, and any remedy that the have, or are given, they adamantly avoid and refuse. YouTube, like other social media, is driven by pushing and pulling on the right emotions in the right way to get you hooked. Sexy, funny, happy, cute, sensational, sad, scary, angry. Enough Sophia Vergara, cat videos, UFOs, doom and gloom, bias-confirming politics, etc, and you'll have someone watching all day long. It's not like what it was when an elderly person watched daytime soap operas and gameshows, this is a dopamine-fueled additive binge. We've seen several really bad cases where it's almost everything that the lonely elderly person does. There's no more "journey" or "investment" when you can simply flick to the next video that tickles your fancy in that moment. These are the people I'm sincerely concerned about, and they have zero reason to go seek help. It's not an issue to them. In fact, they'll fight tooth and nail to claim anything else is their problem except this. It's almost as though the first generations to enjoy television weren't ready for something this addictive. Personally, I despise YouTube, despite growing up in the heart of the Silicon Valley. That platform serves a handful of purposes for me, such as helpful tutorials the rare time that I need them and epic Mongolian folk metal music videos.
  • torben-friis 1y ago
    Why YouTube specifically? In my experience it is the tamest of all feeds. Not that they have any more morals or self control, they just seem to have a comparatively awful algorithm that brings up the same 14 videos over and over.
  • atoav 1y ago
    Youtube is one of those platforms I would probably never have used if my feed wouldn't be adjusted to me. There is real gold on youtube, like for example the math explainers by 3blue1brown. But if you ever tries opening a private browser window and opening and see the video recommendations it looks like a platform only containing mindless trash, with the mental nutritents contained in a piece of cardboard. And there are people who like precisely that: Mindnumbing somethings that just keep your brain from having a single thought.
• bkolobara 1y ago
  I have noticed the same trend with my parents. The people that were insisting that I was spending too much time as a child in front of the computer and should get out, are now retired and permanently glued to their phones.
  • throaway180 1y ago
    Mine didn't even like having a TV in the house and now my mom can't sleep without her iPad:( she's 64
    • throwaway287346 1y ago
      Same experience in a European country. Parents didn't get a TV for the home when we were kids. Now neither parent can eat full meal or hold a conversation without looking at something from their phones, even when they have guests over. I spend WAY too much time online as well, but I make sure I do not take out my phone during meals, when talking to someone, etc.
  • hebrides 1y ago
    Same. When I’m visiting my parents, I sometimes check the Screen Time stats on my dad’s iPad. Consistently, he’s spending around 30 hours per week on YouTube. It has pretty much replaced TV for him.
    • bamboozled 1y ago
      I can hardly get my mother, father or in laws to look at us anymore when we visit, they just look at social media and sometimes comment on whatever they saw and share it with me, sometimes via a message too. It's weird but for us, it's been going on since FB and Pintrest but Instagram and TikTok have taken the addiction to new levels. They basically wouldn't travel to anywhere quality, high speed internet isn't present.
  • phrotoma 1y ago
    "Facebook has done to our parents what they thought video games would do to us."
• blfr 1y ago
  Absolutely, because they have the time for it and fewer alternatives. I got my mom a tablet, set her up with ReVanced YouTube & Twitter plus VLC, and now she is by far the heaviest user of our NAS, last Kindle user on our Amazon account, and reachable on Signal pretty much always. Would it be better if she sat at home with the TV on and a paper book? No, I don't think so. This is also where the leisure time went. Keynes predicted 15 hour workweek, we decided to just have kids and the elderly not work at all.
  • gtsop 1y ago
    > This is also where the leisure time went. Keynes predicted 15 hour workweek, we decided to just have kids and the elderly not work at all. Amazing analysis.
  • dewey 1y ago
    > because they have the time for it and fewer alternatives What are you referring to by fewer alternatives? Isn't there way more ways / activities / infrastructure to spend your time these days than before?
    • blfr 1y ago
      With age your company dwindles as people drift away (or die) so you have fewer people with which to enjoy these activities and many become less attainable/enjoyable with lower physical strength and endurance.
      • jerlam 1y ago
        Most of the current elderly also grew up in an era where they believed cities and urban areas were bad, so they moved out to the suburbs where everything is farther away and requires driving. It requires a lot more effort to do anything and they have effectively isolated themselves. My grandparents who lived in a city could walk down the street, get groceries, and easily meet friends for a snack or chat. Even when they were alone, they were part of a community. My parents' generation all live far away from each other, struggle to get out of the house, and are scared of strangers.
• aussieguy1234 1y ago
  If your mobility is limited physically, what else is there to do other than computer/screen based activities? Hopefully full dive VR will be ready by the time I'm that old.
  • Dumblydorr 1y ago
    Read books, play chess, write letters, knit, sew, DnD, play music, wheel around and chat with others, there’s a lot of solid options. Their environment needs to serve those up in as convenient a manner as a device, not likely, sigh.
• dv_dt 1y ago
  It gives a feeling of Screen addiction is when people are looking at things I don't approve of. Many older people I work with would love to have more required interactions move away from the phone screen.
  • floundy 1y ago
    >Many older people I work with would love to have more required interactions This was actually a big issue in my office leading to work from home being rolled back. The boomers want to be in the office so other people are forced to socialize with them, and they don’t want to be home because many of them seem to resent their spouses. IMO it’s a terrible trade-off. What they lack is true relationships and friendships, and they're filling the void with idle workplace chitchat for the illusion of connection. I’d rather be at home. I’m getting paid to work, not provide social support for lonely boomers.
    • array_key_first 1y ago
      Many older people held the belief that isolation is good and community is for suckers. They move to the suburbs, completely go all-in on their family, and have zero friends. It's unfortunate, but for a lot of people, their job is all they have.
      • derwiki 1y ago
        I know a lot of 20-something’s for whom their job is all they have. Not sure it’s completely an age thing.
        • array_key_first 1y ago
          It's not completely an age thing but it's heavily associated with age. Young people will also do things like move to the city and be poor just for the hell of it. Or backpack somewhere and be poor because why not. Or spend 2x on rent just to cut their commute by 15 minutes.
• austin-cheney 1y ago
  This reminds me of elderly people addicted to cable news. Once separated from TV they can only talk about politics, but it’s weirdly up to the minute and yet still so poorly informed.
• delbronski 1y ago
  Sometimes I think… What if this is just human evolution at play? After hunter-gatherers, humans became sedentary farmers and herders. Imagine if psychology was a thing back then. There would have been so many papers on how this shift was changing the very core of what we were. What if technology is just evolving us into something else? I can imagine in 1000 years from now our cyborg versions would be walking around with screens inside their brains not thinking twice about it. I don’t think I’d like that world at all. And I hate what screens have done to my current world. But shit, maybe there’s no stopping it.
  • card_zero 1y ago
    Well everyone use their branes so much that in the end they are all going to turn into eggs becos they will hav thort a way of getting along without walking. This will not be until 21066 a.d. (approx.) but it makes you think a bit. —N. Molesworth (1956)
• Dumblydorr 1y ago
  I have a lot of elderly friends, from folk music jams. They’re in their 60-80 phase, plenty of money and energy, decent health, minds still in tact. They’re learning new tunes, arresting the decline of technique, interacting in person regularly with others. If every older person did this, their minds would stay a lot sharper for longer. Every day you’re minutely deliberately improving and learning new tunes. Grab a bodhran or banjo and head to a local folk jam everyone!
  • analog31 1y ago
    Concur. I'm 62. It's jazz for me, but same deal.
• doom2 1y ago
  This is also what I think is a driving factor behind American politics today: > Alarming and misleading news may be a particular threat to the elderly, who are twice as likely as under-25s to use news apps or websites. Millions of people are addicted to watching Fox News paint a picture of the urban US as a war zone that rural and suburban residents should avoid at all costs. That doesn't even include the right wing AI slop on social media sending similar messages. One could argue that this is affecting Trump himself, whereby domestic policy is shaped around what he sees on TV and social media (where was he seeing videos of "bombed out" Portland, anyway?).
  • parpfish 1y ago
    i didn't read the original article, but an interesting aspect to the elderly screen addiction is that there's a real imbalance in content consumption vs. content creation. young folks on social media create a lot content (posts/photos/videos) meant for their peer group to consume, so their feed is a mix of authentic peer-generated content and whatever mass-produced stuff sneaks into their feed. older folks do not share nearly as much. maybe a text-based facebook comment once in a while. so when they log and consume from their feed, they aren't watching things created by their peers -- they're seeing content that professionals created for the purpose of broadcast.
  • pessimizer 1y ago
    It's not just Fox News, and it's not just the right-wing. That's something that you've absorbed from a screen. My black, middle-class, Democratic-voting father and stepmother who certainly were alive during the early 90s (when I was a teenager and actually on the south side Chicago streets, in danger) think that crime is higher than ever before. Democrats have absolutely spent most of their time trying to convince them that it definitely is, except when targeting Republicans, or trying to defend terrible mayors. Tough on crime is almost the only thing second-term Democratic presidents run on. Focusing on crime, at whatever level, is always a suitable distraction for the dumb middle-class (R or D). The only thing that comes in second is focusing on poor people's diets. There will always be crime, and always be people eating badly; and are you pro-crime and pro-junk food on your dime? > One could argue that this is affecting Trump himself, whereby domestic policy is shaped around what he sees on TV and social media (where was he seeing videos of "bombed out" Portland, anyway?). More than argue. It's not just him, though, it's completely out of touch wealthy people who think of politics as a hobby, and are constantly bombarded with local news that consists entirely of crimes. There's no concept that the fact that they heard about 2 murders and 10 robberies today within a metro area of 10 million people doesn't give them any understanding at all of current crime prevalence. Or that they hear about street crimes, but don't hear about domestic ones. Or hear about violence but don't hear about financial crimes. They've all got a story of somebody they know who was affected by street crime, too. One incident that a hundred people get to cite. Trump also is just consciously playing middle-class dimwits like everyone else.
• Tewboo 1y ago
  It's fascinating how tech has become a vital part of the elderly's lives, helping them stay connected and informed.
• andrewrn 1y ago
  The problem of algorithmic feeds gets a modest amount of attention, but I still think its not nearly enough. Addicting feeds are evil. If we ever manage to make it beyond them, we'll reflect on them with the same regret as slavery. A quote from an author I like, Matthew Crawford: "Attention is the thing that is most one’s own: in the normal course of things, we choose what to pay attention to, and in a very real sense this determines what is real for us; what is actually present to our consciousness. Appropriations of our attention are then an especially intimate matter." I can't really envision a solution, frankly. On a personal level, I have tried dozens of strategies to use my phone less, including deleting many of my social media accounts, and regrettably, its still an issue. My best guess is legislation that bans machine-learning algorithms on newsfeeds. But there are billions of dollars and a dysfunctional government (speaking U.S. here) motivated against that outcome.
  • 0xDEAFBEAD 1y ago
    The HN homepage feed is non-algorithmic (at least the sense that the algorithm isn't personalized). Does that actually make a big difference?
    • andrewrn 1y ago
      For me, absolutely. And the fact that it’s text-only helps enormously too. The way I interact with HN is fine to me. I skim the posts once a day and read maybe one or two. I’ve never scrolled hours away on HN.
      • Taikonerd 1y ago
        I think it's also important that HN doesn't have infinite scrolling. It's old-school: 30 items per page, click at the bottom to go to the next page. I made a rule for myself that I would never go past page 2 of HN. So, each morning, I see 60 items, and if none of them interest me, then I just move on with my day. I think that's why I never became addicted.
        • 1y ago
• cindyllm 1y ago
  [dead]
• silisili 1y ago
  This got both of my parents. What's interesting is that neither of them really used a computer or smartphone much, but both got addicted to iPads in their late 60s. What they do in their free time is their business, but it often even messes with human interaction. I've been midsentence with them in person when they'd just pull out their iPad for a quick scroll, completely oblivious that I was even there or talking to them. What's weird is that it almost reminds me of a person taking a quick vape or smoke... I'm not even sure they realize why they're doing it.
  • everdrive 1y ago
    But we still sell and consume all these products. We willingly bring them into our home. It's maddening and totally self-inflicted.
    • tyleo 1y ago
      The problem is they are both drugs and productivity devices. I have two iPads and I love them. I use a Mini exclusively for book reading and logging workouts. I use a Pro for video calls and occasionally YouTube videos. The addiction didn’t get me through them… on the other hand, here I am posting HN comments instead of doing something productive so it did reach me through my phone.
      • jader201 1y ago
        > on the other hand, here I am posting HN comments instead of doing something productive I feel like there are worst ways to spend time on devices than reading/responding to HN. I know it can be addicting/a distraction, too, and I try to limit my time with it. But I don’t feel that the highs and lows are near as bad here vs. other forms of social media & content consumption.
        • tyleo 1y ago
          Agreed, but I do try to remind myself to limit use even here.
• vonnik 1y ago
  This is true. But it’s also hard to hold against many of them. Because they are often isolated, slow or immobile, and in cognitive decline. I saw this happen to my grandmother in an assisted living home.
• sershe 1y ago
  Is this new? My grandparents spent a ton of time in front of the tv, most of the day probably. By the time some of them were near 90 they couldn't do much more anyway, but I think it started decades before that, especially in winter time after they were retired
• brachkow 1y ago
  Maybe it's not bad. In post soviet countries elderly already watching government endorsed man-hating gibberish on tv all day long. So I would better prefer them playing three-in-row. I think after some time it even would be possible easier to "sell" to them playing some kind of minecraft with grandchildren. Also, I vividly remember parks in Georgia (country!) crowded with elderly loudly playing chess and domino, instead of watching "who deserved to die by our god-chosen almighty army today" crap.
• yieldcrv 1y ago
  People criticize children not realizing they are equally afflicted I hope more awareness is made about this
• jellyfishbeaver 1y ago
  My dad used to tie up the Ethernet cable on our family's home router and hide it in a closet. The knots were to prevent us from reconnecting the router and putting it back before he got back home. He'd be able to tell if we tried since he was the only one able to tie that special knot :) All to prevent my siblings and I from wasting our summers on Runescape or Miniclip or something. Looking back, the hours we were playing each day is nothing compared to the hours he spends scrolling through crap these days. My dad worked in such an intellectually stimulating job before, so it's baffling to see that he chooses to do this all day. I imagine most older parents are in the same boat these days. It has made me hate social media, YouTube, short videos, et al. even more
  • calmworm 1y ago
    This special knot prevented the cable from transmitting a signal?
    • exe34 1y ago
      it's like a seal to show that they had disobeyed.
    • MichaelDickens 1y ago
      I'm not OP but presumably the knot made it so that the cable wasn't long enough to reach the computer.
      • Sammi 1y ago
        > and hide it in a closet
      • jellyfishbeaver 1y ago
        Yep, exactly. You couldn't reach the computer unless you undid the knot.
    • unfunco 1y ago
      It makes it shorter.
• rdiddly 1y ago
  To its credit, the article avoids mention of various "generations," which are a pretty unscientific prism through which to view the world. Yet there is still something to be learned from looking at a particular age cohort and its cultural zeitgeist. The people reaching retirement age today are the oldest members of Generation X. People born in 1965 are turning 60 this year. These people first had access to gaming consoles and personal computers cheap enough for general consumers when they were in their teens. They were 18 in 1983 when Atari crashed, and 28 during Eternal September in 1993. So it's no wonder the numbers are increasing in older people. People have a tendency to think a demographic like "older people" is static, when it's really a sliding window. Digitally-savvy people are simply aging into it. And you will too.
  • jedberg 1y ago
    Nah, it's more than that. My very boomer parents just sit on the couch doom scrolling all day, and they were late getting smartphones. Although they also got us Ataris in the early 80s and internet access in the late 80s, so they were technology forward through their whole lives. So maybe they lived more like late Gen X...
    • djmips 1y ago
      I think you are correct. Tech was binning people and older Gen X slid forward identifying with late Gen X much more than those on the other side of the divide.
  • agarren 1y ago
    Elderly gen-x are screen addicts because they had access to gaming consoles and computers? Maybe I’m misunderstanding your comment. Not every gen-xer was strapped to a console growing up. My boomer parents and their friends are all staring to their phones wa-a-ay more often than I’d consider healthy. At least as much as my millenial/xennial friends. Social media and attention stealing algos are addictive and unhealthy, regardless of the age group. If anything I’d say that gen-x is uniquely positioned - old enough to have experienced the world without the internet, young enough to see the consequences of it.
• havaloc 1y ago
  I support a couple of retired people on the side, and they are totally addicted to the lowest quality slop on Facebook/Instagram imaginable. It's so bad that they'll click on a link to see the latest slop, and ostensibly get one of those webpages that says they have 47 viruses and call the number. I politely told them that they shouldn't click on those links anymore. To which they said, well, if I shut my phone off when that happens, can I keep on doing it? It's like that Star Trek the Next Generation episode where they all get addicted to that game. It's creepy and sad.
• almosthere 1y ago
  Well it helps replace the Young that don't visit.
• k310 1y ago
  Mirrored at Business Times. https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/opinion-features/meet-real-screen-addicts-elderly?ref=global-opinion https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/opinion-features/meet-real-... Archive today and even archive.org are not working with safari on this iphone. I'll have to debug. FWIW, I'm senior, and when you're not 100%, you just sit and read or listen to the radio (preferably classical music). Being a techie and infovore, Hacker News fills the bill. Where else do you get links to WWII proximity fuses (schematic included) or high tech gambling cheat devices. And programming languages, something of interest to me since "Computer Lib: Dream Machines"? I felt great yesterday and hiked a lot, but some days, the connected screen replaces the ipad over the piano and the camera screen. Screens all over. Grabbed a sunrise this morning before just chillin most of the day.
• throw-10-13 1y ago
  This goes hand in hand with the resurgence of fascism.
• metadope 1y ago
  I am elderly and I am an addict. But my screen addiction is only a small part of my lifelong problem. The real, root cause, my major malfunction, is an ongoing aversion to reality, a constant urge and willfulness to escape, an addiction to fantasy and an increasing willingness to indulge myself. I am not alone in this. Yes, my first screen addiction was probably the NTSC broadcasts from a black & white childhood, but all those paperbacks counted too, Heinlein and Fleming and MacDonald et al. Even my early career as a software engineer was motivated by a self-indulgent escape from reality. I preferred the small world of intense coding in 6510 cycle shaving loops, to the expansive reality that surrounded my basement. The outside world went on without me as my screen addiction grew all the way to 640x400. Now people enjoy an escape into the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe). I've been living there since the print versions were only 12 cents each. Nowadaze everybody I know have become as addicted as I've always been. But is it a problem for society? Or is shared fantasy the actual basis on which our society is built?
• uptownfunk 1y ago
  We need a screenaholics anonymous