Discussion

Grandparents are glued to their phones, families are worried

Simulacra: Maybe a solution is to spend more time with grandparents, so that they have something more than just technology to keep them company.

analog8374: 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

joe_mamba: 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. All white collar jobs still hiring are in large metro areas now.Even parents and grandparents told me "leave and don't look back". Ultimately, you want what's best for your offspring rather than for yourself.

rationalist: > 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: OnlyGrans.com is available for only $50k

foobarchu: 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.

susam: 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 often is YouTube recommendations. As a result I have written a little userscript for myself to disable shorts and YouTube 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.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: 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.

wortelefant: Taking grandmas unpaid care work for granted - no longer possible. Outrage!

50208: 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.

toomuchtodo: 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.

kevin061: Before smartphones and TikTok it was casino TV at 3AM, TV infomercial shopping, and the like.

gcanyon: [delayed]

xnx: 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: The recontextualisation of "parental" is very amusing.

serial_dev: It’s all fine, but in that case also do not worry about this hypothetical old person spending time the way they like to.

impure: 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: That makes sense, they haven't "built immunity".

Wistar: That’s worth about $5

tromp: As nicely illustrated in this Young Sheldon episode fragment: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Nd90rFPYVnc

tietjens: Can you share some things you were reading?

everdrive: 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.

nomel: 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.

retrac98: My parents generation are the most screen addicted people I know. Absolute slaves to Facebook’s algorithm. It’s really disheartening to see.

blakblakarak: 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: Mine got Israeli propaganda and kept texting me so often about Hamas and Muslims that I had to block him.

gammalost: 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

gedy: 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: Very true, phone addiction is that taken to a new level but the same underlaying issues remain.

politelemon: This is the simplest and most effective solution, Cheers

alwa: If anybody wants to do something with instagran.org, I know somebody who would be willing to part with it for a good cause…

pndy: 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.

asib: If you press t key you will get a full width video player.

pcblues: "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.

hsuduebc2: 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.

CompoundEyes: 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!

hsuduebc2: 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.

Aurornis: 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: 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.

talon8635: Mine got Iranian propaganda and kept texting me so often about IDF and Jews that I had to block him.

KoftaBob: Iran's a sideshow compared to Tel Aviv's Hasbara spin factory.

l72: 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.

rrr_oh_man: > the most likely to voteWell... who's fault is that.

HNisCIS: 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

SoftTalker: 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: In some states it’s easier now; in some it’s much harder.https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/chao...

SoftTalker: Before smartphones they sat at home and watched game shows and TV evangelists, and listened to Rush on the radio. Which is worse?

Nux: Smartphones.

fhdkweig: I would have gone with South Park's murder porn episode in which the kids accidentally got the parents interested in Minecraft.

tossandthrow: It is well known that smartphones can be difficult to use with dry skin - like most elderly have

rafaelmn: > 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.