alt.hn

3/15/2026 at 5:43:19 PM

Grandparents are glued to their phones [video]

 https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p0n61dg3/grandparents-are-glued-to-their-phones-families-are-worried

by tartoran

3/15/2026 at 6:06:13 PM

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.

by susam

3/16/2026 at 3:22:53 AM

It boggles me that anyone is able to get used to phone screens as a serious device for consumption of just about anything, let alone creation (e.g., typing).

by BrenBarn

3/16/2026 at 7:08:22 AM

consumption is easy. I read alot of Webcomics and well they are literally made for the Phone. Mangas are usualy also fine. Watching Videos also.

The Creation point I completely concur, I hate typing on my phone.

by mastermage

3/16/2026 at 7:24:50 AM

I sometimes edit photos I took right on the iPhone while on the bus or in a coffee shop and one time I edited a gaming clip through iMovie on the same iPhone. It feels good to use that processing power for something that isn't mobile gaming or reading reddit.

for typing I use the swiping keyboard if I am typing in a language it supports, but I concur it sucks using the mobile keyboard in either horizontal or vertical orientations.

I am not a big fan of reading manga on the phone on the other hand, I much prefer doing it on the tablet. Although I used to read webtoons a lot back when I was still on iPhone 7, which feels tiny in 2026, but felt gigantic back then.

by asimovDev

3/15/2026 at 6:12:54 PM

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.

by nicbou

3/15/2026 at 6:41:52 PM

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.

by nomel

3/15/2026 at 10:24:06 PM

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.

by aucisson_masque

3/15/2026 at 6:52:08 PM

This is the simplest and most effective solution, Cheers

by politelemon

3/15/2026 at 10:06:21 PM

These also remove suggestions and comments

by nicbou

3/15/2026 at 7:40:26 PM

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.

by l72

3/15/2026 at 10:06:52 PM

"Just" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here

by nicbou

3/15/2026 at 7:24:59 PM

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.

by pcblues

3/15/2026 at 9:14:22 PM

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

by oldeucryptoboi

3/15/2026 at 10:55:56 PM

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.

by incompatible

3/15/2026 at 7:18:15 PM

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

by asib

3/15/2026 at 6:20:11 PM

Screenshot not found.

by serial_dev

3/16/2026 at 5:08:10 AM

[dead]

by aaron695

3/15/2026 at 7:32:12 PM

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.

by CompoundEyes

3/15/2026 at 8:13:47 PM

> 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.

by rafaelmn

3/15/2026 at 9:36:56 PM

> 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

by paulryanrogers

3/16/2026 at 10:34:15 AM

People have kids later but life but expectancies and health and medicine for older people are far better than they were historically. Not for everyone, but for most people.

The rest all comes down to solvable social and economic problems, mostly as a result of putting short term GDP growth over all else.

by graemep

3/15/2026 at 9:03:13 PM

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.

by antonymoose

3/15/2026 at 10:58:52 PM

I think one thing that has changed-both my parents and my wife’s parents are divorced, which makes things socioemotionally more complicated in terms of grandparental involvement in our children’s lives-it still happens, but I think it involves difficulties which didn’t exist for my own parents and grandparents when I was young, and were it not for those difficulties, it likely would happen more

Both grandparents divorced means you go from two family units involved to four-which in itself adds logistical complexity-and new partners doubles the opportunities for interpersonal conflicts

by skissane

3/15/2026 at 9:30:43 PM

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.

by watwut

3/15/2026 at 9:33:44 PM

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.

by antonymoose

3/15/2026 at 10:11:16 PM

Millenials are the "stereotypical manchild who hates his parents because he's too much like them" generation. (I'm a millenial too)

by wisty

3/16/2026 at 10:44:03 AM

A large part of both is the professionalisation/outsourcing of child care which weakens family ties.

by graemep

3/16/2026 at 8:06:27 AM

I really think you did not bothered to check how families historically functioned.

by watwut

3/15/2026 at 10:46:25 PM

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.

by mitkebes

3/16/2026 at 10:41:15 AM

When was that? The average age of marriage in medieval England was early 20s as far as I can find out.

There are cultures where it is usual for grandparents to help where people are having kids in their mid twenties or later.

I know and have known lots of people who are perfectly capable of looking after kids (maybe not full time permanently), but for holidays or during the day, in their 70s or 80s.

In fact standard retirement age (insofar as it still exists) here in the UK is 67 so most people will still be working in their 50s and most of their 60s. It really is not that old.

by graemep

3/15/2026 at 10:27:56 PM

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.

by carlosjobim

3/16/2026 at 8:14:45 AM

> 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.

That would mean very old. They kept main decision power as long as they could. By the time they gave it away, they were not helping with childcare much. Instead, they were cared for. And even with that arrangement, you are ignoring younger sons, daughters and wife's. Because childcare part is not something that concerned men - it was women's area.

> Thirty or forty year olds in the past wouldn't take any orders from their fathers

Yes they did. The dad was 50, that is not nearly old enough to give up power even in your arrangement. And yes, they were frequently pissed about it.

> or mothers.

They were taking orders from mother in law. And if you look at less individualistic societies now, that is the source of large friction - mother in law vs sons wife. Where mother in law expect her to be, basically, a maid and she does not like that at all. A woman marrying into the husbands multigenerational family is the lowest person in the hierarchy of adults, basically.

by watwut

3/15/2026 at 10:40:19 PM

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.

by lotsofpulp

3/15/2026 at 11:11:38 PM

Young people have always had the power to support themselves without anybody's help. That's how life has worked for billions of years now.

It is only very recently that the industrialized world became completely financialized, so that the cost of life has become artificially increased for the youth. Young people have always moved away from their families for marriage, or for becoming sailors, soldiers, miners, hunters, lumber jacks, etc. It was only the oldest son who would inherit anything, so the rest of them wanted to scram as soon as they hit puberty.

Inheritance-baiting your children is the oldest scam in the book, but people weren't complete fools in the past, and wouldn't stick around if the old folks went too far. A lot of head-butting between generations and in-family as you mention.

by carlosjobim

3/16/2026 at 8:16:47 AM

> Young people have always had the power to support themselves without anybody's help.

You do not know much about history, do you?

> Young people have always moved away from their families for marriage, or for becoming sailors, soldiers, miners, hunters, lumber jacks, etc.

Eh, for a bulk of history, people stayed in village where they were born. Women moved to husbands house, rarely other way round, but that is basically it. Miners and hungers and lumber jacks did not moved away from village.

And soldiers and sailors were tiny minority.

by watwut

3/16/2026 at 10:27:13 AM

If you take care to learn about history you will be surprised as to how wrong you are. You are mostly believing in simplified myths.

Of course young adults have always been able to support themselves. If people in their prime can't support themselves, then nobody can. Young adults have always supported themselves + other people.

Take any time period of history and any place, and there is a mobility which will surprise you. Evidence for this is for example the colonization of the New World.

And as I have mentioned: Only the oldest son would inherit the village farm, so the other sons and daughters were often anxious to get moving.

by carlosjobim

3/16/2026 at 11:39:07 AM

>Of course young adults have always been able to support themselves. If people in their prime can't support themselves, then nobody can. Young adults have always supported themselves + other people.

Maybe pre-property rights when an individual's ability to inflict violence was more correlated with their status, but not post-property rights when first mover's had an advantage in gaining ownership to be able to collect rent and have a group of able bodied young to enforce it (e.g. police). Once that dynamic is established, the game favors those who can benefit from previous generations.

After that, the option for a young person to support themselves is mostly based on expanding to unclaimed or lower priced land, which is a big gamble because it is usually unclaimed or lower priced for a reason (hard to reach, no infrastructure, enemies, climate, clean water, etc).

>Take any time period of history and any place, and there is a mobility which will surprise you. Evidence for this is for example the colonization of the New World.

The internet might have been the most recent world that was available to be colonized, but it is not clear to me that these worlds will always be available.

by lotsofpulp

3/16/2026 at 8:21:32 AM

TBH it was also expected trade - you will take care of elderly parents in exchange for their help with kids participation, so since boomer parents don't help they also can't expect help

my (divorced) parents (5+ and 2.5+ hours away by car) didn't help us with kids at all (wife's parents are 7500 km away), but they can't expect I will be taking care of them when they will be really old, after all my father and his sister put their own mother to retirement home, when she could not live alone by herself, so they should kinda expect the same treatment (although I was against it and wanted grandma rather die alone in her house earlier than suffer slightly longer in retirement home without her garden/animals), actually my mother put her mother to retirement home as well, though I think she wanted to go there, it was pretty great facility, it was very small house (studio), each separated part had one occupant with minigarden with meals minutes away + it was also <1km from her old big house, so not much change and not much difference for her since she lived in front of the living room TV anyway

by Markoff

3/15/2026 at 8:24:57 PM

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.

by tcskeptic

3/15/2026 at 9:14:59 PM

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.

by jkestner

3/15/2026 at 9:42:50 PM

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.

by wisty

3/15/2026 at 8:17:18 PM

> 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...

by MattGaiser

3/15/2026 at 7:56:12 PM

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.

by tossandthrow

3/15/2026 at 8:33:45 PM

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.

by borski

3/15/2026 at 6:15:34 PM

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

by retrac98

3/15/2026 at 7:48:27 PM

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.

by atomicnumber3

3/15/2026 at 6:57:11 PM

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.

by Aurornis

3/15/2026 at 7:43:45 PM

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.

by pndy

3/15/2026 at 8:18:15 PM

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

by parpfish

3/15/2026 at 6:35:52 PM

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).

by blakblakarak

3/16/2026 at 8:16:04 AM

I have hoarded 61849 short videos (44 GB, filtered, no propaganda, spam or low quality stuff) from 9gag, with this you could build a "Fakebook" of your own and serve your parents whatever you want, I randomly picked 5 videos:

- funny cat video

- superfluid helium document from 60s

- people jumping on a roof and falling through

- abba sos song (in Swedish, or Esperanto, idk)

- kid saving bus driver with stroke

Analyze them with LLM, generate positive comments and you're good to go.

by dvh

3/15/2026 at 6:40:54 PM

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

by gzread

3/15/2026 at 7:05:26 PM

[flagged]

by talon8635

3/15/2026 at 7:41:54 PM

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

by KoftaBob

3/15/2026 at 8:17:11 PM

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

by parpfish

3/16/2026 at 12:57:15 AM

everyone is vulnerable to it. i think the idea that certain generations are better equipped is more a by product of exposure rather than some sense of immunisation. GenX/Xennials are just more likely to have other things to do than going on social media at the same rate as other cohorts - whether its still busy working or kids or hobbies etc. Intense exposure and the reinforcement that brings is the problem. Its why the problems became even more pronounced through covid years

by cal_dent

3/15/2026 at 6:42:22 PM

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.

by everdrive

3/16/2026 at 4:06:27 AM

I think it might be that if you don't grow up with something that hijacks you as a kid you don't have the mental equivalent to antibodies.

Old people get captured by new dopamine hits moreso than their younger counterparts.

by Induane

3/16/2026 at 6:02:00 AM

I believe this to be true, and I even think you need to be old.

On several occasions during college I ran into kids that weren’t allowed to play video games as kids. The first time they got their hands on a game, it was all over. They were hooked and it was a problem. They’d skip classes, meals… and just play. If someone tried to intervene, they would throw a tantrum. It was the weirdest thing, but I saw it enough that it seemed like a pattern.

Others of the same age who had games as a kid seemed more able to put it down and not get so emotionally reactive if something came between them and the game.

by al_borland

3/15/2026 at 6:56:18 PM

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.

by reactordev

3/15/2026 at 8:17:18 PM

> 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.

by visarga

3/16/2026 at 5:29:21 AM

Ahh yes, the “It’s always been this way” argument. I was wondering if it was going to show its ugly head.

The difference now is ANYONE can become a TV station. A newspaper. A radio talk show. While I’m all for allowing anyone to do anything, I’m also a fan of curation and quality over quantity. Social media has no value. Because it values nothing.

by reactordev

3/15/2026 at 11:45:36 PM

i dont see whats cancerous about social media conceptually. sharing photos online with a local network of contacts, setting up digital event flyers, instant messaging, etc ... yes these tools were used for subjectively nefarious purposes like cyberbullying, but on the whole they probably added more benefit than was subtracted from the community.

social media that has been gamified into an infinite scroll loop with the express intent to destroy attention spans and rebuild them around an advertising/behavioural structure of mark zuckerberg's ("they trust me ... dumb fucks") choosing? now yes that is cancer. but thats not really social media. theres nothing social about it.

i like the way someone put it here a few weeks back. we used to call these things social networks. then they became social media. so in that sense i do agree with you on a literal basis, although im not sure that was your intended point.

by thin_carapace

3/16/2026 at 5:28:24 AM

I said social media. You described Social networks. I agree social networks are good. Social media is a fucking cancer.

by reactordev

3/15/2026 at 8:29:51 PM

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.

by Ritewut

3/16/2026 at 5:49:56 AM

I also see it as an issue because kids model what they see. A parent telling their kids not to be on a phone kind of falls flat when every adult in their life is glued to their phones.

When I go to family gatherings I make it a point to keep my phone in my pocket and not scroll. I don’t want the kids to see that as an example of how to act when getting together with family. Meanwhile, my mom (their grandmother), is glued to Facebook the whole time.

Beyond the bad example, it makes her frustrating to interact with. She’ll mention a news story that came up in her feed. Occasionally it’s one I’m familiar with and I engage, thinking we’re about to have a conversation about this topic… but no. As I’m replying, she mentions the next thing in her feed, she’s already moved on.

Ironically, my dad is probably the most connected person in the family, yet doesn’t do any of that stuff when getting together with family. There are all sorts of loud notifications going off, because he never has anything on silent, but he glances at his watch and carries on with the conversation. But to a point in the video, he maintains a lot of in-person connections and has a really rich social life in his 70s, which I think is rare. So he isn’t looking to fill holes in his life with doomscrolling.

by al_borland

3/15/2026 at 9:27:08 PM

+1, I see so many 50 to 70 year old folks using the phone way more than Gen Zs.

by epolanski

3/15/2026 at 9:51:52 PM

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.

by urbandw311er

3/15/2026 at 6:17:48 PM

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.

by ellyagg

3/15/2026 at 8:36:42 PM

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.

by borski

3/15/2026 at 6:35:56 PM

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.

by colechristensen

3/15/2026 at 7:19:02 PM

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.

by pndy

3/15/2026 at 7:58:26 PM

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

by tossandthrow

3/16/2026 at 10:24:53 AM

Touchscreens work worse for older people. Their skin is not as conductive and because of that they often seem to struggle with swiping and gestures.

by wao0uuno

3/15/2026 at 10:03:27 PM

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.

by ishtanbul

3/16/2026 at 6:06:02 AM

My mom was telling me about how Eminem did a song with some Christian singer she likes. That didn’t pass the smell test for me, I’m sure I would’ve heard about that, but didn’t contest it in the moment.

A couple days later she sent me the video. It was obviously AI, but even said in the video description (if expanded) that it was AI.

I keep thinking if I tell her enough stuff is AI she’ll start to get more skeptical about this stuff or be turned off the platform feeding her all of it, but it doesn’t seem like it.

by al_borland

3/15/2026 at 6:22:02 PM

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.

by xnx

3/15/2026 at 6:23:53 PM

The recontextualisation of "parental" is very amusing.

by Cpoll

3/15/2026 at 6:43:51 PM

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

by tromp

3/15/2026 at 8:03:01 PM

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

by fhdkweig

3/15/2026 at 7:09:12 PM

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

by SoftTalker

3/15/2026 at 7:51:27 PM

Smartphones.

by Nux

3/15/2026 at 9:11:11 PM

Rush on the radio was poison for my impressionable brain. Thankfully the Internet came along and exposed me to outside perspectives.

by paulryanrogers

3/16/2026 at 6:08:14 AM

Radio shows end at some point.

by al_borland

3/15/2026 at 6:24:11 PM

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

by kevin061

3/15/2026 at 6:19:23 PM

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.

by impure

3/15/2026 at 6:21:42 PM

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

by krackers

3/15/2026 at 6:42:28 PM

Can you share some things you were reading?

by tietjens

3/15/2026 at 8:41:00 PM

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.

by alwa

3/15/2026 at 11:54:11 PM

Wider society spends an awful long time talking about the effects of social media on young people. I personally think that is somewhat blinkered because its an everybody issue. What do old people and kids have in common, lots and lots of free time. That's it. Same with unemployed, under employed people, people with no real interest or hobbies.

If there's a hole you need to fit and you do nothing with it, social media is the easy way out, and given that it does have addictive tendencies, we end up where we are.

by cal_dent

3/15/2026 at 6:24:01 PM

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."

by gcanyon

3/16/2026 at 6:09:45 AM

I have a rule that I don’t swipe through shorts. If they show up on my recommendations, I treat them like normal videos to avoid getting stuck in the slot machine.

by al_borland

3/15/2026 at 7:17:57 PM

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.

by hsuduebc2

3/15/2026 at 8:18:41 PM

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

by d41dev

3/15/2026 at 8:54:00 PM

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.

by crims0n

3/15/2026 at 9:27:41 PM

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.

by oliwarner

3/15/2026 at 9:29:31 PM

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 :/

by svilen_dobrev

3/15/2026 at 8:50:56 PM

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.

by lencastre

3/15/2026 at 10:20:06 PM

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.

by anal_reactor

3/15/2026 at 7:18:08 PM

"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.

by pcblues

3/15/2026 at 6:17:10 PM

Reminds me of Chade and The Skill from the Robin Hobb books

by alansaber

3/15/2026 at 7:30:36 PM

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.

by hsuduebc2

3/16/2026 at 1:51:01 AM

it keeps them off the road

by soopypoos

3/16/2026 at 8:45:48 AM

Scroll all day, and that's just normal. Shoot heroin all day, and everyone loses their minds.

by bufio

3/15/2026 at 6:16:50 PM

Amazing opportunity! One more demographic to save via age verification laws, with a side dish of reliable personalized advertisement profiles.

by exo762

3/15/2026 at 10:12:25 PM

There's an awful lot of ageism inadvertently on display in these comments.

by SoftTalker

3/15/2026 at 7:25:40 PM

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.

by HackerThemAll

3/15/2026 at 6:28:13 PM

Wait till you see the grandparents glued to the TV.

by nolist_policy

3/15/2026 at 6:11:00 PM

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.

by 50208

3/15/2026 at 6:38:40 PM

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.

by allendoerfer

3/15/2026 at 9:49:34 PM

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

by boelboel

3/15/2026 at 7:27:43 PM

You are describing every pension system in the world.

by heraldgeezer

3/15/2026 at 8:29:24 PM

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.

by tossandthrow

3/15/2026 at 8:30:25 PM

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.

by allendoerfer

3/15/2026 at 8:36:14 PM

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.

by mech422

3/15/2026 at 6:14:37 PM

> the most likely to vote

Well... who's fault is that.

by rrr_oh_man

3/15/2026 at 6:16:11 PM

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

by HNisCIS

3/15/2026 at 7:06:51 PM

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.

by SoftTalker

3/15/2026 at 6:18:09 PM

Early voting exists in many states. Even in these states you’ll find that younger folks hardly vote.

by ViktorRay

3/15/2026 at 6:37:22 PM

And also the most likely to fall victims to scams. An elderly family friend lost millions to a pig butchering scam.

by k2enemy

3/15/2026 at 5:53:54 PM

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

by Simulacra

3/15/2026 at 6:15:05 PM

As the old saying goes, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink.

by AngryData

3/15/2026 at 6:24:32 PM

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.

by eYrKEC2

3/15/2026 at 6:16:52 PM

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.

by gedy

3/15/2026 at 6:52:42 PM

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

by HerbManic

3/16/2026 at 1:47:37 AM

The mobile is much than TV because of the enforcement loop and algorithm turning that attention into scams, ai generated slop, and harmful content that is more and more difficult to identify. With tv I suppose you can change the channel, with reels, the next 20 reels might continue to show you similar things or follow folks on other platforms as well.

by nanobuilds

3/15/2026 at 6:01:55 PM

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

by analog8374

3/15/2026 at 6:07:32 PM

> I hook them up with each other. There are parties.

OnlyGrandparents.com?

(I looked it up, the domain name was registered six days ago!)

by rationalist

3/15/2026 at 7:21:11 PM

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

by alwa

3/15/2026 at 6:14:01 PM

OnlyGrans.com is available for only $50k

by rrr_oh_man

3/15/2026 at 6:21:29 PM

That’s worth about $5

by Wistar

3/15/2026 at 7:56:48 PM

bulletball

by behringer

3/15/2026 at 6:13:27 PM

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.

by foobarchu

3/15/2026 at 5:58:26 PM

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

by p2detar

3/15/2026 at 6:01:01 PM

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.

by joe_mamba

3/15/2026 at 6:10:53 PM

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.

by toomuchtodo

3/15/2026 at 6:22:09 PM

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

by serial_dev

3/15/2026 at 6:46:46 PM

Certainly, how they spend their time is their choice, concepts of free will and all that.

by toomuchtodo

3/15/2026 at 5:56:57 PM

[flagged]

by chronic20001

3/15/2026 at 6:01:36 PM

I said, "I'd like to see you if you don't mind"\

He said, "I'd love to, Dad, if I can find the time\

You see my new job's a hassle and the kids have the flu\

But it's sure nice talking to you, Dad\

It's been sure nice talking to you"\

And as I hung up the phone it occurred to me\

He'd grown up just like me\

My boy was just like me

by behringer

3/15/2026 at 6:11:08 PM

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

by wortelefant

3/15/2026 at 6:53:23 PM

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

by gammalost