As my grandmother's Parkinson's progressed, she had to give up knitting. Then she gave up all the crafts that she had spent her days on. As things got worse, she could no longer go for walks or visit the neighbors. She stopped cooking, too, another thing she loved. Then she couldn't hold a book still enough to read it, and the contraptions we'd set up for her also stopped working since eventually she lost the coordination to turn a page in a book. We got her an iPad and she could vaguely swipe so she could read. Eventually she needed help even with her iPad.<p>My point is that the elderly aren't necessarily hypocrites. They have a very different lifestyle than you do. The challenges they face are different, what they're capable of is different.<p>My father is perfectly able-bodied, but you can only golf so many times a week and I think he's gotten sucked into the news and his screen. He just doesn't have anything else meaningful to do with his time.
Some elderly people who live alone like the TV on for company - in many cases they aren't even watching it properly, they just have it on in the background to feel less lonely, like there are other people in the house with them. The article even alludes to this albeit in negative terms "this includes time spent engaged in other activities while the television is blaring in the background". But it is a very different pattern from being "screen-obsessed" and "waste hours ... fritter on chat-shows and repeats of soaps". I think the author could benefit from showing a little more sympathy towards people who have circumstances different from their own.
My mother and her friends are completely lost to Facebook addiction. It’s like they grew up without any immunity or incoulation from video games, MySpace, etc. and Facebook hit with full force to their naive social media immune system. It’s like crack, you can’t get them off of it. Reminds me of the first time I played Everquest. My mother will be at actual family events like birthdays and instead of interacting is mindlessly scrolling her feed in a room alone on a couch instead of making actual memories. It is the only “socialization” she and her friends seem to do now and that is a terrible thing in my opinion.
This matches a pattern I think I noticed in the last few years (maybe it was there all along): those who want to protect the weak by forbidding some aspect of life are often the ones that seem to somehow struggle with it themselves.<p>E.g. sexuality. Those with a healthy sexuality are literally never the ones asking to protect the youth from it. It is always those for whom it is connected with shame and stigma. So the most safe route to become afraid of the sexualization of the youth seems to be to have shameful sedual thoughts yourself. And because you, a (in your self image) controlled person have troubles with your dirty mind, how bad must it be for the youth?<p>So when it comes to assigning priorities to potential problems, one seems to look to themselves and extrapolate from there.<p>I saw similar patterns with parents that have troubles with their TV habits and extrapolate that onto the (in their eyes comparable) activity of siting on a computer.<p>The problem with computers is, that you can’t really tell what your kid does unless you spy on it or have the trust bond to ask them. They could be playing games, socialize, watch porn, read the news, watch videos, learn programming or editing software — who knows.<p>The generation of obsessive television watchers thinks kids are doomed because of the internet. The generation of wild parties belives the youth is unhinged (despite evidence against it). Etc. Just because it was aproblem for you doesn’t mean the next generation even wants it.<p>I have cousins that are around the age I threw my first wild parties and they didn’t even go out ror a drink yet, befause it literally doesn’t interest them.
There seems to be a pattern where a new, addicting technology sinks its claws in, and the it requires a certain amount of youthful malleability to realize the problems it causes and grow out of it. And the older you are, the less of that adaptive ability you seem to have.<p>My mom plays the most mind-numbing mobile and Facebook (yep) games, instead of realizing there's a bigger world of much higher-quality content out there. Gen Z seems to have the hindsight about social media to resist some of the effects it's had on millennials. Etc.
There is nothing about technology that inherently makes it more alluring for young people. In the future we should actually expect that it will be the elderly who possess the most knowledge about a wide variety of technology and are also the heaviest of users of it.<p>This expectation that young people would be more predisposed to technology grew from incorrect notions of their natural learning abilities and the technological adoption curve.<p>There is a generation of people who were born at precisely the right time such that technology was simple and analog enough for them to understand from a young age, and from that point grew in complexity at a pace that was proportional to their own mental development, allowing them to seamlessly transition into more advanced technologies with clearer intuition about how it works. Whatever the next best thing was, they were certain it was better than whatever came before, because progress was exponential for so long, and they had actually <i>seen</i> everything that came before. This may be the <i>only</i> generation that is so obsessed with technology, because all their life has been nothing but exponential technological advancement, and a belief that technology can do anything.<p>It cannot.<p>The new generations coming into this world where everyday technology is the best it has ever been and probably the best it will ever be quickly come to understand that, and have no expectations of better things to come. For that they will look elsewhere, back to the old ways. The vintage, the analog, the fleeting.
I see that in mine and my wife's parents. It is a pretty good indicator of how much their lives suck or do not suck. The lonelier, less engaged with the world they are the more screen time. And who can blame them.
The graph at the top clearly shows <i>flat</i> TV habits from 2015 to 2019 for the elderly (and more TV use than younger demographics); and increasing computer and smartphone use <i>but</i> still less than younger demographics, even after increase.<p>So comments about how the elderly might be more succeptible to social network addition seem off the mark. They are still using computer/smartphone less than other demographics, not more.<p>Props to well-designed infrographic at the top, anti-props to the clickbait title which has contradicting implications.
I feel guilty for enabling this by buying them smartphones. Now my parents are in a room watching their respective daily soaps/Whatsapp junk viral videos and propaganda on Youtube for hours everyday (and late at night as well).
Can confirm. My mom is a Facebook power user and doesn’t even know it. She cares so much about what her high school graduating class is up to; including spats in comments about politics, etc.<p>My father on the other hand is old school and never opted into social media.
if I am asked "do you read or watch TV" I read, by 10:1.<p>but, if I am asked "do you spend time in front of a screen" the answer is different because I read on a kindle.<p>I'm in the age cohort in question btw. I gave up TV about two years ago, around the time I also stopped doing FaceBook.
That's surprising, not because of the amount that elderly watch TV (here my grandfather won't move from the living room when the cricket's on), but because I thought more people under the age 60 would be behind a computer 8 hours a day.
The use of "obsessed" is a pretty aggressive conclusion - just because people do something a lot doesn't mean they're obsessed. I'm not obsessed with laundry and vacuuming because I have a dog that sheds a lot.<p>When I was a kid, my grandma was in a retirement home, and every time I'd go over, she'd have the TV on and blasting at full volume. She wasn't obsessed, there just wasn't much else she could do. She was in bad physical shape, so she couldn't leave her room easily. Her eyes were bad, so she couldn't read or engage in a lot of other activities. Her options were the TV or talking to her kids on the phone, and you can only do the latter for so many hours a week.<p>Millennials/teens/whatever group of young people you want to compare them to are more physically fit and able to get around, plus they have larger social networks. That enables them to do a much broader range of activities than the elderly, so of course it's likely they'll divide their time among more things than the elderly will.
How does someone in their 50s watch six hours of television a day?<p>I'm 63 and even on days when i am not working I'd be hard put to find six hours to sit in front of a television.<p>I'm not American; but I can't see what difference that should make.