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).
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.
There maybe something more than that. Maybe modern life and the great financial crisis have put us all into more stress, more work, so that we don’t have time for real relationships. It’s part of why politics have shifted the way they do.
I am VERY online, but I don’t usual traditional social media. I mostly read Hackers News and a DC parenting forum which is pretty no-holds bar, but is a website out of the 90s so not really capable of infinite scroll or dark patterns (other than the addictive and open ended topics).
I also read a lot of news like NYT and watch TV like Apple TV, but it’s hardly the dopamine drip of TikTok or Instagram. Yet I am ashamed of my 8 hours of screen time despite my best efforts. I used to reach out to friends more but as I get older it feels intrusive and hard to make conversations.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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?).
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 56.4 ms ] threadYoutube and big tech will have to answer for this eventually.
The richest, most powerful organizations are spending billions every month to make it more addictive, to reach more people.
I am VERY online, but I don’t usual traditional social media. I mostly read Hackers News and a DC parenting forum which is pretty no-holds bar, but is a website out of the 90s so not really capable of infinite scroll or dark patterns (other than the addictive and open ended topics).
I also read a lot of news like NYT and watch TV like Apple TV, but it’s hardly the dopamine drip of TikTok or Instagram. Yet I am ashamed of my 8 hours of screen time despite my best efforts. I used to reach out to friends more but as I get older it feels intrusive and hard to make conversations.
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…
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.
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.
Hopefully full dive VR will be ready by the time I'm that old.
Many older people I work with would love to have more required interactions move away from the phone screen.
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.
Grab a bodhran or banjo and head to a local folk jam everyone!
> 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?).
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.
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.
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.
I hope more awareness is made about this