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Grandparents are glued to their phones [video]

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Re: Grandparents are glued to their phones [video]

#4

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

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

Re: Grandparents are glued to their phones [video]

#5

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

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.

Re: Grandparents are glued to their phones [video]

#7

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

[flagged]

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

Re: Grandparents are glued to their phones [video]

#8

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

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

Re: Grandparents are glued to their phones [video]

#9
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.

Re: Grandparents are glued to their phones [video]

#10

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

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

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

OnlyGrandparents.com?

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

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