91–100 of 157 posts
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.
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.
Can you share some things you were reading?
* 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.
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…
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.
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 rol…
> 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.
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.
Before smartphones they sat at home and watched game shows and TV evangelists, and listened to Rush on the radio. Which is worse?
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 mana…
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 rol…
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+…
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.
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.
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.