Charlie Warzel on rising screen time among some older adults and whether their kids should be worried.
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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.
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 mastermage 2026-03-167:081 reply 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 asimovDev 2026-03-167:24 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.
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.
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 aucisson_masque 2026-03-1522:24 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 politelemon 2026-03-1518:52 This is the simplest and most effective solution, Cheers
By nicbou 2026-03-1522:06 These also remove suggestions and comments
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 nicbou 2026-03-1522:06 "Just" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here
By toomuchtodo 2026-03-1519:551 reply TIL tubearchivist has a Jellyfin plug-in. Cheers.
By toomuchtodo 2026-03-1618:52
By pcblues 2026-03-1519:24 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 oldeucryptoboi 2026-03-1521:14 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 incompatible 2026-03-1522:55 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 asib 2026-03-1519:18 If you press t key you will get a full width video player.
By serial_dev 2026-03-1518:20 Screenshot not found.
By aaron695 2026-03-165:08 [dead]
By CompoundEyes 2026-03-1519:326 reply 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.
> 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 paulryanrogers 2026-03-1521:361 reply > 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 graemep 2026-03-1610:34 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 antonymoose 2026-03-1521:033 reply 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 skissane 2026-03-1522:58 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
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 antonymoose 2026-03-1521:332 reply 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.
Millenials are the "stereotypical manchild who hates his parents because he's too much like them" generation. (I'm a millenial too)
By graemep 2026-03-1610:44 A large part of both is the professionalisation/outsourcing of child care which weakens family ties.
By watwut 2026-03-168:06 I really think you did not bothered to check how families historically functioned.
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 graemep 2026-03-1610:41 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 carlosjobim 2026-03-1522:272 reply 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 watwut 2026-03-168:14 > 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 lotsofpulp 2026-03-1522:401 reply 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 carlosjobim 2026-03-1523:111 reply 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.
> 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 carlosjobim 2026-03-1610:271 reply 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 lotsofpulp 2026-03-1611:39 >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 Markoff 2026-03-168:21 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
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 jkestner 2026-03-1521:14 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 wisty 2026-03-1521:42 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 MattGaiser 2026-03-1520:17 > 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 tossandthrow 2026-03-1519:56 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 borski 2026-03-1520:33 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.
My parents generation are the most screen addicted people I know. Absolute slaves to Facebook’s algorithm. It’s really disheartening to see.
By atomicnumber3 2026-03-1519:48 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.
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 pndy 2026-03-1519:43 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 parpfish 2026-03-1520:18 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 blakblakarak 2026-03-1518:352 reply 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).
Mine got Israeli propaganda and kept texting me so often about Hamas and Muslims that I had to block him.
By dvh 2026-03-168:16 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.
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 cal_dent 2026-03-160:57 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
