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Posted by tartoran 4 hours ago

Grandparents are glued to their phones, families are worried [video](www.bbc.com)
116 points | 73 commentspage 2
kevin061 3 hours ago|
Before smartphones and TikTok it was casino TV at 3AM, TV infomercial shopping, and the like.
impure 3 hours ago||
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.
krackers 3 hours ago||
That makes sense, they haven't "built immunity".
tietjens 3 hours ago||
Can you share some things you were reading?
alwa 1 hour ago|||
Not OP, and I’ve been looking at more meta-analyses than RCTs, but:

* 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.

impure 1 hour ago|||
This is the one I read: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266656032... which says how older participants benefit more from restricting social media use.
gcanyon 3 hours ago||
Time to sign off HN, I guess :-)

On a serious note YT shorts are on my radar for "things I spend too much time on that deliver minimal value."

hsuduebc2 2 hours ago|
In my opinion it's best from short content feed out there but it's still useless. Too much AI slop in there. Needles to say I did get some interesting creators in there but I believe people I'm searching for are using YouTube as long videos platform and do not properly use the short term format.
pcblues 2 hours ago||
"But is this shift actually worth worrying about? Or are younger people just projecting their own anxieties about screen time onto their parents and grandparents?"

False dichotomies can either be the worst thing that happened to humankind or a pathway to a new way of understanding each other.

alansaber 3 hours ago||
Reminds me of Chade and The Skill from the Robin Hobb books
hsuduebc2 2 hours ago||
I must admit. My parents we're right the whole time. Staring at the screen for a whole day is truly unhealthy and they should go to play outside instead.

This whole thing is beyond ironic.

HackerThemAll 2 hours ago||
Old people are wonderful relays from paid trolls and propaganda to their peers, unwittingly spreading and amplifying lies and political agenda in social media. They're often retired, having entire days at their disposal, wasting them on forwarding sh*t back and forth.
exo762 3 hours ago||
Amazing opportunity! One more demographic to save via age verification laws, with a side dish of reliable personalized advertisement profiles.
nolist_policy 3 hours ago||
Wait till you see the grandparents glued to the TV.
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