Social media addiction affecting boomers, BBC hears
BBC News
Social media addiction affecting older people, BBC hears
From "endless scroll" to beating loneliness, experts and users discuss how boomers use social media.
Unsurprising to anyone around boomers. Grandma asks Gemini everything. Dad scrolls shorts all day. Grandpa rage posts on Facebook.
Then you talk to them about real life shit and they act like they understand, but how could they understand when they haven’t been present for years? Their opinions and beliefs are no longer based in reality. They say stupid out of touch shit and have absolutely no hobbies anymore. The disconnect between me and my parents and grandparents makes me physically sick and there’s legitimately no amount of effort I can put in that would get any of them to stop… Because it’s addictive as fuck.
For fucks sake any time I’m with my dad he’s just scrolling short videos and laughing/making comments trying to bring everyone else into what he’s watching and holy shit it’s legitimately the most annoying fucking thing. Put your fucking phone down and experience real life. YOU think it’s so awesome because they know EXACTLY what you like but nobody else fucking cares.
I see everyone around me mentally degrading because of this shit and I’m feeling worried. It makes me feel like I need to make a Facebook account just to fill their feeds with less slop but I deleted my Facebook 10 years ago. I don’t know how else to get through to them. If anyone has ideas that’ve worked on their family, lmk. Rant over.
this sounds like everyone i meet. except… they are not boomers. they are millennials.
and when i say i like doing stuff in real life they get very confused and often angry.
and if i say ‘lets go to a movie’ they say ‘it’s too long and hard to pay attention’. and if i say I like to read, they tell me I’m weird and pretentious.
and they can’t hold a conversation on topic for more than like a minute or two. and then when I don’t want to interact with them anymore… they tell me I’m the problem.
I used to actually kinda like talking to my co-workers and people my age… now I just hate it. Because everyone’s brain is destroyed, everything is instant gratification echo chamber nonsense or anxiety-fueled social comparison.
and when I go on social media… I am just repulsed confused how anyone could enjoy the endless slop it serves up, and often turned off by people to the point I just block them. I’d rather remain ignorant than look at their try hard posts about how happy and wonderful their life is… because when you talk to them IRL they are anxious and depressed.
God, I’ve seen so much of this.
Only reason I’m commenting is the movie thing, cause the “hard to pay attention” is wild to me, even as someone with severe ADHD.
I don’t like going to, or sitting down for, movies most of the time because of dermatillomania (warning on images there) secondary to my ADHD resulting in me usually creating entirely new holes in my fingers/hands absentmindedly while I’m watching. There’s a secondary ADHD “itch” due to the drive for spontenaeity, but I get hooked easily on what I’m watching once I do – it’s more of a “but I could be working on X project or something” thought, but then I’ll sit and watch a 2 hour episode of Dimension 20 with no distractions like it’s nothing.
I just… I don’t get how people could pivot to being so short-attention-spanned they don’t want anything like that. Those of us with ADHD are very used to how short attention spans feel, but they’re almost never that short. What the hell.
Eh, I think it’s probably movie dependent.
Example:
I recently watched Project Hail Mary and The Odyssey more or less back to back with family. PHM, I was climbing the walls halfway through thinking holy shit when will this be over, The Odyssey I was engaged the whole time. Both movies are approaching three hours. One of them is a good movie, and the other one is not.
Folk on Facebook are a lost cause. They have lost their minds, beyond redemption. Meta needs to be absolutely hoofed into the ether.
I feel you and your frustrations, same for me on all accounts. Mom wonders why I don’t visit often but then sits there on Facebook the entire time.
I tried to fight it online, you won’t win. Their algorithms bury your stuff, your comments get the stupid laughing emoji, it’s not worth it. Plus it just starts to suck you in so it’s a lose lose.
The only thing that helps is getting them off their phones. There’s no silver bullet there, but simply disconnecting them somehow. Starting a hobby with them, or hiking, or something that isn’t being in their phones. If you ban phones you’re the villain so be careful, but you can do things that are less phone involved. When they’re not memorized by their phones they come back a little.
Hardcode the DNS for social media to 127.0.0.1 on the router lmao. Nothing to lose.
My dad already has “WiFi issues” and isn’t even on the network most of the time, just uses 5G. I think it’s because my pihole blocks ads on his phone games that give him rewards… Sigh…
Oh wow, the people who consistently vote conservative are addicted to platforms owned by billionaires which constantly spew disinformation and create echo chambers by design. There’s probably nothing more to look into, there.
Its across the board… super popular with everyone around me. Feels like almost every day someone is trying to show me some TikTok Insta nothing of a video where its just some words with a person dancing in the background talking about how mad drive thrus make them or a rescue kitten. I watch my wife randomly get super passionate about incredibly specific topics like some murder from 1998 or a new product that totally solves some problem we never had until then and inevitably when I ask about it yep, Instagram story. Depression + fear + a stream of bullshit to sell seems to be a winning formula and I’m just so fucking tired.
Yeah no shit. Boomers fucking love Facebook.
This one doesn’t.
Almost as much as under-45s love tiktok
This one doesn’t.
What, 45? Like, people who saw that shit start when they were well into their thirties? Is that a thing?
Feels very late to hop on that bandwagon.
Yup. I’ve had to tell more coworkers in their early 40s than I’d care to admit, and 2 women I’ve dated, to stop sending me tiktok links
That…seems like an awfully expansive definition of addiction.
I’d bet that an awful of us here use the Threadiverse at least once a week.
And define “use”. My father “uses” Facebook at least once a week for marketplace. That is pretty much the extent of his social media presence. Even if he checked it daily, he’s not addicted in any way.
TIL I’m addicted to my banking app.
Also, only 50%?
I think this is also tied to a decline in mental faculties. My mom had dementia and I had to dig her out of various situations, like having multiple car warranties, and destroying her inbox by clicking on literally anything. She hit a point where the gates that would validate or invalidate a decision vanished entirely. If a salesperson came to her door, the chances they left without landing a sale were slim to none. They just had to be charismatic and sound positive. It’s the reason she got stuck with one of those whole-house water softeners.
I think AI slop hits similarly. It’s made to tap into their most basic hooks. Religion, family, cute stuff, etc. Their brain drives past any of the gates that we have where we ask why anyone would watch this over actual videos of animals, people, etc. They’re a deer in headlights being entertained by the rudimentary dopamine hits, while all of the technical details go over their heads.
Wait, what other kind of water softener is there? Maybe it’s just because I live in an area where our water is practically more limestone than water, but I’ve only ever heard of whole house water softener.
As far as the rest of your comment. My experience is slightly different. I have several older relatives who have no known mental issues who have the same issues as your mom. But on the other hand my dad who doesn’t use social media because he has MS and it makes it hard for him to type, is still sharp as a whip when it comes to spotting scams. He’s pretty tech illiterate but he can still easily spot and ignore dogey emails and links. It seems almost like social media has conditioned most boomers to be more likely to fall for scams. Of course corolation doesn’t imply causation. Maybe it’s just that more scam savvy people are more likely to recognize most social media as being a scam so they don’t use it.
I imagine she’s in a place where a water softener isn’t needed. Or if someone is particularly picky, a filter or something for drinking water and maybe cooking water.
Under-sink and showerhead units.
Are you thinking water heater or filter? Because I’ve never seen a water softener that can fit under a sink or on a showerhead. Unless you’re talking about phosphate feeder cartridges but those don’t actually soften water they just help keep limescale from sticking.
www.homedepot.com/p/…/330537478
Can’t speak to how well it works, I just know it exists.
It’s unfortunate.
One has to consider that your boomer parents and family members are at this point literally living in a different reality, because functionally, that’s what these big social media sites with algorithmically-weighted content do. They present a reality that keeps people’s eyes glued to the screen, often by convincing them whatever dumb shit they believe is correct but also keeping them perpetually outraged, and all to buy cheap garbage produced in Indonesia or something.
Lets ban social media for them as well! And then for the rest of us too! Then at least we can stop with the age verification…
Limited to boomers? Isn’t it affecting a whole lot more many demographics ?
yeah, but boomers are an easier target.
They certainly fall for a lot of crap but younger generations will likely accrue more damage over time since they have been exposed to the crap earlier. Boomers likely experienced boredom and books a tad more than those of in their twenties today :(
Yes the men literally type nice rack on their cousins photos.
The people sharing the dumbest shit with you on Whatsapp are affected? … …what…nooo!
I’m not addicted. I can quit anytime I want.
Oh, the solution is pretty easy: Ban social media access for this vulnerable group! If it works with kids, it should work with other endangered members of society, too! Won’t it?
My tech illiterate mom is now supporting far right parties in local area, thinks that our country needs to be friends with Russians, scrolls tiktok and tells us always to consult chatgpt.
I can understand most of it but all together this is getting rediculous. She can’t answer the question: “How do you think our country can be friends with Russia if Russia constantly blames us for trying to destroy them from inside by applying European values?” too much propaganda on tiktok ig…
Sidenote: she’s tech illiterate because she doesn’t read prompts her phone gives her in her own mother language, clicks some random buttons and always asks me why things do not work. All that instead of just pausing for a sec when prompt appears and read it through to understand what buttons do.
The same people who told us not to believe everything we see or hear…
Yeah, what a shame /s
they are obsessed with AI videos. an older couple i know, solely watches AI asian movie videos now.
Oh that’s a thing. Never seen the Asian movie videos
specificaly AI generated chinese “drama videos”
This was written in 2026?. For almost 20 years everyone 50+ has been hanging out on facebook, Everywhere I’ve worked in different places across the country, from coast to coast the older people never shut up about facebook topics and the charlie bit the finger kinda meme’s .They are much more grounded in social media than any other age using for the most part, they personally know the people they are scrolling feeds on and talking to.
Unlike the rest of us using sites like reddit, lemmy, and the likes. We spend our days interacting with strangers and the majority are just cleverly disguised AI at this point. Completely manipulating our reality, then we run to youtube and have 95% of our videos being ad’s disguised to be genuine content that impacts our sites, apps and hardware choices, news, and political opinions to the point there is only 2 far sides to the spectrum and no one can be even remotely close to the center anymore.
I think the old people are doing quite alright in this age of easily accessible addictive doomscrolling, especially when you think anyone 50+ today was only in thier 30’s and 40’s when smart phones came out
boomers are 70+
gen x is 50s/60s
millennial is 30s/40s
gen z is 20s and late teens
alpha is under 15.