Older people can be just as bad as young ones about phone addiction and poor habits let alone manners
My mother was constantly on her phone playing games or scrolling social media/TikTok/YouTube. Even when her favorite shows were on she barely paid any attention.
My mom used to knit during shows, and either miss a plot point, or lose count of a stitch and have to unravel stuff.
For movies, she was notorious for falling asleep and getting upset that we finished watching it anyway.
Lol my grandma had phone additiction long before smart phones. Watching TV before steaming really sucked with her in room.
Not that I’m in any position to speak for an entire generation but I feel like a lot of Gen Z also can’t understand why Gen Z can’t put their phones down and watch TV like a normal person.
My boomer parents are looking at two screens 24/7. Either TV + tablet or tablet + phone or tv + tablet
Bonus points when I call them and they don’t answer because they say they didn’t have their phone with them
Are you my sibling?!
“tiktok will ruin your attention span”
Flips between channels every 20 seconds muttering about how there’s nothing good on
Watch older tv and you realize how much time is dedicated in many shows to recapping what happened three minutes ago before the commercial break.
3 minute commercial break? So like TV from 60s?
Last I heard the average sitcom comes in at 16 minutes for a 30 minute block.
I haven’t really watched made for broadcast tv since, say, 2008 and House episodes are about 42:00, 6 breaks, 3 min each. Maybe it’s longer, fewer breaks. But I’m sure it’s trashier now.
I got curious and did some quick searching. Looks like it depends greatly on the content and network with dramas usually having shorter breaks than sitcoms. The Big Bang Theory for instance averaged 17 minutes apparently.
One interesting factoid I found was that The Wizard of Oz, which is 101 minutes long, took up a 120 minute block in the 60s unedited but a 180 minute block today with edits to make it shorter.
Gen Z is gravitating towards analog. It’s the boomers who are addicted.
My first thought as well. My parents and in-laws are constantly on screens while watching TV.
I know plenty of Boomers who are additcetd to their smartphones. Even more so than the younger generations. Some even have the TV on in the background while doomscrolling.
Correction: boomscrolling 😁
😀
And I’m a (late) millennial and spend most of my time at home neither on my phone nor TV, but my laptop computer (connected to two external monitors).
I got my first own computer when I was 10 and ever since then, using the computer has been my “default” activity when I’m at home. Smartphones came after that and didn’t change that, I still prefer big screens with a keyboard and mouse if I have them, mainly use my smartphone when I’m not at home.
I’m the same way. Phone usually sits at the desk by the door. I’m also almost able to convince myself I’m better than others due to not having a “smartphone addiction” as if it makes a difference which screen I’m staring at.
No such thing as “smartphone addiction” anyway. Not liking boredom is a fairly normal human instinct and the fact that we can now at almost all times use smartphones to get rid of boredom is a good thing. Quick reminder that “Internet addiction” started out as a satirical concept. Addiction is normally about substance use, maybe gambling; calling all hobbies or habits “addictions” completely devalues the concept.
Digital technology can be used for so many different things in so many different ways that it’s completely stupid to demonize it in general. I acknowledge that watching a steady stream of short videos (on TikTok or similar) for hours isn’t a very productive way to spend one’s time, but there are so many other things that can be done on screens!
So the definition of addiction is a repeated behavior that you know is causing your problems and you know you should stop but you can’t make yourself stop. Internet addiction is absolutely not a joke and never was. It doesn’t devalue the concept at all. That’s what it is. Addiction often ties in with substance dependence, but not necessarily.
That said, a lot of people do misuse the word addiction, if you use the phone a lot but it’s not causing problems in your then it’s not addiction.
Actually, boomers are some of the most phone-addicted people I come in contact with 🤷♂️
Gen-X quietly in the corner, remembering how they watched TV a lot too, but also mostly got kicked out of the house to play outside and “don’t come back in until dark”.
Edit to emphasize this wasn’t necessarily a choice we made for ourselves. Boomers (and the Silent Gen before them) wanted their peace from the kids, so we were on our own. Good and bad points to that kind of character building.
So much TV. Mostly UHF on Saturday mornings until cable came along.
My parents said I was addicted to TV. So they told me I was allowed to watch 4 hours a week and I could pick the programs I wanted to watch from the TV magazine.
Turned out that this just meant I could watch the shows I wanted instead of them switching them off. I only had 3 favourite shows, I never watched anything else anyway.
Millennial here: don’t come back until dark wasn’t exclusive to GenX.
Yeah, it didn’t really fade out until into the '90s.
To play devil’s advocate; being on your phone is an isolating activity, while watching the TV is generally more communal, and was especially so in the era in which Boomers have spent most of their life.
Millenials and most Gen Z have shows that everyone watched growing up, but that’s going away increasingly, with on-demand streaming and customized feeds replacing the latter. I think it’s a very obvious culprit of why young people today struggle to talk to one another.
I am Gen Z.
This. For better or worse people would gather to watch a show at a particular time and day. It often turned into much more of a social event than a let’s watch this show event. A thirty minute show was a several hour gathering of people. Laughing, eating, having a good time.
You cannot replicate that using a phone.
And you could talk about it the next day with your friends in school.
A lot less choice and everyone watched the same things.
The experience can only be compared to a football final these days.
Millennial here, I got (and sometimes still get) my fair-share of bashing for spending way too much time on the computer. Some were concerned that I will be unable to talk with other people about the series currently running on the TV (!), although early on they mourned the “football star” I was supposed to become, with my late stepmother not really giving up on that until she thought instead I could be the next Zuckerberg (TL;DR: she originally hated computers because they crashed and she also read an article on the Columbine shooting once, but changed her mind once Facebook came out).
I’ve just never been able to connect with people, by talking inanely about reality shows or football. Woe is me.
I think they crave shared experience, the social activity of watching together, of picking something that everyone wants to watch.
I miss it too, except I never wanted to watch what they wanted to watch. I couldn’t do it either.
Now I just miss them.
Boomer here (cusp between boomer & gen x): Why not both put down the phone AND turn off the TV?
I have a TV but pretty much only turn it on for local news & weather. I absolutely can’t tolerate the ads and there are no good shows anyway except a few on PBS. I use a flip phone. I won’t call it a ‘dumb’ phone because it’s still android underneath and has navigation. But no internet.
Of course that doesn’t stop me from sitting on my ass in front of a computer on the internet, but at least I’m not doing that 24/7 and have other things for entertainment like books, games, hobbies.
edit: not to imply I speak for other boomers. Most of them are on their smartphones all the time, getting notifications every 5 seconds like everyone else.
Boomers grew up in the 40s and 50s. 60s a little. Television had three channels and you watched when the broadcast was happening. That was it. There was already a long history of non-TV activities to do.
Today with phones and telecommunications everywhere, along with “I can consume whatever content I want to any time at my whim”, is an entirely different landscape.
I wish the media environment was as basic as it was in the 50s.
I disagree with you, but you’re right
In the worst case Boomer can’t even remember how we watch TV in the 90s which was exactly the same way but without our phone. We didn’t watch TV scotched to the screen like people like to think, there’s a reason why ads are blaring noise like a fucking bombing alarm now.
