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?!
This isn’t really a shower thought. It’s more of a shower opinion.
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.
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.
My grandma is addicted to porn on her phone she just constantly goons.
You walk into her room at the nursing house and her fingers are wrinkly like she just got out of the bath and it smells like day old tuna salad.
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 😁
😀
I’m GenX and I honestly can’t stand to watch ads anymore, they’re all so stupid and I feel like I’ve put in my damn time already with the ads. I suppose that’s why most ads are aimed at younger people until they want to start selling you catheters.
millennial here, I absolutely hate ads with such a passion that I will go very far out of my way to block ads. I’ve side loaded a YouTube alternative onto my TV to avoid ads. My parents (boomers) have no problem paying for xm radio and still being advertised to!
Gen Z here. I haven’t seen an ad that wasn’t a billboard or of my own volition for over a year. VHS ads don’t really count though so take that as you will.
Yeah same here, my Mom will actually DVR stuff and not skip through the ads lol. WTF.
DVRs still exist?
Yes but it’s really only boomers who still have cable and use them.
Plex and Jellyfin are DVRs. They just do other things too.
Surprisingly yes although I suspect they will phase them out real soon since you can skip ads. The only way to watch the show again will be on demand, which they put ads all over now. There are a few movie channels that offer ad free, but unless you pay through the nose the only way to avoid ads is to pirate things.
I havent used an actual TV for regular broadcasting in about 25 years, so my experience of ads has been targeted bullshit about buying lawnmowers when I already bought one, and eat this ONE WEIRD FRUIT to half CANCER RISK.
I miss the adverts on cartoon network. Im tired of being an adult. Tell me more about that RC Car that sticks to walls. Show me the slushy maker again.
Right. Advertise cool shit. Not corpo crap. Liberty, Applebee’s, some pharmaceutical called wongfelloffwizi
My cell phone has literally all notifications turned off.
Silent always. Never a pesky red dot telling me where to tap. Never a push notification reminding me that I should reconsider using something I obviously don’t need.
Yess… DND for life :D
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.
“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.
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.
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 life then it’s not addiction.
Because TV is boring as hell most of the times and majority of it is ads which cant be blocked.
At least with phone i have to move my thumbs or put a little taught into how to express myself.
Standard TV is just a complete mind numbing existence. It’s pretty much equal to just being in a coma. Even sleeping is better, at least the body is recovering at that time. Standard TV is one of the worst ways to consume data garbage.
Of course there are good movies and documentaries, but those are a minority.
Actually, boomers are some of the most phone-addicted people I come in contact with 🤷♂️
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
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.
Millennial here: don’t come back until dark wasn’t exclusive to GenX.
Yeah, it didn’t really fade out until into the '90s.
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.
I’ve never seen someone panic when the internet went down as my 72yo mother
Or my 83-year old mother in law. Most of the stuff that happens happens because she doesn’t read. She’ll just blindly click.
