While much attention is paid to the young, a less-noticed explosion in screen time is happening within a different generation. As today’s 60-somethings, already familiar with digital technology, enter retirement, time spent on smart devices is shooting up among the elderly.
This trend is driven in part by the newly retired, who are among the most enthusiastic adopters of digital gadgets precisely because most have been online since middle age. Their familiarity has led to remarkably high device ownership among this demographic. According to a seven-country survey by GWI, a research firm, over-65s are more likely than under-25s to own tablets, smart TVs, e-readers, and desktop and laptop computers. Seeing this, tech companies have identified oldies as a growing market. All this has led to a situation where screen time among the elderly is growing as device ownership becomes more common.
However, older people face some online risks that other vulnerable groups do not. A key vulnerability is that, unlike most teenagers, their phones and tablets are often directly linked to their bank accounts. This makes them susceptible to financial threats: “Microtransactions” within games—so-called loot boxes and the like—can drain wallets, while fraudsters, who are able to contact and rob their victims within the same app, pose a similar danger. In poor and middle-income countries especially, older people have embraced WhatsApp for everything from communications to shopping, says Dr Vahia—“and WhatsApp is also the platform of choice for scammers as a result.”
Beyond financial threats, alarming and misleading news may be a particular danger to the elderly, who are twice as likely as under-25s to use news apps or websites. A recent paper by Hunt Allcott of Stanford University, and colleagues, underscores this mental health risk: they found that giving up Facebook led to modest improvements in mental health for users of all ages, with the beneficial effect more than twice as large in the older half of their volunteer group as it was among the younger ones.
Yet a boom in screen time among the elderly is by no means all bad. From Zoom-powered church services to online yoga classes and remote book clubs, the connective power of the internet is especially valuable to those who struggle to get out. Professor Bowden-Jones believes that for people forced to stay at home, because they feel unable to get out or because they can no longer drive, the ability to follow pursuits online “is just so wonderful”. Beyond structured activities, messaging apps bring family closer, gaming passes the time, and platforms like Spotify and YouTube serve as nostalgia machines that bring childhood music and video rushing back.
原创编写 版权所有 侵权必究 每日更新 个性化阅读 英语飙升
更多优质学习内容
