My parents generation are the most screen addicted people I know. Absolute slaves to Facebook’s algorithm. It’s really disheartening to see.
susam 15 minutes ago [-]
Fortunately, I could never get used to the small screens of mobile phones as a serious computing or web browsing device. So my use of my mobile phone is limited to basic tasks like making calls, sending messages, and sometimes, reluctantly typing emails when I don't have a laptop handy.
My primary computing and web browsing device remains my laptop, with Emacs and Firefox being my main tools. One thing that does manage to distract me often is YouTube recommendations. As a result I have written a little userscript for myself to disable shorts and YouTube recommendations: https://github.com/susam/userscripts/blob/main/js/ytx.user.j...
So far the userscript has been successful. As a side effect of disabling the recommendations sidebar, the video panel expands to occupy a larger part of the screen which I quite like. Here is a screenshot: https://susam.github.io/blob/img/userscripts/ytx.png
Also, I still depend heavily on physical textbooks, a rollerball pen and a stack of plain A4 paper for most of my learning and exploration activities. This routine has helped me to stay away from modern attention media too.
serial_dev 1 minutes ago [-]
Screenshot not found.
nicbou 8 minutes ago [-]
Try Unhook (desktop) and Untrap (iOS). At this point, my YouTube experience is just the channels I subscribe to, and the video player. It reduced my usage to almost zero.
I'm not exactly curing cancer, but my media consumption is more moderate and mindful now.
impure 2 minutes 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.
ellyagg 3 minutes ago [-]
My aunt is 80 and thank goodness she has an iPhone. She’s bedridden and spends all day on it. She has no children but I lived with her for a while when I moved out of my parent’s, and we text often.
alansaber 4 minutes ago [-]
Reminds me of Chade and The Skill from the Robin Hobb books
exo762 4 minutes ago [-]
Amazing opportunity! One more demographic to save via age verification laws, which a side dish of reliable personalized advertisement profiles.
Simulacra 27 minutes ago [-]
Maybe a solution is to spend more time with grandparents, so that they have something more than just technology to keep them company.
AngryData 6 minutes ago [-]
As the old saying goes, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink.
toomuchtodo 10 minutes ago [-]
If someone would like to and is willing to make the time, that’s fine, but you don’t owe them this if they are not a good person or worth spending time with imho. Connection and community is earned, not a given. My lived experience is there are some good old people you strive to make time with, some who are fine but I wouldn’t go out of my way to make time for, and some who are just terrible people who are going to die alone because of who they are. Your life experience and decisioning process about how and with whom to spend precious, non renewable time may differ.
Don’t set yourself on fire to keep someone else warm.
p2detar 23 minutes ago [-]
Yes, but no. From personal experience, even around grandchildren, TikTok/FB have precedence. It’s getting sickening and we need to educate our parents about the harm that "the algorithm" causes. I just ask myself whether we are even in the position to do so.
edit: typo
gedy 4 minutes ago [-]
Sure, but I've seen since the 70s old folks just staring at TV all day, so it's not just a mobile phenomenon either.
foobarchu 8 minutes ago [-]
Doesn't always help. My mother (of grandparent age but coincidentally had 5 kids who didn't want to procreate) stares at her phone 95% of the time when I visit. I'll be telling a story and she's on Facebook, doesn't even look up. She's even been called out in it by my sibling who lives with them, to no avail.
Luckily she doesn't fall for right wing propaganda all over the Internet, but she sure does fall for every single piece of Trump rage bait out there.
analog8374 19 minutes ago [-]
I know a lot of old bored retired people.
They need something physical and social. Like softball or something. But compatible with their decripitude.
I hook them up with each other. There are parties.
Still working on the softball part.
Ideas are welcome
rationalist 14 minutes ago [-]
> I hook them up with each other. There are parties.
OnlyGrandparents.com?
(I looked it up, the domain name was registered six days ago!)
rrr_oh_man 7 minutes ago [-]
OnlyGrans.com is available for only $50k
joe_mamba 20 minutes ago [-]
I'd love to. The issue is grandparents are in a town with no jobs ruled by a corrupt government that only steals and embezzles money and provides no benefits to local taxpayers.
There's a reason youth migrate away to live with roommates in overpriced big metro areas. That's where all the white collar jobs are created for college educated people. And everyone in the last 09+ has been groomed to go to collage and take white collar jobs, plus deindustrialization and offshoring of manufacturing jobs. Maybe I'll be a plumber one day and move back to my grandparent place if Claude takes my job, who knows.
chronic20001 24 minutes ago [-]
[flagged]
behringer 20 minutes ago [-]
I said, "I'd like to see you if you don't mind"\
He said, "I'd love to, Dad, if I can find the time\
You see my new job's a hassle and the kids have the flu\
But it's sure nice talking to you, Dad\
It's been sure nice talking to you"\
And as I hung up the phone it occurred to me\
He'd grown up just like me\
My boy was just like me
20 minutes ago [-]
50208 10 minutes ago [-]
Seniors are the most vulnerable people on the internet, the most likely to be fooled by disinformation, the most likely to vote, and are one of the biggest threats to civil society. Boomers are destroying what previous generations have built.
rrr_oh_man 7 minutes ago [-]
> the most likely to vote
Well... who's fault is that.
HNisCIS 5 minutes ago [-]
It's because election day is a weekday and the rest of us have to keep up with the grind. It's entirely because they don't have jobs
ViktorRay 3 minutes ago [-]
Early voting exists in many states. Even in these states you’ll find that younger folks hardly vote.
wortelefant 10 minutes ago [-]
Taking grandmas unpaid care work for granted - no longer possible. Outrage!
Rendered at 18:21:10 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
My primary computing and web browsing device remains my laptop, with Emacs and Firefox being my main tools. One thing that does manage to distract me often is YouTube recommendations. As a result I have written a little userscript for myself to disable shorts and YouTube recommendations: https://github.com/susam/userscripts/blob/main/js/ytx.user.j...
So far the userscript has been successful. As a side effect of disabling the recommendations sidebar, the video panel expands to occupy a larger part of the screen which I quite like. Here is a screenshot: https://susam.github.io/blob/img/userscripts/ytx.png
Also, I still depend heavily on physical textbooks, a rollerball pen and a stack of plain A4 paper for most of my learning and exploration activities. This routine has helped me to stay away from modern attention media too.
I'm not exactly curing cancer, but my media consumption is more moderate and mindful now.
Don’t set yourself on fire to keep someone else warm.
edit: typo
Luckily she doesn't fall for right wing propaganda all over the Internet, but she sure does fall for every single piece of Trump rage bait out there.
They need something physical and social. Like softball or something. But compatible with their decripitude.
I hook them up with each other. There are parties.
Still working on the softball part.
Ideas are welcome
OnlyGrandparents.com?
(I looked it up, the domain name was registered six days ago!)
There's a reason youth migrate away to live with roommates in overpriced big metro areas. That's where all the white collar jobs are created for college educated people. And everyone in the last 09+ has been groomed to go to collage and take white collar jobs, plus deindustrialization and offshoring of manufacturing jobs. Maybe I'll be a plumber one day and move back to my grandparent place if Claude takes my job, who knows.
He said, "I'd love to, Dad, if I can find the time\
You see my new job's a hassle and the kids have the flu\
But it's sure nice talking to you, Dad\
It's been sure nice talking to you"\
And as I hung up the phone it occurred to me\
He'd grown up just like me\
My boy was just like me
Well... who's fault is that.