The Most Screen Addicted Generation Is Not Who You Think

We worry endlessly about children and screens. Toddlers glued to tablets. Teenagers scrolling into the early hours. Attention spans shrinking. Dopamine fried brains. The concern feels constant and justified.

The problem is that we might be worrying about the wrong people.

Quietly and without much alarm, older adults have become the most screen heavy generation in society. Not because they were raised on devices, but because the digital world finally arrived at the right moment in their lives.

For years, older people were described as digitally behind. Smartphones felt optional. Social media felt confusing. The internet was something you used when necessary rather than something you lived inside. That gap has disappeared. Today’s retirees were already online in middle age. Email, search engines, social platforms, streaming services. They did not arrive late. They adapted gradually and comfortably.

As access increased, so did time spent. Television viewing among people in their fifties and sixties has stayed fairly stable over the past decade. What changed is everything layered on top of it. Social media. Mobile games. Messaging apps. Audio streaming. Endless news cycles. When traditional television is combined with digital screen use, people of retirement age now spend more time in front of screens than young adults do.

In countries where digital adoption is most advanced, concern is starting to follow. Studies have begun to flag rising rates of problematic smartphone use among older adults. What once sounded like a teenage issue is no longer age specific. Habit does not care how old you are.

The risks are not identical across generations, but they are real. Young people face external limits, at least in theory. Parents, teachers, schedules, rules. Older adults often do not. Retirement brings freedom, but also long stretches of unstructured time. Screens fill gaps easily. Self regulation becomes harder when days blur together.

Misinformation adds another layer. Many older users enter online spaces without the digital instincts younger people develop early. Algorithms do not care whether confusion comes from innocence or malice. When older adults are misled, the consequences ripple outward through families, communities, and public life.

None of this means rising screen time among the elderly is purely negative. In many cases, it has been quietly transformative.

Video calls keep families connected across distance. Online exercise classes support mobility. Digital communities reduce isolation. Virtual religious services, book clubs, and hobby groups create belonging where geography once limited it. For many older adults, the internet has expanded life rather than narrowed it.

There is also something useful in this generational overlap. When grandparents and grandchildren share digital habits, it becomes easier to talk honestly about trade offs. Less moral panic. More perspective. New technologies always trigger fear when they arrive. When they spread across age groups, that fear tends to soften into understanding.

The real question is not whether screens are good or bad. It is whether we are paying attention to how they shape behaviour at every stage of life.

If society is going to worry about screen time, it might be time to worry a little less about children and a little more about grandparents.

Not because one group matters more than the other, but because the story has changed.