Are Your Parents Addicted to Their Screens?

Are your parents addicted to their phone? In this episode of Galaxy Brain, Charlie Warzel explores how technology is affecting an older generation of adults. Instead of a phone-based childhood, Warzel suggests, we may be witnessing the emergence of a phone-based retirement—one shaped by isolation, algorithmic feeds, and platforms never designed with aging users in mind. To untangle whether this is a genuine crisis or a misplaced moral panic, Warzel speaks with Ipsit Vahia, chief of geriatric psychiatry at Mass General Brigham’s McLean Hospital in Massachusetts and a leading researcher on technology and aging. Vahia emphasizes that older adults are anything but a single category, and that screen use can be both protective and harmful depending on context. The key, Vahia argues, is resisting reflexive judgment. Ultimately, this is an issue not of screens versus humans, but of how families navigate connection in a world where attention is mediated by devices in every age group. Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to Pulitzer-winning journalism, from clear-eyed analysis and insight on breaking news to fascinating explorations of our world. Atlantic subscribers also get access to exclusive subscriber audio in Apple Podcasts. Subscribe today at TheAtlantic.com/Listener. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:19Speaker 01

  Do you want to hear about visionaries creating a better world? People working in conservation, exploration, science and tech alongside storytellers imagining and creating a better future. I'm Alex Honnold, professional rock climber and founder of the Honnold Foundation, bringing you season six of Planet Visionaries. This season, I speak to guests like National Geographic photographer Tom Pescek and Anna Rappam, executive director of the Jane Goodall Institute, USA, in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. Watch Planet Visionaries on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:49Speaker 02

  You're, don't go, you're spending too much time on the phone. Instead, perhaps ask, what are you watching on your phone? What apps are you into? This is what I do with my phone. You could use their phone use as a conversation starter, as a way to meet them where they are, as a way to perhaps enter their world rather than expecting them to, to jump straight into your world. And, you know, it can just be the basis of strengthening connection rather than breaking it.

• 1:29Charlie Warzel?

  I'm Charlie Weirzell, and this is Galaxy Brain. About a year ago, around the holidays, I began to hear a similar complaint. People were heading home, often with their kids in tow, to be with family. It was there that they noticed that their parents, or grandparents, or older relatives were behaving differently.

• 1:52Charlie Warzel?

  Broadly, the complaint was that their older loved ones seemed consumed by their devices, constantly on TikTok or Instagram or Facebook, watching vertical reel videos. Sometimes, they said, they found it hard to hold a conversation. In multiple instances, people reported that some of these adults seemed to not pay much attention to their grandchildren. Most of the people that I spoke to recognized it pretty quickly. It was the same thing they'd seen in their own kids. A screen time problem. So naturally, I was curious. I wanted to get a sense of the scale of this. So I asked around on social media. I got dozens of responses over the year, from young people, from older people, lots

• 2:37Charlie Warzel?

  of people. Some older folks, they wrote in to tell me that they felt bad about how much time they were beginning to spend on social media. Others told me they'd found joy in the process and that there was no problem and I was overhyping it. But many confirmed the anecdotes. Some feared that their loved ones were growing depressed or anxious as a result of a problematic relationship with their screens. Others worried about older relatives falling victim to scams. Almost all of them, though, stressed that this felt like an emergent phenomenon, something that had popped up since the pandemic. I heard stories like this one from Josh.

• 3:17Speaker 04

  It's super interesting to watch my kids and my dad interact in the same space. With my kids, they love screens. They'll spend an hour most mornings watching Blue or Sesame Street or something, but when it's off, they generally switch gears. They'll go bike, they'll do gymnastics, they'll play board games, they engage with the world around them. My dad, on the other hand, is constantly glued to his screen. He's reading the news, he's scrolling through his email. With my dad, there is no off switch. When we look at photos from his trips to see us, they show the kids engaging with their grandma, playing games, being silly, while grandpa's in the background, playing a game as I've had.

• 3:52Charlie Warzel?

  Or this one from Kim.

• 3:53Speaker 05

  I'm 55. I have tween, twin girls. I worry a lot and spend a lot of time controlling their screen time.

• 4:07Speaker 05

  And it's kind of a joke. Because if they saw the amount of screen time that I have in a day, it is way more.

• 4:18Charlie Warzel?

  Kyle worries about what his parents are seeing.

• 4:21Speaker 06

  It's really tricky to talk to my parents about anything news related. Uh, my parents are both, you know, they're very intelligent. They're thoughtful people, but media literacy is a problem for them in a way that it isn't for my teenage kids, who were kind of raised with an understanding of the dynamics of digital content. I mean, we all spend our days staring at screens, but the screens that my parents are staring at is this really toxic combination of Facebook and Fox News. So it gives them these distorted views of things, you know, like Portland is violent. New York City is super dangerous. Immigrants are selling fentanyl to school kids. Isn't Mom Dunny anti-Semitic? You know, that kind of thing. And it's hard to break through that information bubble.

• 5:04Speaker 06

  I'll call my mom out sometimes for sharing disinformation online. But like, how do you tell your mom she's participating in a Russian disinformation campaign? I sound like the crazy person in that conversation.

• 5:16Charlie Warzel?

  But perhaps the most affecting one came from a nurse in the United Kingdom, who told me what she sees in her ward.

• 5:22Speaker 07

  I'm a nurse in the UK, working in an inpatient ward. Most of our patients are in the 50 plus age group. And the majority have smartphones or iPads. When you're stuck as a patient in the hospital, a lot of the time you're bored or lonely or both. That can mean loads of really excessive screen time. It's probably the 50 to 75 age group I'm most worried about. Because they're tech savvy enough to be where they want to be online, but they're not necessarily media literate. They might not recognize harms or understand how algorithms funnel consumption in certain directions. Some of it is fairly benign, like being obsessed with fake AI animal stuff or compilation videos of babies. And sometimes it's actually been pretty funny, like when folk end up

• 6:06Speaker 07

  in an autoplay cul-de-sac of Chinese language videos. But I do think the negative effects of excessive scrolling are bleeding through more, mostly in the anti-immigration stuff we hear and the conspiracy thinking, medical distrust, too.

• 6:21Charlie Warzel?

  These testimonies struck me in part because they sound quite a lot like the concerns voiced for years by parents about children and devices. In the last decade plus, there have been endless panics, many warranted and others less borne out by the evidence about children and screens, that their young minds are being influenced or warped by devices designed to take advantage of them. In most cases, screen panics position children as defenseless, even agentless. They're confronting this force that's powerful enough to cause problematic behaviors among their underdeveloped minds. But now it seems the problem exists on the opposite side of the age spectrum. Data suggests there's a reason people might be noticing this more now, because more people

• 7:06Charlie Warzel?

  are aging into a retirement era with more fluency with smartphones and tablets and social media. On YouTube, for example, older people are among the platform's fastest-growing demographic. And it's possible that the pandemic and the attendant isolation accelerated all this adoption, from rideshare apps to Zoom. The confluence here seems very real. Older individuals may have extra time, and they may be more socially isolated than other demographics, and they're seeing their retirement era just collide with this extremely powerful algorithmic world of social networks, apps, on-demand streaming services, and even the arrival of generative AI. These are things that confound people of all age groups.

• 7:48Charlie Warzel?

  But older people are not by any means a monolith. And technological tools are very clearly lifelines for aging people, as well as tools that can bring great joy, information, help them live full and creative lives. This is really complicated issues, and so I wanted to speak with an expert and find the perfect guest here. Dr. Ybsit Vahia is the chief of geriatric psychiatry at Mass General's McLean Hospital. He's the director of its technology and aging laboratory, and he's been studying this phenomenon and, more importantly, working with patients in clinical settings. He joins me now to talk about all of this. But first, a quick break.

• 8:32Speaker 00

  If you're trying to get news today, you'll find a lot of biased algorithms, rage bait and AI noise. Thanks, social media. That's where Inpress comes in. It's a social platform on top of factual journalism, not the other way around. Track your reading and earn points. It's like Strava for your brain. Plus, you can connect with other users in your city who share your genuine curiosity. Ditch the echo chamber for reality with Inpress. Download it today for iOS or Android at inpress.app. That's I, N as in news nerd, press.

• 9:06Speaker 01

  Do you want to hear about visionaries creating a better world? People working in conservation, exploration, science and tech alongside storytellers imagining and creating a better future. I'm Alex Honnold, professional rock climber and founder of the Honnold Foundation, bringing you season six of Planet Visionaries. This season, I speak to guests like National Geographic photographer Tom Peszek and Anna Rattman, executive director of the Jane Goodall Institute, USA, in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. Watch Planet Visionaries on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 9:44Charlie Warzel?

  Dr. Vaia, welcome to Galaxy Brain.

• 9:47Speaker 02

  Thank you for having me. Delighted to be here.

• 9:49Charlie Warzel?

  So you head up the Technology and Aging Laboratory at McLean Hospital. Can you tell me what you all do there?

• 9:56Speaker 02

  Sure. So it's a clinical research laboratory that's focused on understanding the way older adults use technology and then also leveraging technology in a clinical setting with older adults with dementia or other mental health challenges. So we have a broad, broad range of areas in which we do research. This includes early diagnostics, technologies for monitoring and supporting clinical decision making, but then also developing interventions using tech.

• 10:28Charlie Warzel?

  So how did, how did you get into this line of work, especially working with people on the, you know, the, the furthest side of the, of the age spectrum there?

• 10:40Speaker 02

  There's actually an origin story there. When I was a trainee, uh, it was when smartphones first came about. And I remember this incident very specifically. It was the year two thousand and nine. I was a trainee in um, in California. And my wife and I were out for dinner with uh, with friends and we had a four-year-old child in tow. And, and he was doing what, what four-year-olds do. He was boisterous and, and I saw a simple thing again. This is circa two thousand and nine, so this is quite common now. But in two thousand and nine, I had never seen this before, where my friend took out his smartphone and gave it to his child and the child was engaged with it. And we didn't hear a peep from him. We made it to four courses of dinner, glass of wine even.

• 11:26Charlie Warzel?

  Very, very common now.

• 11:27Speaker 02

  Now it's, now it's default. But back then, the, the, the thing that it, it really made me think about was that if this engagement with the screen could sort of stabilize the behavior of a child, could it do the same for someone that was, you know, functioning at the level of a child, which is to say someone with dementia? Could we use these devices to engage them? Could we use these devices to reduce agitation? A little after that, when iPads came out, there was a different incident. Uh, so when I was working on the inpatient unit, we had a routine. And the routine would be that every morning started out with everyone gathering in the community area. And we would just read from the newspaper.

• 12:12Speaker 02

  And this was intended to sort of create the sense of community or shared activity that brought everyone together. It also let us assess how people did in that group setting because it's a predictor of how they might do when they were on the outside. Now, on the morning that I was supposed to lead the meeting, the newspaper never showed up. It was stolen, lost, we don't know. Uh, but this was when iPads had just come out and I happened to have a personal iPad with me. And an interesting thing happened that morning where in the absence of the newspaper, I was able to pull out the newspaper's website and, on the iPad. And, and we kind of went through the same exercise, but now it was digital. And what happened was someone raised their hand and asked me that can you access only the,

• 12:57Speaker 02

  the San Diego Union Tribune? I was training at UC San Diego, so that was the local paper. And I said, well, no, I can access any newspaper that has a website. Now, this was a Monday morning. And it was a very specific question. He said, I'm from Pittsburgh. Can you tell me what they're saying about the Steelers game last evening? And and so I did, I was able to pull up the column and we talked about that. When this happened, another person raised their hand. And he's like, well, that's great. I'm from St. Louis. Can you find out what they're saying about the Rams last evening? And so I was able to do that. And now suddenly everyone was asking not for this one size fits all newspaper reading.

• 13:40Speaker 02

  But they were able to get what was most important to them. And that was sort of the other big moment where I realized that you could, you know, with this device that we already had figured out engages people. We could also personalize the intervention. And and in many ways, it was not about the tech at all. It was about what the tech made possible. And there's a difference because I think to this day, some of the way we think about this is about the tech. But but I've always thought about technology as a conduit to problem solving and an intervention. So as a clinician, the thing that we anchor our work around is what is the patient need or what is the clinical problem?

• 14:20Speaker 02

  And then think about, is the technology we have before us able to solve some of these? And and that served us well. I think that served us well.

• 14:29Charlie Warzel?

  So tell me a little bit about you work with this elderly population. You're working on these types of interventions. You're also deeply attuned to the way that they use and interact with technology.

• 14:47Charlie Warzel?

  Broadly speaking, how would you classify how people on this side of the age spectrum are using technology? Are they a monolith? Are they extremely different and varied? How how would you describe, you know, the the elderly's interactions with with technology?

• 15:06Speaker 02

  Thanks for that question. I think I think that's the question that really gets at the heart of it all. So so I think if our listeners learn exactly one thing from this entire podcast, it should be that that.

• 15:20Speaker 02

  Older adults are probably the most heterogeneous group of all the age groups. And, and we don't always think of it that way, right? We think of the elderly as this one monolithic entity. I love your use of that word. Uh, and nothing could be farther from the truth. Uh, so if you pause and just think about this for a second, we think of everyone over sixty five as part of this one block, right? We have, you know, we have infants and then we have toddlers and then we have pre K kids and then we have elementary school and, and, and we're quite sophisticated in the way we compartmentalize people across the age span. But then we get to age about sixty five and they're all seen as this one block.

• 16:02Speaker 02

  So in the elderly group, if we consider people in their nineties and people in their sixties, these people are thirty years apart. And if you've seen and understood one older adult's use of technology, you've really seen and understood one older adult's use of technology.

• 16:18Charlie Warzel?

  Yeah.

• 16:19Speaker 02

  And I think, I think this overgeneralization, um, does not serve us well, which is not to say that, that, that there is not truth in the data. I think older adults as a whole do use less technology. Uh, but it varies quite a bit by age cohort. So, you know, eighty year olds may not be quite as digitally literate around apps or mobile phones, but sixty year olds assuredly are, are very proficient as a group. There's exceptions, obviously, on both hands.

• 16:52Charlie Warzel?

  Well, that, that makes a lot of sense, right? You, you would expect that between a sixty five year old and a ninety five year old, there's thirty years there, there's a lot of life and context experience. And, and I think you're right that we, we do paint people i- i- in a lot of age brackets, but especially the, the elderly in, w- w- with this really broad brush. But I, I am curious, from what you are seeing, and this will contextualize a little bit of, of, of what I wanna dig into, um, in this conversation. But is there, do you notice that there is a, a, a different effect on older generations in terms of the way that they are using technology than, say, younger generations?

• 17:36Charlie Warzel?

  Like if you were taking the bucket of, you know, zero to ten versus, you know, let's say, like seventy five to, you know, eighty five, like, uh?

• 17:49Charlie Warzel?

  Do older generations use, have, like, does the effect of technology different than what you see on younger generations?

• 17:58Speaker 02

  It is, it is.

• 18:03Speaker 02

  And, and again, sort of with the understanding that one size does not fit all. Older adults as a whole,

• 18:14Speaker 02

  they, they are slower to take up new technology and they're much more methodical about it. So I think older adults as a whole are less likely to just experiment or play with tech. They adopt technology when it serves a clear and defined purpose in their lives on the whole. So a great example was sort of what we found during the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown, right? Where

• 18:40Speaker 02

  among older adults, being tech proficient actually predicted better mental health. And that's because most of them use technology or newly adopted technology to stay connected. I'll give you an example from our own work.

• 18:57Speaker 02

  We, like, like most healthcare systems, sort of had this en masse migration to telemedicine through Zoom or whatever. And we found that, that most of our patients were not already using this technology. And so we had to train them on how to use it. And, and an interesting thing happened that, that we found that of the people, you know, who were the majority that figured out how to use telemedicine through phones, et cetera.

• 19:28Speaker 02

  The ones who did best were the ones that learned Zoom not to keep their doctor's appointments. But it was because their church started doing services virtually or, or their family started having gatherings virtually. And then, once they learned it, they were using it way better and way more regularly and effectively than, say, say, younger populations. So, so the data are fascinating because they find that high technology use.

• 19:59Speaker 02

  In teenagers and adolescents is associated with worse mental health and is a predictor of more isolation and loneliness, even depression. Whereas in older adults, engaging in technology seems to be protecting them from isolation and loneliness, and it seems to be enhancing connectivity. Now, this finding might evolve over time, but broadly, I think tech use and tech engagement is a positive for older adults, when broadly, it's more of a negative for younger adults.

• 20:32Charlie Warzel?

  So that's really fascinating and I think helpful in grounding what I want to get into here, because there is a, I guess you'd call it like a meme, right, online, but this is really just a whole bunch of anecdotal evidence that suggests that, I'll put it this way, I have done a lot of reporting, talking to different people about elderly people and screen time use, and a lot of what I've seen is these anecdotes from younger people. They go home for the holidays, they see that their loved ones who are older are kind

• 21:16Charlie Warzel?

  of deeply engaged with their phones, with their iPads, with social media, in a way that younger people are recognizing is potentially problematic, or at least it makes them uncomfortable, right? They come home, they say, "I brought my kids over, you know, Grandma and Grandpa or Mom and Dad weren't paying as much attention, right? They were just kind of stuck in their devices. This is really worrisome." And I have so many of these anecdotes that have piled up, or you go on places like Reddit and you see this, "Help, my mom or dad has this screen time problem." And there is this developing feeling, I think you're starting to see some news articles and things like that that say, you know, "We associate screen time problems with younger

• 22:01Charlie Warzel?

  generations. We're always worried about adolescents and what they're seeing." But perhaps there is also this problem on the other side of the age spectrum.

• 22:13Charlie Warzel?

  I am curious what you like, what is what your reaction is to to all of that kind of anecdotal evidence like, are you seeing this to this idea that they're also technology may be beneficial, but are you seeing a screen time problem forming generationally?

• 22:32Speaker 02

  So that is so interesting because I think the answer is yes, and I think we are seeing increased screen time among older adults as a whole. I think this is definitely true.

• 22:48Speaker 02

  But there's a lot of nuance there because

• 22:53Speaker 02

  I'll preface it by saying that, that, you know, younger generations, like, you know, people are more similar to each other in in the routines of their lives than not, right? It's it's

• 23:08Speaker 02

  everyone goes to school. So there are sort of these like activities and routines that extend across the community. And then once we get older, you know, elementary school kids are more like each other than middle school kids and middle school kids are probably a little bit more like each other than high school kids and college kids are not quite as like each other. And then and then you just continue to separate out. So as you as you get into late life, people have just had like unique life experiences. And while there are similarities, I think there's also a lot of differences in in that life experience. And I think what what that, why that is relevant is

• 23:50Speaker 02

  we have fewer sort of ways to determine what constitutes problematic screen use. So yes, there is increase in screen time, there is increase in screen use. But when that becomes problematic, you really kind of need to get into the weeds with each person to sort of decide if this is a good thing, if it is just what it is, or if it is a problem. To the example of people seeing their older loved ones at the holidays and and finding out that the older one that that they are spending a lot more time with their phone they used to. So I hear that story in my clinic. I actually see that in my family like like that. That's probably familiar to a lot of people.

• 24:33Speaker 02

  And and the way I think about it is is

• 24:38Speaker 02

  I mean, yes, you observe it when you meet them during the holidays. The problem is you're not there the rest of the time. And what are they doing with their lives the rest of their time? And, and is this a habit that formed because they just didn't have all that much going on? And so, so now their life is running more through their phone. Through their perspective, is it possible that they have a nice routine? Their phone is a big part of it, for better or worse. And your arrival is actually the disruption.

• 25:08Charlie Warzel?

  That's so important, though, right? Because there is this idea that you are dropping in to getting this window into their lives, right? And, and when we, when we talk about some of the, you know, the issues, especially with people who are, who are much older, being isolated, being untethered from reality or real life, right? Like civic life, right? If you can't drive, if you, you know, if you're in a, in a rural or remote location. And I think that's a really helpful observation that, that this influx of people

• 25:49Charlie Warzel?

  or, you know, around the holidays or something is actually like aberrant, is abnormal. And, uh, you know, the rest of the time, these devices could be serving a, a really smart purpose. Um, or really, a really helpful purpose, rather. I, I wonder though, when it comes to some of what is being seen, this is the, this is a separate part of this. It's not just that, when I hear these anecdotes that are reported, that I am, or that they're coming home and watching their loved ones be deeply embedded in their devices.

• 26:30Charlie Warzel?

  A lot of the worry too, is around what they are looking at, right? This notion that they are scrolling on Facebook, you know, what, what I, what me and my colleagues are calling like real slop, right? Like R E E L, where

• 26:48Charlie Warzel?

  They're seeing these AI-generated videos of things that are either, you know, misinforming them or just strange and kind of detached from reality and like really low quality, right? Like, these aren't the mitigations that you're talking about where, you know, it's allowing someone to play puzzle games that are sort of, you know, keeping their brain elastic. This is like, kind of tuning everything out and just being like washed over with low-quality slop content. Is that a worry, this idea that the phones are helpful? But, and the connection is helpful and the tether is helpful. But what they're seeing is potentially harmful because it's really low quality.

• 27:31Speaker 02

  It is a worry, and I think it's, it's, um, it's a... So it's real, and it's consequential. So, you know, the dark side to all of this screen news has a few different dimensions. I actually think the biggest one is that as older adults are spending more time on the phone, it's getting easier for scammers to target them. And I think the, the, the screen-based scam targeting older adults, I think that is a real problem and a real threat. And with AI, it's becoming even more sophisticated because

• 28:13Speaker 02

  sometimes these scam tools can be really quite hard to distinguish from, from humans, especially when the AI is talking to people. So I think that's a risk. The slop, the slop is a risk too. Much has been said and written about misinformation in general and and older adults, I think, do tend to be a little bit more trusting of a technology that they adopt. I think that innate skepticism isn't always there. And...

• 28:45Speaker 02

  Again, the devil's always in the details, right? If someone's just scrolling through a social media feed where they're watching a video after the other, that's a little bit different than two people forwarding content to each other or on a chat group, where there's also communication and correspondence. I think one of those things is, neither of them is great, but one of those is slightly better than the other because one of them involves interaction and communication and the other one is just much more passive, which is, which is less ideal.

• 29:19Charlie Warzel?

  If you talk to younger people about their phones, and by younger people, I mean all the way up to, you know, let's say, let's say fifty-five, right? They'll tend to complain about the use. They'll talk about they're doom scrolling, or I want to get off this, or it's not helping me live my best life. But what are you hearing from older people that you meet with in terms of self-reporting? Are they worried about the time that they're spending on their devices? Are they okay with it? How do people seem to feel about it?

• 29:46Speaker 02

  In preparation for this conversation, I kind of polled my colleagues. I work in a team with nine other aging and mental health specialists. And I just polled our team that, have you seen this? Has anyone brought this up? And, and the answer surprised me that no one's actually had any of their patients. We see, we see several hundred people. No one could really acknowledge or remember someone coming to them with problematic screen use as something to address. I think they were there for other things and you sometimes uncovered a lot of screen use.

• 30:21Speaker 02

  But unlike, say, you know, substance use or alcohol use or even things like gambling,

• 30:28Speaker 02

  we haven't, we haven't come across yet the issue of too much screen time as a bona fide problem that requires a mental health professional. Others may have, so I think I'd be, I'll be watching the response to this to see if anyone can, can share a story. But we are seeing clear reports of more time being spent on the screen. So, so where my head's at is, is... We are seeing people spending more time on their phone, but it's not necessarily being thought of as a problem. And that's interesting, isn't it? Because if you're spending way too much time doing something, you usually know when it's a problem versus when it's not. And I see that as a signal that that it's probably got at least some benefits or some positives.

• 31:13Charlie Warzel?

  But but do you think there's also a a literacy quality there? And what I mean by that is something I see from from especially people in a younger generation than me, Gen Z, Gen Alpha, there is a real understanding innately, having grown up around this technology, that they know they're being manipulated at all times, right? They know they're being pushed by these algorithms into this thing. And there's there's a frustration there, I think, because of the the just the understanding of the technology being so innate. Do you feel like maybe a little of this, the the maybe the lack of what you're hearing on the end of the older

• 31:58Charlie Warzel?

  people comes from maybe not having that same like media literacy, like understanding of the ways that the technologies work?

• 32:10Speaker 02

  I do. I do think that that's a part of it. But I also think it's it's specific to this moment in time, and that digital literacy just takes time to trickle up the lifespan. So I think we are starting to see see this shift. But it's always like these things are always going to start at the younger, more hyperconnected, more tech-literate generations, and then and then trickle up the age span. There's also the kinds of tech that older adult you adults use are they tend to trust more mature, more settled technologies rather than latest greatest things. So, you know,

• 32:52Speaker 02

  most people are still happier about something like Facebook, which at this point counts as mature technology, or at least a mature platform. And they're less prone to whatever the newest ones are, Snapchat. We're paying attention to ChatGPT and the sort of the new.

• 33:13Speaker 02

  Generative AI models. This is, this is, I think, a lot of people have their eyes on this because every now and then we kind of see these, these leaps in tech adoption. So, older adults historically were less prone to using computers, but I mean by computers, I mean the classic desktops. And then they were also, they use laptops a little bit more, but they were behind. When cell phones emerged, they were not as quick to adopt cell phones. They were also slower to adopt smartphones. And then the tablets arrived and that just seemed to mark like this whole on mass onboarding of the technology. Because it's that Goldilocks phenomenon. iPads were just right.

• 33:57Speaker 02

  I think the screen was larger.

• 34:02Speaker 02

  The, the keys were larger, so just easier to type for people with sensory impairment or visual impairment. But also they were so easy to use. You didn't need to upload software. You didn't need to download software. It was all kind of right there. You had to tap it, it was easy. So I think you see these generational leaps around ease and efficiency of use.

• 34:24Speaker 02

  And, and a lot of us believe that as these generative AI has gotten more, you know, as we move from typing to speaking, that's marking a shift. It's just so easy now where you have a device and you tap it and something is talking to you while it talks back and you can have a conversation. So I think you have these like leaps every few generations of technology and just simplicity of use.

• 34:47Speaker 02

  So I think we're on the threshold of seeing a lot of change as these voice based AIs become commonplace.

• 34:54Charlie Warzel?

  Are you seeing a lot of, just anecdotally, a lot of adoption of the voice based AIs?

• 34:59Speaker 02

  We are, we are. And, and you know, it's, it's anxiety provoking because I think it, it really brings all the things that we've talked about to a head. And I think it creates huge opportunities, but it also creates massive risks.

• 35:11Charlie Warzel?

  Right. We recently had Kashmir Hill, a New York Times reporter on a podcast, who's done a lot of reporting around what people are informally calling AI psychosis. That's not a medical definition, obviously, but this idea of problematic behaviors with chatbots. And something that she has noted in the reporting that we talked a lot about was this idea of the ways that these chatbots are so engaging, right? It's not just that they mimic the human nature and that conversing, which I think with someone who may be more isolated in general, or feeling like that is extremely attractive as a proposition.

• 35:55Charlie Warzel?

  But also this idea that they are prompting you to continue to engage, right? They are also sort of asking questions at the end of it, wanting you to go further. And the more that people do engage, the higher the likelihood that you start to lose touch with what it is you're... And this goes to people who are younger, too. This is happening sort of everywhere. The sooner you might lose touch with, "Oh, I'm talking to a large language model, not a person, not a thing." Are you seeing any problematic examples of those interactions with chatbots,

• 36:38Charlie Warzel?

  with some of the people that you're seeing in clinic?

• 36:44Speaker 02

  So personally, not yet, but it's a matter of time. Because the thing that I'm nervous about is that bots, it's that validation function. They rarely contradict during conversation. It's more, it's what you said, like they're designed to be facilitating, but they're also designed to be validating. So a bot will not say no. A bot will say yes, but also if it wants to contradict. And I think there's a real risk there that...

• 37:26Speaker 02

  If someone is, if someone has a question about something and it's risky like,

• 37:32Speaker 02

  I'll make up a ridiculous example, but see if an older adult were to ask their daughter, should I send my bank account information to this Nigerian prince? Their daughter would be, no. A bot might say, well, that's an interesting question. Here's what you should know about this, that there is a scam like this, that maybe you should do this, maybe you should do this, maybe you should do that. And there's a difference qualitatively because one puts an end to a risky conversation and the other may not put quite as, sorry.

• 38:08Speaker 02

  One puts an end to the risky conversation and the other may continue that conversation because it is designed to engage. And, and I think that is risky because that that validation function, right? The bot rarely makes you feel bad by telling you you're wrong.

• 38:28Speaker 02

  Even when it tells you you're wrong, it offers alternatives or other ways to continue the discussion.

• 38:33Charlie Warzel?

  Well, and I think we should, you know, should be clear here for these, the purposes. That's hypothetical, you know, it's possible these chatbots will or, or that in some cases when you prompt them, you know, won't, won't, will caution people against sending money to this, you know, the theoretical Nigerian prince. But I, I get what you're saying. Something you said earlier too, I think is very striking to this phenomenon. You know, I mentioned this like, you know, short form video slop stuff that is historically been very prevalent on, on Facebook and also Instagram.

• 39:13Charlie Warzel?

  You mentioned that older people tend to adopt these more mature technologies, right? Like a Facebook. And I think what's interesting as a technology reporter is that some of these younger, newer social platforms, they struggle with all kinds of emergent problems. But they're also iterating out of them a little bit faster, right? They're, they're sort of pushing the boundaries a little bit.

• 39:42Charlie Warzel?

  It's interesting to me that you have these people who are on a platform like Facebook that isn't updating in the same way, right? Like, it is happy to kind of keep that engagement, to not have those rules against, you know, these types of fake AI slop images. And it feels to me like a danger that is not talked about enough, potentially, that by not sort of evolving out of the platforms like a Gen Z person might do, or being on the newest, latest, greatest thing, that there is actually a little bit of this, like,

• 40:26Charlie Warzel?

  there is a danger of using an older platform that is not evolving in the same ways, because then they get trapped with the lower-quality content. And I think that's super fascinating. One of the things that you've brought up here that I think is one of the most salient points for people listening at home who may be dealing with an elderly relative or a loved one who they feel has a problematic relationship with some of their technology, is this idea that it can be really positive, that we should stop, pause, think about what role this is serving in their life. You're in clinic with people, you're using this technology in a way that is supposed

• 41:09Charlie Warzel?

  to have positive interventions. Talk to me about some of the positives you're seeing here with elders and technology use.

• 41:17Speaker 02

  So there's many levels of it, right? The one thing I really try and emphasize is that you don't have to always be using the most state-of-the-art, high-tech, fresh-of-the-lab tech. There's a strong case to be made for just teaching people to use well-established stuff properly. Um, a very simple example is uh uh I have I have people on our team whose job is to teach older adults how to use Uber and Lyft. Why? Because because I so many of them don't drive, many of them are isolated.

• 41:59Speaker 02

  Uh, they're used to calling a car service or they're used to calling for the ride. And of course, these are these are benefits, not not things they pay for. Uh, but I mean, if I had a dollar for every time we showed someone how easy it is to call a car service that will take you anywhere. Um, it can transform, it can transform lives. Food delivery is another example. So, you know, is it or is it not technology to teach someone how to use a widespread app? I would argue it is because you are enhancing digital literacy, but you're doing it around specific function. So some of it is just people's mood improves, people's anxiety goes down.

• 42:40Speaker 02

  If you can simplify everyday functions, that may be a challenge for them. Um, using.

• 42:48Charlie Warzel?

  What what about what about in general? I mean, like, there's those those those apps that that help, but I think, you know, are you seeing positive effects with the social media use?

• 42:58Speaker 02

  We we can, uh, but it depends on with social media use. So so a big one is just text messaging or or things like WhatsApp or, uh, you know, the messenger apps. Why? Because if people's social media use is anchored around interaction and communication rather than just the passive consumption of content, that's a different thing. It's it's sort of what I alluded to earlier, that that in my family, I have people that uh, it's actually quite specific to WhatsApp, that there are people on multiple WhatsApp groups just forwarding what you might consider slop. Uh, but but it's one thing to screw and, you know, by yourself in your room to watch watch slop. And it's another thing to forward slop to each other and then talk about that slop,

• 43:43Speaker 02

  whether it be, is this real or or this is so stupid, what do you think? So, um. Uh. There is almost, almost always value in interaction and communication. I think in person is better, but, but in person is always, not always an option. And so, you know, slop when consumed in isolation, I think is almost universally a problem. Slop as giving people a common thing to talk about that might not have too many common things to talk about. Now, that's, that's a little more nuanced, isn't it? That's a little more positive. Uh. We know art therapy works, we know music therapy works, but very few people can play an instrument or draw.

• 44:26Speaker 02

  But if you give them an app that is now letting, that's equalize artistic talent or musical skill. That's a positive. So it's not really about the tech, it's about how you use it and how you apply it. And I think the art of digital medicine lies in that. The art of digital medicine, the art of digitally based psychiatry, the art of AI use. Lies in that. I'll give you an example from an ongoing study where. We have a project where we are comparing a human geriatric care manager. Versus an app that is trained on working with caregivers, and this is all specific to dementia. Which is, it's a very simple question. We, we, we generated. How caregivers, you know, a list of common caregiver questions.

• 45:10Speaker 02

  And we asked the same question to an AI chatbot. And to a human geriatric care manager. And then we did a third thing. We gave the human care manager access to the bot to see if they could come up with a hybrid answer. And we compared how, you know, we compared differences. Uh. But before we even get into what we found, the, the biggest finding was that it took our human. Six weeks to answer all the questions and compose their responses. It took the bot thirteen minutes. And, and.

• 45:43Speaker 02

  A lot of us sort of picked up on the fact that even even though we would not really question that you want a human resource, you want you want someone to help really work through whatever it is that ails you. The truth is our human is not going to be available for a three hour conversation at 11:30 in the night. AI is AI is and and AI is is close enough to the it's not perfect. But there is something to be said for efficiency and access. I'm not saying it's right, but I'm saying you can't discount it.

• 46:15Charlie Warzel?

  I'm I all of that is is so conflicting to me, right? Because in one sense, I was I was kind of laughing earlier because of this this notion of, you know, art therapy, music therapy, and then slop therapy, right? Like sending it around to others and and being connected. And and I think that that yeah, I know. And I think that that's important. Because it adds a a rub to, you know, we look at somebody sort of canonically, there's this, I don't know if you've heard of shrimp Jesus. Have you heard of shrimp Jesus?

• 46:55Speaker 02

  I don't think I've heard of shrimp.

• 46:57Charlie Warzel?

  Okay, it's an it's an AI slop representation of this, you know, Christ like figure, but it's it's a shrimp. And it was it was it was a very popular, like one of the early versions of AI slop that was very popular. And and it's it seemed like it was not fooling, but sort of bewildering a lot of elderly, you know, Facebook users, something like that. Anyway, those things are always presented as awful, right? That they are, you know, there is somebody that they're like brain rotting instead of, you know, instead of generative in any way. And I think that we have reflexively, especially someone like myself, a technology reporter, has classified something like slop as

• 47:43Charlie Warzel?

  Bad, right? There's you're not gaining anything from it. And yet, you know, what you're asking people to consider is that just as a as a meme, as a as a like a thing to trade back and forth, a building block of conversation, however, you know, silly it may be, or, you know, is in general, if it's fostering that kind of tether and that connection, I think that it's important. And so so that's that's kind of confounding to think about. And something I wanted to ask you is, I feel like there is this idea that the technology is very, very helpful to people when it tethers them to reality,

• 48:27Charlie Warzel?

  right? Isolation, loneliness. But I think what we're also seeing at the same time is some of this tech, some of what they're consuming is actually distancing them from reality is blurring the lines of what is real. So you have this thing, it feels like two things are happening at once, right? Almost at the exact, yeah, at the exact same time. And do you do you agree with that?

• 48:53Speaker 02

  I do, I do. And, you know, it's, it's, I think that, that conflict that you're feeling that confusion that asking of, well, which is it? Is it good? Or is it bad?

• 49:04Charlie Warzel?

  I know.

• 49:05Speaker 02

  That's actually the appropriate response, because nobody knows. Nobody knows. But I think there is, there are some guardrails to this, because the real answer is not nobody knows. But the real answer is, it depends. It depends on the person, it depends on the situation, it depends on the circumstance. I get asked all the time, you know, we now have therapy chatbots, and I get asked all the time that, am I worried that it that these things are going to take away human jobs? And I don't think so. In fact, I think it's really sharpening.

• 49:42Speaker 02

  The the the human effect, and I think it's very close to what you said that on the one hand, it it uh people value technology that tethers them to reality, but there's also an untethering. And that's exactly right, isn't it? I think that the human function there is to then find the tethering and to prevent that disconnection and a confusion. Um. And sometimes it's as simple as acknowledging the confusion to begin with. We we we react poorly to ambiguity. I think there is this this preference for clarity. And sometimes all we have to do is help people hold their ambiguity, but then do it, do it while giving them some tools

• 50:24Speaker 02

  around um how to then, how to then remain, remain connected. So so brain rot, slop, I think no one would argue that that's probably not a good thing. But

• 50:38Speaker 02

  if talking, if brain rot, slop is giving you something to talk to people, preferably in the same room and face to face. And if you're older, if it's giving you something to laugh at or something to at least make sure that everyone else is just as puzzled by it as you are. And then maybe it gives you an excuse to call up your grandchild and say, well, what the hell is this thing? It makes no sense. Then then something positive has sprouted from that slop. And and I think, I think in many ways, I think there is a certain collective responsibility not to be absorbed by all of this, but to absorb it instead. And and assimilate AI as as

• 51:19Speaker 02

  a piece that can promote. And this is all very Pollyanna. I'm not saying this is easy. I'm not saying this is how it's going to go. This is messy, complicated stuff. Uh. But there is a reality where this can all be sort of leveraged into a collective positive.

• 51:35Charlie Warzel?

  Yeah, my my my concern, having covered this for for a long time with the social platforms, is that this, I think I I think you're right. And I and I would just want to say that, like, I I don't want to paint with too broad a brush on this, and there could be the that these positive externalities from even the lowest quality type of content. I think that that's something we all need to keep in mind. I think where I Where I worry, where I break a little bit is from you, rather, where I break a little bit from you is that these companies are generally very poor stewards of the regulations and the rules and the looking out for, and they do optimize for this engagement. And

• 52:17Charlie Warzel?

  if you have a segment of the population, be it 11-year-olds or be it, you know, 84-year-olds, who are showing signs of deeper and deeper engagement with a certain type of thing, the chances are it's going to be fed to them at higher and higher rates, right? And that to me is a concern. And that's not on you, or that's not on, you know, the people who are using this technology. That is a very simple, you know, people who are in charge of building and designing these platforms, not serving their users properly. And that's distinct from, you know, any kind of user behavior. What I wanted to sort of end on

• 52:57Charlie Warzel?

  here is, this episode's going to come out during the holiday season. People are going to be at home. People are probably going to be experiencing this, we'll call it a phenomenon, but just this experience of maybe seeing an older loved one immersed in a device, maybe feeling a sense of concern. How do you suggest that people breach those conversations? And what should they be saying to someone if they do feel this way?

• 53:32Speaker 02

  Such a great question. I would say, I would say first, if you feel distressed, see if you can hold it within you and resist the temptation to jump to a conclusion about it. So, so don't be, don't go, you're spending too much time on the phone. Instead, perhaps ask, what are you watching on your phone? What apps are you into? This is what I do with my phone.

• 54:02Speaker 02

  You could use their phone use

• 54:06Speaker 02

  as a conversation starter, as a way to meet them where they are, as a way to perhaps enter their world rather than expecting them to to jump straight into your world. And, you know, it can just be the basis of strengthening connection rather than breaking it. But, you know, who among us responds well to being told whatever it is we're enjoying is wrong? Like, like, like, no one enjoys that. So, so don't do that. If it bothers you, fair game. But, but keep an open mind and inquire and learn and assess what's going on rather than declaring it good or bad.

• 54:47Charlie Warzel?

  I think it's so smart that if we are talking about a behavior that seems to be isolating somebody or seems to be drawing a a human disconnect, that the appropriate way to respond to it is to connect with them, right? Not to disengage or shame them in some way that may draw them further into their device or further away from the loved ones in their life who they feel like they're judging. I think there's something rather lovely about using this as an opportunity to foster the kind of connection that they may not be feeling and that may be, you know, drawing them into in into that device.

• 55:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, it could be. It could be a reason to bond than a reason to separate because we all bond over things we share in common. For better or worse, too much phone use is something we all share in common these days. Might as well use it.

• 55:45Charlie Warzel?

  I think that's a great place to end it. Dr. Vahia, thank you so much for coming on Galaxy Brain.

• 55:50Speaker 02

  Such a pleasure. Thank you for having me, Charlie, and for focus on this. It matters.

• 55:59Speaker 00

  If you're trying to get news today, you'll find a lot of biased algorithms, rage bait and AI noise. Thanks, social media. That's where Inpress comes in. It's a social platform on top of factual journalism, not the other way around. Track your reading and earn points. It's like Strava for your brain. Plus, you can connect with other users in your city who share your genuine curiosity. Ditch the echo chamber for reality with Inpress. Download it today for iOS or Android at inpress.app. That's I, N as in news nerd, press.

• 56:33Speaker 01

  Do you want to hear about visionaries creating a better world? People working in conservation, exploration, science and tech alongside storytellers imagining and creating a better future. I'm Alex Honnold, professional rock climber and founder of the Honnold Foundation, bringing you season six of Planet Visionaries. This season, I speak to guests like National Geographic photographer Tom Peszek and Anna Rappman, executive director of the Jane Goodall Institute, USA. In partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative, watch Planet Visionaries on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 57:05Charlie Warzel?

  That's it for us here. Thank you again to my guests, Dr. Vahia. If you liked what you saw here, new episodes of Galaxy Brain drop every Friday and you can subscribe in The Atlantic's YouTube page or on Apple or Spotify or wherever it is you get your podcasts. And if you enjoyed this, remember you can support our work and the work of all the journalists at The Atlantic by subscribing to the publication at theatlantic.com/listener. That's theatlantic.com/listener. Thanks so much and I'll see you on the internet.

• 57:46Charlie Warzel?

  This episode of Galaxy Brain was produced by Nathaniel Frum and edited by Claudina Bade. It was engineered by Dave Grine. Our theme music is by Rob Smersiak. Claudina Bade is the executive producer of Atlantic Audio and Andrea Valdez is our managing editor.

• 58:02Speaker 00

  If you're trying to get news today, you'll find a lot of biased algorithms, rage bait and AI noise. Thanks, social media. That's where InPress comes in. It's a social platform on top of factual journalism, not the other way around. Track your reading and earn points. It's like Strava for your brain. Plus, you can connect with other users in your city who share your genuine curiosity. Ditch the echo chamber for reality with InPress. Download it today for iOS or Android at inpress.app. That's I, N as in news nerd, press.