Pod Insights Short Wave Screen time is up for grandma and grandpa About this episode Folks over 65 are putting in a lot of screen time. In 2019, the Pew Research Center found that people 60 years and older spend more than half their daily leisure time https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/06/18/americans-60-and-older-are-spending-more-time-in-front-of-their-screens-than-a-decade-ago/ in front of screens, mostly watching TV or videos. Since the pandemic, that screen time has increased. Is addiction on the rise? And what’s the best use of screen time for any of us? We’re parsing out all the questions with Ipsit Vahia https://www.mcleanhospital.org/profile/ipsit-vahia, the Chief of Geriatric Psychiatry at McLean Hospital.
Interested in more stories about how technology is changing daily life? Email us your question at [email protected] mailto:[email protected] .
Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave http://plus.npr.org/shortwave.
See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.
NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 This message comes from Google Workspace with Gemini. One subscription that does it all. Personalized AI and premium business versions of Gmail, Google Docs, Drive and more. Try it free for 14 days at g o o dot g l e slash Workspace with Gemini.
0:18 Emily Kwong? You're listening to Short Wave from NPR.
0:24 Emily Kwong? Some people get bummed out about their birthdays and say stuff like, oh, I'm getting so old. But I actually have loved getting older. The sense of perspective, of time passing, and older people are just cool. Ipsad Bahia agrees.
0:39 Speaker 02 I think older people have the coolest stories. And I could spend the rest of our time together just telling you cool stories I've heard over the years from my patients and the people I work with.
0:48 Emily Kwong? Ipsad is from a family of psychiatrists, and all four of his grandparents lived well into their 80s and 90s.
0:55 Speaker 02 So all four of my grandparents were at my medical school graduation, which was just
0:58 Emily Kwong? Amazing.
0:59 Speaker 02 unusual and really special.
1:01 Emily Kwong? And the specialty he chose was geriatric psychiatry because he wanted to care for the mental and emotional health of older people, people his grandparents' age.
1:10 Speaker 02 I started to see them lose a step as they got older. But I also saw what they retained and the ways in which they just seemed to get funnier and sharper. And they just seemed to have like wisdom and perspectives to give.
1:24 Emily Kwong? Now, as the chief of geriatric psychiatry at McLean Hospital, Ipsad has had a front row seat to one of the biggest transformations in life after 65, the explosion in screen time.
1:37 Speaker 02 The sentinel event, I think, for all tech in all of our lives, was the arrival of the smartphone that was 2007.
1:44 Emily Kwong? Flash forward to today, and the screen habits of older people parallel the appetite of Gen Z. In 2019, the Pugh Research Center found that people 60 years and older spend more than half of their daily leisure time in front of screens, mostly watching TV or videos. And since the pandemic, screen time has only increased.
2:06 Emily Kwong? So this got us wondering on Shorewave, is this a problem? Should we be worried? And Ipsa says it kind of depends on the technology and on the person.
2:14 Speaker 02 Some of it comes down to what could they be doing if they were not on that screen, which is to say, is the screen keeping them away from better things? Or is it giving them something to do when the option is isolation and apathy?
2:28 Emily Kwong? Today on the show, what does science have to say about your auntie's affinity for Candy Crush? And what is the best use of screen time, really, for all of us? I'm Emily Kwong, and you're listening to Shorewave, the science podcast from NPR.
2:51 Speaker 00 Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.
2:56 Speaker 03 This message comes from Edward Jones, where they believe rich isn't about having life all figured out. It's opening yourself to all the possibilities. That's why your dedicated financial advisor provides long-term planning built around you, meeting you where you are and helping you get closer to where you want to be. So no matter where you're starting from or wherever life takes you, you can move forward with confidence. The key to being rich is knowing what counts. Let's find your rich together. Edward Jones. Member SIPC.
3:29 Speaker 00 This message comes from BetterHelp. BetterHelp is in-network with more than 125 health plans with an average copay for eligible members of just $23 per session. Don't have eligible insurance? You can still get 10% off your first month. Visit betterhelp.com/NPR to explore your payment options. That's betterhelp.com/NPR. This message comes from Google Workspace with Gemini. One subscription that does it all. Personalized AI and premium business versions of Gmail, Google Docs, Drive, and more. Try it free for 14 days at goo.gle/workspacewithgemini.
4:11 Emily Kwong? Okay, I want to focus just to start on what we know about smartphones. What does data show about smartphone use among this age group?
4:21 Speaker 02 So smartphone use is rising very rapidly. I think at this point, smartphone ownership data among older adults are comparable to most other age groups. But I think the pattern of how they use their smartphones, I think, varies considerably in that, you know, older adults aren't quite as engaged with things like social media and visual social media at the same rates as younger adults. They use them for more practical purposes. A lot of it is just following the news or getting information. But in my personal and family circles, the WhatsApp addiction and overuse of WhatsApp
5:06 Speaker 02 is the one I hear about most often. Inherent in that particular app is that, you know, you're part of a group or you're communicating with people. So there is a pro-connection aspect to it.
5:21 Emily Kwong? Right. WhatsApp is the ultimate staying in touch device.
5:25 Speaker 02 It really is because you can do everything. You can text, you can call, you can video chat. And then for a lot of them with, you know, the basic age-related cognitive challenges, it's just, it makes it so that you rarely miss a birthday. It makes it so that you rarely miss an anniversary.
5:42 Emily Kwong? Yeah. In preparing for this conversation, you also sent me an interesting study looking at empirical evidence from China.
5:49 Speaker 02 Yeah.
5:49 Emily Kwong? It's titled, "Understanding Older Adult Smartphone Addiction in the Digital Age", and it looked at a survey of 371 subjects. What'd you make of that paper?
6:00 Speaker 02 So what they found was that... Smartphone addiction was the consequence of other factors that they had looked at in their study. They found that if people's cognition was failing, and specifically if they had conflicts within their family, that seemed to lead to a sense of alienation. And that sense of alienation in turn led to what they defined as smartphone addiction.
6:27 Emily Kwong? That is so fascinating to me because it suggests that it's the social factors that drive people into the arms of technology.
6:35 Speaker 02 Correct. So I think what I found really interesting about this is there's this debate, right? What comes first? Does the isolation come first? Or does the smartphone overuse come first? And I think this sort of, it gives us an early indication that smartphone addiction is the result of isolation and alienation, not the cause of it. And that's really interesting because I think in that sense, it tells us that smartphone overuse among older adults is a little bit different than younger adults. That in older adults, it's the isolation and alienation that comes first, and the smartphone overuse comes later.
7:20 Emily Kwong? But the thing that's so hard about tech is it's hard to leave. Like, we've all been caught doom scrolling.
7:27 Speaker 02 Yes.
7:28 Emily Kwong? So are you seeing older folks having just as hard time putting their phone down as we younger people are?
7:35 Speaker 02 I think we're starting to see that. And I think that is where the, you know, the sky start to darken a little bit on this topic because people are spending more time on their phones. And we know that this content is designed to engage.
7:55 Speaker 02 In some of the more informal conversations I've had with collaborators and people in the community we work with, they really worry about two things. A misinformation, that this is making older adults really
8:07 Emily Kwong? Ah, yeah.
8:08 Speaker 02 prone to clickbait. I think many of them, they trust what they see.
8:14 Emily Kwong? Sure.
8:14 Speaker 02 And clickbait leads to, you know, at best, spending a lot of time on things that don't really add meaning. We call it empty calories screen time, where it's hooking you, but you're not getting much value out of it. But the second more troublesome one is that they are prone to scams and they're prone to being targeted for fraud, identity theft, and other things.
8:40 Emily Kwong? Right. And I mean, how does this square with other, with what we know about how the brain just gets hooked on things, period, regardless of age? Like, what happens when we pick up our phones that makes it sometimes so hard to put down? Or you pick it up mindlessly, where you didn't even intend to pick it up? You're just like, it's almost automatic? Like, what is our brain doing in that moment?
9:02 Speaker 02 That's a great question. And if you had to sum it up in one word, that word would be dopamine. Dopamine is the reward neurochemical.
9:10 Emily Kwong? Yeah.
9:12 Speaker 02 It's what regulates pleasure and gratification and excitement, also apprehension. And a lot of the content, particularly on social media, is designed to give you that quick dopamine hit. It hooks you by creating a sharp excitement, or giving you a quick laugh, or making you gasp at something shocking.
9:39 Emily Kwong? Yeah. Like, when a kid eats, like, too much candy and they're just like, brrrr, and then they crash.
9:44 Speaker 02 It's a sugar rush, yeah. And then you want more.
9:45 Emily Kwong? And then you want more. What I'm hearing is, there's a real risk for overuse when it comes to screens. But I also hear you saying there are benefits to technology, including technology use among the elderly. You spoke about social connection on WhatsApp.
9:59 Speaker 02 Absolutely.
10:00 Emily Kwong? What are other examples of technology at its best?
10:02 Speaker 02 So, I'll give you two examples, and they're both, they're both just so obvious you might not even think about them, but Uber or Lyft.
10:11 Emily Kwong? Yeah.
10:12 Speaker 02 The rideshare services. Many older adults
10:16 Speaker 02 Can't or won't drive because you know their eyesight is failing or their response time goes down there. By their own admission, they don't feel safe driving their own car. This means that they're often limited in being able to go out.
10:31 Emily Kwong? Yeah.
10:31 Speaker 02 I have on multiple occasions, the the the treatment is teaching someone to use Lyft or Uber or a Rideshare service and and you know, setting it up with their credit card and showing them that if you click these things in this order, a car will mysteriously appear at your door and take you to wherever you need to go.
10:50 Emily Kwong? Mm hmm.
10:51 Speaker 02 And now they're not dependent on people to take them to meet a friend or to go buy groceries or go watch a film or whatever. But virtual reality, I feel, is an under tapped and under utilized technology.
11:05 Emily Kwong? Yes, virtual reality. I'm glad you brought this up. This is like, you know, those headsets, you put them on and suddenly you're like standing in a castle, you're holding a sword, you can slay a dragon in the VR world.
11:15 Speaker 02 All of the above. So my favorite story around VR has to do with with a very specific patient. She was one of my patients and we were doing psychotherapy. And about ten or twelve sessions in, it was just this moment in the process of psychotherapy where we really needed to talk about her childhood. And she was just consciously or subconsciously, it was hard for her to do it where she was happy to talk about her childhood and that's where I used VR where we were able to get her to stand in front of her childhood home.
11:52 Emily Kwong? Wow.
11:52 Speaker 02 So we had her retrace her childhood walk from home to school. And then we we had her stand outside where her father's business used to be. And something about this was transformative. She became tearful minutes after.
12:08 Emily Kwong? Mm hmm. How does a patient like that inform your sort of philosophy towards geriatric care? What what does it say to you about what elderly people need from people around them?
12:24 Speaker 02 I think the art of chariature psychiatry is actually on an individual by individual basis, figuring out exactly what the person needs.
12:36 Emily Kwong? Hmm.
12:36 Speaker 02 You know, as physicians, we're sort of prone to think about curing diseases. In late life, it doesn't work like that. It's, it's, you know, many things are not really curable. Yes, sometimes the thing that this person needs is medications or psychotherapy to alleviate depression or anxiety. But at other times, it's listening, it's connecting.
12:59 Emily Kwong? Yeah.
13:00 Speaker 02 And there is this implicit fear of aging. And yet, we have spent centuries perfecting medicine, perfecting all these things with the idea that we live longer. So getting old is the whole point. So if we're then going to fear it and think of aging as a problem or a challenge, then we've got it backwards, haven't we?
13:20 Emily Kwong? Yeah.
13:21 Speaker 02 The second thing is, I would want everyone to stop thinking of this monolithic entity of the elderly. The truth is, someone in their early 60s is nothing like someone in their late 80s. And we tend to think of everyone above 65 as like this one block. They are not.
13:38 Emily Kwong? Every Short Wave listener over 65 just went, yeah, listening to this. Well, Dr. Ipsit Vahia, thank you so much for talking to me. This was a wonderful conversation, and I wish you luck with all your work.
13:53 Speaker 02 Thank you so much.
13:57 Emily Kwong? If you liked this episode, follow us so you never miss another one. And if you're looking for more, you may like our episode on guilty pleasures and the one about how to keep your brain young with mental exercises. This episode was produced by Rachel Carlson and edited by our showrunner Rebecca Ramirez. Tyler Jones checked the facts. Jimmy Keely was the audio engineer. Beth Donovan is our vice president of podcasting. I'm Emily Kwong. Thank you for listening to this episode of Short Wave from NPR. See you next time.
14:41 Speaker 03 Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. This message comes from Rosetta Stone, offering an alternative approach to language learning. Without relying on traditional memorization, the platform guides users to intuitively think in a second language. More information at rosettastone.com. This message comes from Mint Mobile. While others have been hiking your bill, Mint Mobile has kept their wireless plans starting at $15 a month. Switch to Mint Mobile and get three months of premium wireless service for $15 a month. Go to mintmobile.com/switch. Upfront payment of $45 for three-month plan required. $15 per month equivalent. New customer offer first three months only, then full-price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra.
Previous Could our trash become local fishes’ treasure? Next The dangers of warming winter lakes Page updated October 31, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated