Older people can be just as bad as young ones about phone addiction and poor habits let alone manners

I'm GenX and I honestly can't stand to watch ads anymore, they're all so stupid and I feel like I've put in my damn time already with the ads. I suppose that's why most ads are aimed at younger people until they want to start selling you catheters.

Not that I'm in any position to speak for an entire generation but I feel like a lot of Gen Z also can't understand why Gen Z can't put their phones down and watch TV like a normal person.

My boomer parents are looking at two screens 24/7. Either TV + tablet or tablet + phone or tv + tablet

Bonus points when I call them and they don't answer because they say they didn't have their phone with them

"tiktok will ruin your attention span"

Flips between channels every 20 seconds muttering about how there's nothing good on

This isn't really a shower thought. It's more of a shower opinion.

Gen Z is gravitating towards analog. It’s the boomers who are addicted.

I know plenty of Boomers who are additcetd to their smartphones. Even more so than the younger generations. Some even have the TV on in the background while doomscrolling.

And I'm a (late) millennial and spend most of my time at home neither on my phone nor TV, but my laptop computer (connected to two external monitors).

I got my first own computer when I was 10 and ever since then, using the computer has been my "default" activity when I'm at home. Smartphones came after that and didn't change that, I still prefer big screens with a keyboard and mouse if I have them, mainly use my smartphone when I'm not at home.

To play devil's advocate; being on your phone is an isolating activity, while watching the TV is generally more communal, and was especially so in the era in which they've spent the most time.

Millenials and most Gen Z have shows that everyone watched growing up, but that's going away increasingly, with on-demand streaming and customized feeds replacing the latter. I think it's a very obvious culprit of why young people today struggle to talk to one another.

I am Gen Z.

Gen-X quietly in the corner, remembering how they watched TV a lot too, but also mostly got kicked out of the house to play outside and "don't come back in until dark".

Edit to emphasize this wasn't necessarily a choice we made for ourselves. Boomers (and the Silent Gen before them) wanted their peace from the kids, so we were on our own. Good and bad points to that kind of character building.

Like TikTok, Twitch, and YouTube aren't basically the same thing as TV.

Video content, sometimes live, loaded with commercials. Just like TV.

Actually, boomers are some of the most phone-addicted people I come in contact with 🤷‍♂️

I think they crave shared experience, the social activity of watching together, of picking something that everyone wants to watch.

I miss it too, except I never wanted to watch what they wanted to watch. I couldn’t do it either.

Now I just miss them.

Because TV is boring as hell most of the times and majority of it is ads which cant be blocked.

At least with phone i have to move my thumbs or put a little taught into how to express myself.

Standard TV is just a complete mind numbing existence. It's pretty much equal to just being in a coma. Even sleeping is better, at least the body is recovering at that time. Standard TV is one of the worst ways to consume data garbage.

Of course there are good movies and documentaries, but those are a minority.

Boomer here (cusp between boomer & gen x): Why not both put down the phone AND turn off the TV?

I have a TV but pretty much only turn it on for local news & weather. I absolutely can't tolerate the ads and there are no good shows anyway except a few on PBS. I use a flip phone. I won't call it a 'dumb' phone because it's still android underneath and has navigation. But no internet.

Of course that doesn't stop me from sitting on my ass in front of a computer on the internet, but at least I'm not doing that 24/7 and have other things for entertainment like books, games, hobbies.

edit: not to imply I speak for other boomers. Most of them are on their smartphones all the time, getting notifications every 5 seconds like everyone else.

I've never seen someone panic when the internet went down as my 72yo mother

In the worst case Boomer can’t even remember how we watch TV in the 90s which was exactly the same way but without our phone. We didn’t watch TV scotched to the screen like people like to think, there’s a reason why ads are blaring noise like a fucking bombing alarm now.

Millennial here, I got (and sometimes still get) my fair-share of bashing for spending way too much time on the computer. Some were concerned that I will be unable to talk with other people about the series currently running on the TV (!), although early on they mourned the "football star" I was supposed to become, with my late stepmother not really giving up on that until she thought instead I could be the next Zuckerberg (TL;DR: she originally hated computers because they crashed and she also read an article on the Columbine shooting once, but changed her mind once Facebook came out).

Boomers grew up in the 40s and 50s. 60s a little. Television had three channels and you watched when the broadcast was happening. That was it. There was already a long history of non-TV activities to do.

Today with phones and telecommunications everywhere, along with "I can consume whatever content I want to any time at my whim", is an entirely different landscape.

I wish the media environment was as basic as it was in the 50s.