Seniors May Be As Hooked to Smartphones As Their Grandkids
An 80-year-old using her smartphone to check in with friends and family. Many seniors are becoming addicted to their smartphones. JONATHAN NUTT/GETTY IMAGES It took a long time for my 69-year-old mother to break down and get a smartphone — "They're too expensive." "Who am I texting, anyway?" — but since buying her secondhand iPhone two years ago, she's barely put it down. Word Crack, a Boggle-like word game, is her aptly named drug of choice. But she also uses her phone's tiny screen to read books borrowed digitally from the library (a book-a-day habit) and, of course, to FaceTime with the grandkids. My mother-in-law is in the same boat. She can tell you the local weather forecast where each of her seven children (plus 26 grandchildren) live because she compulsively checks the weather app on her smartphone. Then there's the constant stream of social media notifications from Facebook, Instagram and GroupMe. Ding, ding and ding. Millennia...