Dear silvers,
In the good old days, I’d come home to my parents reading the newspaper as a way of winding down for the night.
Nowadays through, the paper has left the bedroom, only making rare appearances as a means of wrapping homegrown vegetables for gifting or lining the sides of the kitchen wall ahead of deep-frying fish.
Today, they’d rather spend their time on their smartphones, scrolling through the social media feeds they once derided.
My father enjoys calming, unnarrated YouTube videos of people camping — or chopping roast duck at a busy restaurant in Hong Kong — while my mother adores ten-minute summaries of Korean dramas.
This isn’t a problem for me. I’m just as terminally online as the rest of the modern developed world where social media sites and smartphones are ubiquitous. In Singapore, around 85% of the population have a social media account, while a near-universal 97% own a smartphone.
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There is, however, a cruel irony in realising that my parents now spend upwards of five to six hours a day staring at screens when they once would’ve branded me as addicted for doing the same.
I am not alone in this observation, as many of my peers have also noticed their folks spending an increasing amount of time online, whether that be watching and shopping on e-commerce livestreams, or resharing posts from platforms like Facebook and TikTok on family WhatsApp chats.
This upward trend of silver screentime bucks the conventional stereotyping of seniors as technophobic luddites — which is undoubtedly a good thing. However, could it also be pointing to a hidden epidemic of senior smartphone addiction?
Government tackling screen time in children
It’s an important question to ask, especially in light of the government’s newly declared war on the scourge of screen time for children.
The battle plan, aptly dubbed Grow Well SG, will see new guidelines to curtail excessive screen time in schools, preschools and the home.
Children up to the age of 12 will be the first to lose mealtime handphone privileges in this national strategy, though the group that is perhaps the most affected by the rise of universal technology will follow soon after.
We’re talking about teenagers who’ve grown up surrounded by smartphones – teenagers who, according to a survey commissioned by a national newspaper, use screens for a whopping 8.5 hours a day. Almost half of this figure goes to their smartphones alone, with the rest distributed among tablets, computers, televisions and gaming consoles.
Naturally, researchers have focused their efforts on these youths, linking their excessive screen time and social media use to stunted cognitive development, decreased ability to focus, social anxiety and depression.
Senior smartphone addiction: A hidden epidemic?
However, the data is comparatively scant when it comes to seniors. A 2019 study interviewing 16 older adults aged between 60 and 80 in Singapore found that seniors generally enjoyed social media apps, believing that they helped them facilitate social connections, stay cognitively engaged and remain informed about news and health information.
On the other hand, while the participants acknowledged the potential consequence of social media addiction, only four out of the 16 people interviewed felt that the abundance of leisure time in retirement could lead to overuse and addiction.
Of concern were some of the other participants who believed themselves invulnerable to social media addiction, either due to a greater discipline and awareness born out of their life experiences or an upbringing in an era where technology was less common.
This confidence is unfounded, as seniors’ brains are just as capable of experiencing the habit-forming rush of dopamine that accompanies a surprise “like” notification on our smartphones, or a victory in a mobile game. (My auntie once admitted to playing Candy Crush for “hours at a time”. If you need more examples, look to the ardent Pokemon Go fanbase, many of whom are silvers.)
There are no statistics available about social media addiction or screen time use among seniors in Singapore, though we know from the Infocomm Media Development Authority’s 2020 Annual Survey on Infocomm Usage that smartphone and social media usage have risen dramatically in the older age groups.
We contacted several mental health clinics offering smartphone, Internet or social media addiction therapy in their suite of services, but none of them have treated silvers.
However, studies done overseas indicate that digital addiction among seniors is a real possibility.
A Norwegian study found that around 1% of those aged 60 to 74 years of age were at risk for internet addiction. Meanwhile, a survey among China’s netizens in 2020 found that almost 100,000 of their above-60 internet users – some 120 million of them – were online all day, with 0.19% of seniors surveyed spending above 10 hours online daily.
A separate survey reported that almost half of older Chinese respondents experienced anxiety or unease when their smartphones couldn’t be connected to the Internet, which researchers said potentially pointed to Internet addiction withdrawal.
Gone digital native
The average senior user in China spends 64.8 minutes online a day. Assuming Singapore’s silvers fall roughly into that ballpark, it’s easy to understand why the government is focusing on nipping the problem in the bud by reducing teens’ mammoth 8.5-hour screen times.
However, there is an entire preexisting cohort of ageing Singapore residents who have probably already gone (digitally) native in their use of social media and the Internet; who might be facing their golden years with fewer relatives and a smaller social network to rely on; and who might be particularly vulnerable to overuse of social media and their smartphones in a bid to escape isolation in the real world.
A recent study conducted by the Institute of Mental Health surveying more than 6,500 residents found that 30.2% exhibited symptoms of problematic smartphone use. Though they didn’t break their findings down by age, those who were separated, divorced or widowed were also more likely to exhibit these symptoms.
The growing network of active ageing centres and their busy bee befrienders won’t be enough to get these seniors out of their homes.
Yes, they probably wouldn’t count as clinically addicted to social media or their phones, but they just might find it far more comfortable and convenient to pass their days in the mind-numbing confines of the Internet, blasting out Good Morning stickers and dubious health claims to everyone in their WhatsApp contact list.
