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.
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 Boomers have spent most of their life.
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.
This. For better or worse people would gather to watch a show at a particular time and day. It often turned into much more of a social event than a let’s watch this show event. A thirty minute show was a several hour gathering of people. Laughing, eating, having a good time.
You cannot replicate that using a phone.
And you could talk about it the next day with your friends in school.
A lot less choice and everyone watched the same things.
The experience can only be compared to a football final these days.
Older people can be just as bad as young ones about phone addiction and poor habits let alone manners
My mother was constantly on her phone playing games or scrolling social media/TikTok/YouTube. Even when her favorite shows were on she barely paid any attention.
Lol my grandma had phone additiction long before smart phones. Watching TV before steaming really sucked with her in room.
My grandma is addicted to porn on her phone she just constantly goons.
You walk into her room at the nursing house and her fingers are wrinkly like she just got out of the bath and it smells like day old tuna salad.
No joke, my grandpa watches porn daily (and doesn’t know how to open a private browsing window)
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).
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
I swear to god, same parent telling me I’d pop my eyes out for playing aoe 2 for 6 hours non stop, watches 2 screens non stop. I honestly don’t even get, if you’re not watching the news, why is it on? If you’re playing solitaire, fine do it, it engages brain, but then why did you buy 400 hint bundle. When I wanted a better bike for my local race, it was cheating (real reason was affordability, which was valid). But then playing solitaire with hint isn’t?
And then they wonder why I don’t value their opinion, what did they do wrong?
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.
millennial here, I absolutely hate ads with such a passion that I will go very far out of my way to block ads. I’ve side loaded a YouTube alternative onto my TV to avoid ads. My parents (boomers) have no problem paying for xm radio and still being advertised to!
Yeah same here, my Mom will actually DVR stuff and not skip through the ads lol. WTF.
DVRs still exist?
Plex and Jellyfin are DVRs. They just do other things too.
My cell phone has literally all notifications turned off.
Silent always. Never a pesky red dot telling me where to tap. Never a push notification reminding me that I should reconsider using something I obviously don’t need.
“tiktok will ruin your attention span”
Flips between channels every 20 seconds muttering about how there’s nothing good on
Watch older tv and you realize how much time is dedicated in many shows to recapping what happened three minutes ago before the commercial break.
3 minute commercial break? So like TV from 60s?
Last I heard the average sitcom comes in at 16 minutes for a 30 minute block.
I haven’t really watched made for broadcast tv since, say, 2008 and House episodes are about 42:00, 6 breaks, 3 min each. Maybe it’s longer, fewer breaks. But I’m sure it’s trashier now.
I got curious and did some quick searching. Looks like it depends greatly on the content and network with dramas usually having shorter breaks than sitcoms. The Big Bang Theory for instance averaged 17 minutes apparently.
One interesting factoid I found was that The Wizard of Oz, which is 101 minutes long, took up a 120 minute block in the 60s unedited but a 180 minute block today with edits to make it shorter.
