Emily Kwong

Ipsit is from a family of psychiatrists, and all four of his grandparents lived well into their 80s and 90s.

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.

Now, as the chief of geriatric psychiatry at McLean Hospital, Ipsit has had a front row seat to one of the biggest transformations in life after 65, the explosion in screen time.

Flash forward to today, and the screen habits of older people parallel the appetite of Gen Z. In 2019, the Pew 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.

So this got us wondering on ShoreWave, is this a problem?

Should we be worried?

And Ipsit says it kind of depends on the technology and on the person.

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 Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR.

Okay, Ipsit, I want to focus just to start on what we know about smartphones.

What does data show about smartphone use among this age group?

Right.

WhatsApp is the ultimate staying in touch device.

Yeah.

In preparing for this conversation, you also sent me an interesting study looking at empirical evidence from China.

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?