What if we talked about over-60s’ screen time as we talk about young people’s?
I think some people are just more hypnotically attracted to the action occurring in their field of vision, and moving pictures stimulate this primal response.<p>Emotional response to artificial visual stimuli was first exaggerated for some with the arrival of silent movies, made more realistic (even when complete fantasy) with talkies and then color film.<p>Television turned this from a designated entertainment event into an everyday occurrence in the home when it was still black & white, then color TV upped the ante, but until cable came along nobody imagined that anybody would want to have it turned on all the time.  The few broadcast channels in any one market used to sign off after a certain time at night then not resume programming until the next morning.  There were 13 VHF channels but no market had anywhere near that number to choose from within radio range.<p>Then come personal style computers which were powered on all the time at the office, even if they were not that interesting people got accustomed to it, and did some of the same thing when they got more popular for the home.  Laptops took the screen on the road and internet made it more interesting on a 24/7 basis, wifi broadened that and more powerful smartphones put it over the top everywhere.<p>Each step of the way focusing on smaller-than-realistic horizons.