Screen Time After 65: What Families Should Know
“What I worry about is when someone’s physical world gets smaller and smaller and we don’t really notice because the digital world has quietly filled the space.”
—Dr. Sue Varma
We spend a lot of time worrying about kids and screen time, but older adults are spending a huge portion of the day with TVs, phones, tablets, and computers too. For some, technology is a lifeline that provides entertainment, connection, information, and access to family. For others, it can slowly begin replacing movement, sleep, hobbies, time outside, and face to face interaction.
I spoke with board certified psychiatrist and Practical Optimism author Dr. Sue Varma about where that line sits. We discussed excessive screen use, “digital fog,” scams and misinformation, and how families can help older adults use technology in a way that supports healthy aging rather than shrinking their physical world.
5 Questions with Sue Varma
1. We’ve spent years worrying about kids and screen time, but you argue we should also be paying attention to older adults. What signs tell us that technology use has crossed the line from connection to overuse?
I think we have spent so much time talking about teenagers and screens that we’ve almost forgotten there is another population that can be particularly vulnerable, and when you look at why an older adult might be spending five or six hours a day watching television or on their phone, it actually makes a lot of sense. You may have somebody who has retired and lost the structure of the workday, their children have moved away, friends may have moved or passed away, they may no longer drive, or they may be dealing with chronic pain or an illness that makes it harder to get out of the house. About a third of adults over 65 are dealing with chronic pain, and roughly one in four older adults experiences social isolation, so for some people the television or the phone really does become a window to the outside world.
Maybe that’s how they get their news, maybe Facebook is where they see pictures of their grandchildren, maybe YouTube is keeping them company in a house that has become very quiet. So I don’t want families walking in and saying, “Mom, you’re watching too much television,” because there may be a very understandable reason Mom is watching that much television. What I would pay attention to is whether the screen is starting to crowd out the things that protect us as we age, things like movement, sleep, seeing other people, getting outside, having hobbies, having somewhere to go and somebody expecting you to show up. If those things are gradually disappearing and the screen is filling more and more of that space, that’s when I start to get concerned.
2. How much screen time is too much for retirees or older adults? Is there a threshold where the risks begin to outweigh the benefits?
I think it’s really hard to give people a magic number because we don’t have the same kind of clear guidelines for older adults that we have for children and teenagers. What we do know is that when you add together television, phones, tablets and computers, older adults can be spending somewhere in the range of seven to nine hours a day with screens, which sounds like an enormous number, but you really have to understand what somebody is doing during those hours and what the rest of their day looks like.
With teenagers, for example, we have research showing that as recreational screen time gets into that three-to-four-hour range and beyond, we start seeing associations with poorer mental health, but a teenager is also in school for seven or eight hours a day. There are only so many hours left, so at some point the screen is inevitably crowding something out. It’s usually sleep, exercise, homework, time outside, or actually being with other people.
For an older adult, I think that’s the much more useful question: what is the screen crowding out? Are you getting seven or eight hours of sleep? Are you moving your body? Are you eating well? Are you seeing other people? Are you getting out of the house? Are you still grocery shopping, cooking, taking care of your home and managing the activities of daily living that keep you independent?
And we also have to remember that screen time isn’t one single behavior. There is research suggesting that modest amounts of computer use, even an hour or two, may actually be cognitively stimulating for older adults. Maybe you’re reading the news, doing a crossword, researching a trip, taking a class, writing to friends or FaceTiming your grandchildren. That’s very different from sitting passively in front of television for seven hours. So I would look at the whole 24-hour day. If the things that keep your brain and body healthy are still there, the number matters less. If the screen has slowly started replacing them, that’s when the number starts to matter.
3. You discussed the idea of “digital fog.” What cognitive changes are you seeing in your practice that may be linked to excessive screen use?
This is the part that can be really frightening for people because somebody comes in and says, “I’m forgetting names, I can’t concentrate the way I used to, I walk into a room and I don’t remember why I’m there, does this mean I’m developing dementia?” And of course any new or concerning cognitive change in an older adult deserves a proper medical evaluation, because we never want to assume that something is simply caused by a phone.
But there is also this phenomenon that I think of as digital fog, where your brain is being asked to process an enormous amount of information all day long. You’re moving from a text to a headline to a video to an email to another notification, and every time you do that you’re asking your attention to disengage and reorient. Sometimes what feels like a memory problem actually begins as an attention problem, because if your brain never really encoded something in the first place, of course it’s going to be harder to retrieve it later. Then add in the things that often travel with heavy screen use, like poorer sleep, less physical activity and fewer face-to-face interactions, and it isn’t surprising that somebody may say, “I just don’t feel as sharp as I used to.”
I sometimes think about how different it was when you read a newspaper. You got to the last page, folded it up, and you were done. There is no last page of the internet, so your brain never gets that natural signal that says, okay, we’re finished here, now let’s go do something else.
4. You highlighted the growing risk of scams and misinformation. What practical steps can families take to protect older adults without making them feel incapable?
I really want families to approach this carefully because nobody who has spent 70 or 80 years making their own decisions wants their child suddenly policing their phone and their bank account, and very smart, sophisticated people get scammed because these scams are designed around human psychology. Older adults aren’t necessarily more likely to lose money to fraud overall, but when they do lose money, the losses can be much larger, and adults over 60 are about five times as likely as younger adults to report losing money to tech-support scams.
And think about what the scammer is exploiting. Somebody may be home alone more often, they may be lonely and happy to have someone to talk to, they may have retirement savings, or they may get a call saying, “Your grandson has been arrested and he needs money right now,” and suddenly you’re not thinking like a consumer evaluating a financial transaction, you’re thinking like a terrified grandmother who wants to protect her grandchild. That’s why urgency is such an effective tool for scammers. Older adults reported billions of dollars in fraud losses in 2024, so this is not a small problem.
Rather than saying, “Dad, we’re worried you’re going to get scammed,” I would make it a family policy that none of us moves money in response to an unexpected call, text, email or pop-up without stopping and verifying it another way. Call the bank yourself, call your grandchild yourself, and have a family safe word because now that AI can clone voices, hearing what sounds exactly like somebody you love is no longer enough. When everybody follows the same rule, it feels a lot less like you’re taking away someone’s independence and much more like the family is protecting one another.
5. What does healthy aging look like in a world where our phones increasingly compete for our attention, relationships, and sense of purpose?
When I think about healthy aging, I think about whether you still have reasons to get up and get dressed in the morning, whether there are people who are expecting to see you, whether you’re learning something, moving your body, contributing in some way, and whether there is still something in the week that you’re genuinely looking forward to. Those things become incredibly important because as we get older, some of the structures that used to provide them automatically begin to fall away, whether that’s work, raising children, a spouse, a neighborhood that has changed, or a social circle that has gotten smaller.
And I absolutely want technology to be part of healthy aging because it can be extraordinary. If you’re homebound and FaceTime lets you see your grandchildren every night, that’s meaningful connection. If you can’t drive anymore and an online class gives you a community, that’s wonderful. If you’re using your phone to find a walking group, learn Spanish or reconnect with somebody you haven’t spoken to in 30 years, technology has expanded your world. I know many older adults who reunite with old school classmates, take online classes-from fitness to knitting.
What I worry about is when someone’s physical world gets smaller and smaller and we don’t really notice because the digital world has quietly filled the space, and I think that’s why the conversation with our parents has to come from curiosity rather than criticism. Instead of walking in and saying, “You watch too much TV,” sit down and ask what they’re watching, what they’re enjoying, who they’re talking to, what they miss doing and what they wish they were doing more of, because very often the screen is telling you something about what that person needs.
