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).

It’s not generational, its proportional to how brian-rotted you are.

The more time you spent scrolling mindlessly, the more your brain defaults to that reward path and makes you crave it.

But there are tiers to the activities you choose to do and how they rot or don’t rot your brain:

Tier 1:

• Playing a social sport or game - it’s fully engaging and interactive, it requires planning and foresight, and forces you to communicate and engage socially.
  • It often also forces active choice in picking something to do
  • It often requires broader commitment and week-week planning just to create the events
  • Bonus points if it’s a physical sport or game since it helps you stay fit
  • Bonus points if it’s an intellectual challenge that pushes you to think outside your comfort or default zones (for some people that might be DND, for some it might be playing a team sport)
• Pursuing a challenging cooperative project - joining volunteer organizations, starting / running a business or charity to try and do something for world, organizing large social events, or participating in parent Council and community groups, and local politics, etc. - these all require working with other, broadening your skills, and will be rewarding as you change your environment
• Caring for others who need it - when you have the ability and others don’t, it benefits everyone to help even out the world

Tier 2:

• Reading a challenging book that will make you grow as a person (maybe the news or a genuine deep research binge depending where you’re at) / listening to an educational podcast / watching a challenging movie or mini-series / pursuing a challenging independent project / pursuing independent physical fitness - those are all great pursuits that will help grow you in some specific way that will benefit the world in the long run, and all require active choice and follow through which is great, but when you do things solo, you have orders of magnitude lower effectiveness in terms of your impact on the world, you don’t grow socially (and tend to atrophy). For some people who are hyper social, these might be more Tier 1 since they need to adjust in that direction, but for most people, I would put these at Tier 2.
• Socially consuming good, but non-challenging media / activities. Picking something to do, but picking something good and well made that you can examine and critique with people. Watching breaking bad and picking apart the foreshadowing or symbolism, watching sports and dissecting the strategy, watching a bad movie and actively extrapolating what their bad writing implies about the universe they’ve created and the horrors that would create. Playing the same casual sport you play every week, and not really trying to push yourself or do better.
• Healthy social events - seeing friends / family / neighbours, going out to parties and festivals and events and socializing with people and making friends and adding positivity to the world.
• Necessary cleaning & maintenance - you still gotta take care of yourself, the world you live in, and learn how to do it all sustainably.

Tier 3

• Independent physical fitness activity where you don’t push yourself - going to the gym / run / etc without actually trying very hard. Still good that you’re doing it to prevent atrophy, but not really improving and not necessarily the greatest use of time. Usually hiding a deeper underlying issue like exhaustion, depression, etc.
• min/maxing cleaning and home improvement - still good in that it will make you happy and satisfied, but at a certain point it’s just an obsessive waste of time without benefit

Tier 4:

• Passively consuming content – this is the dividing line between healthy and unhealthy in my mind – but this is putting on cable and watching whatever’s on, opening an app and scrolling, defaulting to reading the latest gossip magazine because that’s just what you do at this time of night, - this behaviour is, imho, fundamentally toxic, in that the act of doing it not just wastes your time, but actively makes you less happy / stable / etc, though it’s often not the root cause. You tend to default towards these when you’re stressed and low energy, on the flip side, they tend to make you stressed and low energy.

Everything is a spectrum, and I’ve known Pre-Boomers, Boomers, GenX, Millenials, and Gen Z who all have problems with Tier 4 (and lower) activities. Usually it’s a sign of other stress / unsatisfaction / depression (note that Tier 1 activities are the ones you tend to drop when you get depressed), but it’s really upsetting to see anyone when they seem unaware of how stuck in a toxic Tier 4 loop they are.

The main reason I whine to kids when they cannot put their phones down is so that they would put their phones down. I’m not passively complaining about the state of the world, I’m doing what I’m supposed to as a parent and/or older person.

I think they crave shared experience, the social activity of watching together, of picking something that everyone wants to watch.

I miss it too, except I never wanted to watch what they wanted to watch. I couldn’t do it either.

Now I just miss them.

Not that I’m in any position to speak for an entire generation but I feel like a lot of Gen Z also can’t understand why Gen Z can’t put their phones down and watch TV like a normal person.

I’m a millennial and I raised my kids how I was raised. My son got his first electronic device at age 13. He does not stop using his phone ever. It is insane. First thing in the morning he grabs it off the charger and will be buried in it all day long doing nothing at all besides looking at his phone. All he does is watch videos on Spotify…it’s fucking crazy. Then I set a time limit on his phone. So after his time limit is up he just texts and calls random people. That shit is not normal and to me I won’t understand it. Ever.

Older people can be just as bad as young ones about phone addiction and poor habits let alone manners

And I’m a (late) millennial and spend most of my time at home neither on my phone nor TV, but my laptop computer (connected to two external monitors).

I got my first own computer when I was 10 and ever since then, using the computer has been my “default” activity when I’m at home. Smartphones came after that and didn’t change that, I still prefer big screens with a keyboard and mouse if I have them, mainly use my smartphone when I’m not at home.

Actually, boomers are some of the most phone-addicted people I come in contact with 🤷‍♂️

In the worst case Boomer can’t even remember how we watch TV in the 90s which was exactly the same way but without our phone. We didn’t watch TV scotched to the screen like that like to think, there’s a reason why ads are blaring noise like a fucking bombing alarm now.

Not a shower thought.

Also never heard this from any boomer - and I have a large family that extends from 90 year-old grandparents to newborns.

“tiktok will ruin your attention span”

Flips between channels every 20 seconds muttering about how there’s nothing good on

Gen-X quietly in the corner, remembering how they watched TV a lot too, but also mostly got kicked out of the house to play outside and don’t come back in until dark.

Because TV is boring as hell most of the times and majority of it is ads which cant be blocked.

At least with phone i have to move my thumbs or put a little taught into how to express myself.

Standard TV is just a complete mind numbing existence. It’s pretty much equal to just being in a coma. Even sleeping is better, at least the body is recovering at that time. Standard TV is one of the worst ways to consume data garbage.

Of course there are good movies and documentaries, but those are a minority.

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.