{"id":260553,"date":"2025-11-04T07:28:31","date_gmt":"2025-11-04T07:28:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/260553\/"},"modified":"2025-11-04T07:28:31","modified_gmt":"2025-11-04T07:28:31","slug":"adrian-weckler-small-screen-addiction-can-no-longer-be-regarded-as-just-a-young-people-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/260553\/","title":{"rendered":"Adrian Weckler: Small-screen addiction can no longer be regarded as just a \u2018young people\u2019 thing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-91174671_secondary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom4 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop4\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\" data-testid=\"title-summary\">\nWith 70pc of Irish adults admitting to spending too much time on their phones, it\u2019s older people and not those pesky kids that need to put them away\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Unfortunately the algorithm to keep teens scrolling is just as effective on older people. Photo: Getty\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/3408b775-91b2-4c62-b9cd-7eaa867c11a5.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Unfortunately the algorithm to keep teens scrolling is just as effective on older people. Photo: Getty<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">What struck me most about visiting wild forests in New Zealand was the eerie silence. There are few birds there because the Europeans brought rodents that wiped them out. So it\u2019s deathly quiet, most of the time.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">I was reminded of this in a restaurant recently. It was almost full. But surrounding me were dozens of middle-aged people. And almost all of them were on their phones. Not talking, not comparing things they were seeing. Just silent, scrolling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With 70pc of Irish adults admitting to spending too much time on their phones, it\u2019s older people and&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":260554,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[55489,49,48,84,393,394,97950],"class_list":{"0":"post-260553","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-adrian-weckler","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-health","12":"tag-mental-health","13":"tag-mentalhealth","14":"tag-review-magazine"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260553\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/260554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}