Is My Aging Parent Addicted to Doom Scrolling on Social Media?
A Closer Look at Screens, Scrolling, and the Surprising Truth
About Older Adults Online
The short answer: Yes — 9 in 10 adults 50 and older now use social media daily, and 8 in 10 stream video weekly, often far more actively than their adult children assume. The real risk usually isn’t the scrolling itself; it’s how easily platforms now let people buy directly from a video, which opens the door to impulse purchases and ad scams (and there are scams aplenty).
Why I Started Paying Attention
When I first started watching my mother using her phone, I assumed she was just texting, checking the weather, or maybe the news headlines. One day, I actually watched her sliding and tapping her finger across the screen, scrolling through a feed of videos, photos, and text messages with the speed and confidence of someone half her age. She’s 95.
Just How Tech-Savvy Are Older Adults, Really?
The stereotype that older adults don’t know how to use technology is common, but the data doesn’t back it up. Nine in 10 adults 50 and older now use social media, and 8 in 10 stream video every week, according to AARP’s most recent Tech Trends research. Pew Research Center’s 2025 survey found that a majority of adults 65 and older use Facebook and YouTube, and nearly one in five now uses Instagram. TikTok still trails well behind in this age group, but it’s one of the fastest-growing user segments the platform has, and it has been climbing every year.
Put plainly: the people you assumed were struggling with their smartphones are, in large numbers, quietly running circles on an app you probably haven’t opened yet.
“Despite the widespread belief that the elderly are not tech-savvy, a good number of seniors, even those over 70 or 80, are fully literate in computer, iPhone, iPad, and Android technology.”
— Chapter 2, Survival Guide to Caring for Aging Parents
I can attest to this, because a few years back I convinced my then-85-year-old dad to give up his flip phone and acquire a smartphone after much resistance. Now at 96, he’s incredibly proficient at navigating sites, checking photos, and reading news articles.
What Are Older Adults Actually Doing with All That Screen Time?
For a lot of older adults, social media has replaced the roles television, talk radio, and newspapers once played. My mom refuses to watch TV, insisting it’s “addicting” — while spending hours on a bottomless feed of comedy clips, gardening tips, and, in her case, news videos. It’s how a growing number of people keep up with news and politics. Pew Research found that roughly one in five American adults now regularly gets news from TikTok alone. A little aside here – with the amount of unregulated AI, fake news, and “opinion” influencers, this can be very dangerous. Older adults make up a smaller slice of the TikTok group than younger ones do, but with so many seniors online every day, even a modest slice adds up to millions of people forming political opinions between a recipe video and a clip of someone’s grandkids or favorite golden retriever.
Then there are podcasts — a genuinely wonderful development for a generation that grew up on radio dramas. And there’s a newer, stranger category worth knowing about: AI-generated “micro-dramas,” bite-sized vertical soap operas on apps like ReelShort and DramaBox. They’re engineered like a slot machine — a free taste of the story, then a cliffhanger that only unlocks for a price. Individual episodes typically run $0.15 to $0.40, coin packs range from $4 to $40 or more, and a regular viewer unlocking a few extra episodes a week can end up spending $15 to $25 a week or a month, sometimes more. None of that shows up as one alarming charge — it shows up as a dozen small ones, which is exactly why it’s easy for a parent to lose track.
Can Doom Scrolling Lead to Financial Scams?
Yes, and this is the part that worries me most as a caregiver. Scrolling or watching a video is harmless. Buying something because of one is where it gets complicated. Social platforms now let you purchase a product directly from the video you’re watching — no separate website, no second thought required, just a “shop now” button and a checkout screen. The FTC has been blunt about the risk: platforms don’t thoroughly vet the ads or advertisers you see, and in 2025 alone, reported losses from social media ad scams topped $95 million — with the real number believed to be far higher, since most people never report it.
Older adults aren’t necessarily more likely to click on a scam ad than anyone else, but when it goes wrong, it tends to go wrong at a much higher cost. According to FTC data, adults 80 and older who lose money to fraud report a median loss of $1,500, compared with $500 for adults under 60. They’re roughly five times more likely to be targeted by tech support scams, and twice as likely to fall for prize and sweepstakes schemes, which account for a full third of reported losses in the 80-and-up group.
My mother once asked me, quite earnestly, whether I thought the “genuine leather” handbag she’d seen — 70% off, only for the next two hours — was a good deal. It wasn’t a scam, as it turned out, just a wildly overpriced bag from a marketplace seller. But it easily could have been, and the video gave her no more reason to trust it than a stranger knocking on her door with the same offer would have.
How Can You Help Your Aging Parent Doom Scroll More Safely?
If your parent is being taken advantage of via their phone — either through lack of self-control or outright fraud — your instinct to take the phone away is understandable, and almost always the wrong move. For a generation this connected, isolation can do more harm than the scrolling ever could. A better approach:
● Stay curious instead of alarmed — ask your parent to show you what they’ve been watching.
● Adjust settings to limit phone time, with their permission.
● Download apps that protect against spam or fraud calls.
● If they mention buying something online, ask where the money went and how.
● Set up purchase alerts on their bank or credit card so a string of small “coin pack” charges — or one large impulse buy — doesn’t go unnoticed for a month.
● Before buying anything seen in a video, do a thirty-second search of the company’s name alongside “scam” or “complaint.”
If something does go wrong, it can be reported directly to the FTC at ReportFraud.ftc.gov, and the free AARP Fraud Watch Network Helpline (877-908-3360, Monday–Friday, 8 a.m.–8 p.m. ET) is staffed by people trained to talk it through — no judgment, no obligation to be an AARP member.
A Final Word
Your parent scrolling through news, product sites, or even TikTok at 10 p.m. isn’t a sign that something has gone wrong. In a lot of ways, it’s a sign that they’re still curious, still engaged, still finding entertainment and connection in a world that keeps handing them new tools to do it with. The goal isn’t to shut that down — it’s to sit beside them occasionally, see what they’re watching, and make sure that curiosity doesn’t quietly cost them more than they ever meant to spend.
This is a theme we come back to throughout Survival Guide to Caring for Aging Parents — that respecting our parents’ independence and protecting them from harm aren’t opposites. They just take a little more attention, paid together.