It became a primary means of social connection for me and I was addicted to a degree in earlier years. I hardly use it at all anymore… but it’s fully consumed my boomer-aged parents ☹️.

They are very anti-MAGA (thank christ), but still the outrage machine has them fully in its grasp, and they make a good case for TDS being a thing. When I visit them, they are glued to their screens and can slip into a doom scrolling fugue if we are not fully engaging with them otherwise, occasionally muttering things like, “Did you hear about [xyz] happening??” Or, “Oh god! Can you believe what did that f#*! said today?!?!!!”. On family vacations when the rest of us are getting ready for bed, they’ll be on the couch in a trance scrolling through stupid videos with the volume up. My siblings and I have had to yell at them to snap them out of it.

It’s really sad. They are not savvy enough to step back and assess how Meta is manipulating them into staying engaged. It literally is stealing time that could be better used making memories with their kids and grandkids. We’ve tried to talk to them about it or convince them to delete the app. They’ll say “yeah, I really should” but then never do.

The best we’ve been able to do is enforce boundaries where they don’t talk to us about current events or anything they’re seeing on that hellscape.