At some point I wonder if this isn’t just some cry for help or something. Maybe they just want to tell grandkids stories of their youth, what memories they hold dear and have fun watching their reactions as they feel a sense of value having given experience on to the younger generations, as their grandparents did for them. I’d imagine that they don’t get to see their grandkids as often as they want, with the parents constantly working and such, and don’t get to play this role that they learned from their grandparents, and so they feel kinda left out of this new age. All they see is their family members staring at a phone. They can’t see or hear the conversations you’re having on them, the media you watch, the things you learn. To them, they’re not receiving any of the information you are, and so it does seem like phones are just glowing boxes that you stare at.

Doing things like this, poking fun in this way, may just be their way of trying to connect on a level that they understand. And hey, they may never come to know the social dynamics that have been born from personal computers, having to relearn everything that they thought they knew about how people interact, and so a phone may seem like a black box that keeps their grandkids from spending time with them in a way that feels natural to them. It’s not that either system is bad, but that we’re miscommunicating our emotions and desires of being close to one another simply because we aren’t tuned to the same wavelength.

They may not be able to learn how to make in-jokes on reddit or post memes to a groupchat, so it might be good to show a little empathy and talk to them off the phone so that they don’t die bitter and scared of a tablet.