Screen time may be rising among older Indians as smartphones become the default interface for daily life, widening health and trust risks that demand practical guardrails from the state, workplaces, and families
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In the Odyssey, Odysseus prepares to sail past the Sirens, whose songs lure sailors off course. The crew seals their ears with wax, while Odysseus, curious enough to listen, is bound tightly to the mast. The instruction is given in advance and is non-negotiable: whatever he demands once the singing begins, he is not to be untied until the ship has passed. The scene hinges on a familiar human flaw. The moment the song starts, Odysseus pleads to be released. The restraint holds because it was designed before his judgment was compromised and enforced by others who did not hear what he heard. India’s older adults are entering a comparable current, though the pull comes in the form of messages, videos, alerts, and frictionless payments. The lesson is clear: guardrails work best when set in advance, before judgment is pulled off course.
A household telecom survey (2025) from the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation notes that about 85.5 percent of households possessed at least one smartphone, possibly driven by rising incomes, increasing internet penetration across the country, and a large domestic market. Phones arrived late in many households, often without settled etiquette for message forwards, advertising cues, or credibility checks. With smartphones now increasingly linked to bank accounts, the costs of a mistake can rise sharply. ‘Digital arrest’ frauds, in which victims are kept on video calls for hours and pressured into making payments, have become prominent enough to reach the Supreme Court of India.
Teenagers face school rules and parental supervision; older adults largely regulate their own use and often have fewer people around to notice when screen time spills into insomnia, anxiety or compulsive checking.
Extended screen time amplifies these risks. Many older Indians now keep their phones close throughout the day and into the night, checking content in short, frequent bursts rather than in a single sitting. As a result, they spend more time in a digital space where information and influence come rapidly and demand immediate attention, leading to increased sitting, less physical activity, reduced sleep, and a cumulative rise in lifestyle-related risks.
Reporting in The Economist offers a useful corrective to a debate that has focused too heavily on teenagers and youth cohorts. In its framing, the steepest change is occurring higher up the age pyramid, as cohorts that have been online since midlife approach retirement with established digital habits and more time to spend. Device mix also matters. Device ownership by age group in selected high-income countries for Q1 2025 (Figure 1) shows older adults as enthusiastic multi-device users. Smartphone ownership among those aged 65 and above sits near the top of the distribution, and the same group also demonstrates substantial ownership of computers, smart televisions and tablets. Some categories skew younger, particularly game consoles, but the overall picture is of older users accumulating screens rather than limiting themselves to a single device.
Figure 1: Device Ownership by Age Group in Selected High-Income Countries, Q1 2025
Source: The Economist, “Meet the real screen addicts: the elderly”
This pattern helps explain why total screen exposure can rise even among older adults who remain heavy television viewers. In Britain, Ofcom data show that those aged over 75 still spend long hours with broadcast TV, while time online on smartphones, computers and tablets has also increased. The guardrails are different. Teenagers face school rules and parental supervision; older adults largely regulate their own use and often have fewer people around to notice when screen time spills into insomnia, anxiety or compulsive checking.
India, by contrast, lacks a single, routinely tracked national statistic on daily screen time among older adults. What exists instead is a set of partial indicators that, taken together, reveal widening exposure alongside uneven capability. The Longitudinal Ageing Study in India (LASI) reports mobile phones as the most prevalent consumer durable in Indian households aged 45 and above, with access higher in urban areas at 93.6 percent than in rural areas at 84.1 percent. Yet usage does not equate to comfort. A NITI Aayog position paper on senior care reforms (2024) notes that only 13 percent of Indians aged 60 or older have ever used the internet, well below the national internet penetration rate.
Future national surveys should track older adults’ screen exposure and digital skills across states, income groups, and rural–urban settings, rather than relying solely on device access to infer behaviour.
Where older adults do adopt phones, the pattern often takes the form of limited, task-specific use. A study of older Indian cancer patients found that 81 percent used mobile phones, but only 25 percent accessed the internet, with use lower among those with no education or impaired cognition. An analysis using National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) data shows large wealth and urban–rural gradients in reported internet use, suggesting that exposure and capability are likely to remain stratified across adult ages. An Indian adult nomophobia study (or no-mobile-phone phobia, the anxiety or discomfort some people feel when they cannot access their phone or stay connected) reported that about 42 percent of participants used smartphones for more than four hours a day for non-work activities, with longer daily use predicting higher nomophobia scores. The missing piece is measurement that matches the scale of the issue. Future national surveys should track older adults’ screen exposure and digital skills across states, income groups, and rural–urban settings, rather than relying solely on device access to infer behaviour.
For some older adults, digital tools can reduce isolation, expand access to services, and support cognitive engagement, even as the social and financial vulnerabilities of a screen-heavy adulthood become increasingly apparent. Chronic disease management can now routinely be conducted via a phone, whether used directly by the older person or mediated by family members. eSanjeevani has expanded teleconsultations nationwide, serving as a routine access channel, particularly when travel to health facilities is difficult. The Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM) has developed the ABHA (Ayushman Bharat Health Account) application as a citizen-facing platform to view and share medical records with consent, reducing repeated paperwork and lost prescriptions for older patients who move between providers. Large consumer platforms also engage older adults in health-related phone use, including teleconsultations, medicine ordering, and diagnostics (Apollo 24/7, Practo), as well as information-focused services (Tata 1mg). Samsung Health has introduced a ‘Find Care’ feature in partnership with PharmEasy and Tata 1mg, enabling medicine ordering, diagnostics booking, and online consultations directly within the health app.
Since ancient times, every generation has believed that the next is being negatively affected by some new medium. A more useful approach—especially for India’s older adults—is to treat heavy phone use as a matter of environment and oversight rather than personal weakness. Teenagers still encounter friction through school routines and household monitoring. Many older adults have fewer such mediators, and late adoption can mean weaker instincts for distinguishing a credible claim from a manufactured one.
Guardrails against dark patterns can be applied beyond niche categories, with clearer consent, fewer manipulative defaults, and transparency around recommendation systems and auto-play.
Screen time among older adults rises due to mundane factors. The phone becomes the easiest way to fill gaps between tasks, manage loneliness without leaving home, and keep up with family. That convenience collides with designs built to hold attention. Infinite scroll, auto-play, streaks, and timed rewards can turn minutes into hours without a clear endpoint. Notifications and group chats keep attention on a short leash, while algorithmic feeds learn what provokes reactions and then serve more of it. Much of this is not ‘content’ in the traditional sense, but a stream of prompts that trains checking behaviour.
Public policy has room to act without sliding into paternalism. The first task is to treat attention-holding design as a consumer issue, not solely a parenting concern. Guardrails against dark patterns can be applied beyond niche categories, with clearer consent, fewer manipulative defaults, and transparency around recommendation systems and auto-play. Digital wellbeing defaults can be normalised across devices and major apps, including simpler ways to mute non-essential notifications and cap late-night use. Digital literacy for older adults would work best when embedded in trusted touchpoints such as primary care, community centres, and welfare services, where the focus can remain practical.
Workplaces could play a greater role in promoting employee digital well-being, including through occupational health and employee wellness programmes. Many Indian adults work in offices while also acting as digital intermediaries for their families at home, so awareness of notification hygiene, sleep, and attention management can have spillover effects beyond the employee. Setting basic norms for response times, meeting schedules, and messaging outside work hours lowers the expectation of constant availability, helping prevent late-night phone use.
Workplaces could play a greater role in promoting employee digital well-being, including through occupational health and employee wellness programmes. Many Indian adults work in offices while also acting as digital intermediaries for their families at home, so awareness of notification hygiene, sleep, and attention management can have spillover effects beyond the employee.
Raising public awareness about synthetic media and online scams through official channels can strengthen households’ first line of defence, as digitally confident individuals are often the ones asked to assess forwarded claims or suspicious calls. Governments can support this by making fraud reporting faster and easier for older users and by providing clear procedures to report, freeze, and recover funds. India has a national channel—the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre helpline (1930)—and a financial fraud reporting system. In practice, these measures are effective only when people know they exist, act promptly, and receive timely responses.
Households can introduce limits without turning daily life into strict policing. This can be done by reducing notifications, cutting down competing apps, and setting predictable phone-free periods around meals and sleep. Younger family members can help configure devices so the default experience is less addictive. They can also offer engaging alternatives—walking groups, community activities, reading circles, simple shared games, or hobbies that create a sense of time passing without screens. Lectures about screen time rarely succeed when rules target only the young. A more effective approach treats restraint as a shared habit across generations, reflecting the deeper reality that the phone has become the common room of modern life.
K. S. Uplabdh Gopal is an Associate Fellow with the Health Initiative at the Observer Research Foundation.
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Dr. K. S. Uplabdh Gopal is an Associate Fellow with the Health Initiative at the Observer Research Foundation. He writes and researches on how India’s ...
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