> who cares how people have fun?

The author's mother, who declared 40+ years ago that Atari games are a waste of time.

This is an article about hypocrisy and asymmetry of importance. The author views his mother's gaming habit as hypocritical given her attitude towards video games when he was young. His mother may not even remember telling at him to get off the video game and go outside because it was just another of innumerable occasions during which she had to scold her child.

I've had this conversation with my own now-elderly mother, and her response was, "well, it was 30 years ago, and you were a child. It doesn't matter now, just let me play sudoku on my phone". Which is frustrating to hear after the decade or so I spent listening to her describe my video game hobby as a waste of time every opportunity she had.

Well, I do agree with the sentiment that people can do what they want, but I think the title AND the picture of the granny with the casino numbers reflected in her glasses both describe a real phenomenon, which I might even venture to label a "problem", the above shared sentiment not withstanding.

All evidence anecdotal and all opinion my own:

First - have you seen the phone games (some of) these old people are playing? "Dumb" is not an objective label of course but.... have you seen them?

Second - I think it's definitely possible that there are seniors out there blowing their social security on gambling games. I think there are a lot of things wrong with that.

Third - Even ignoring "dumb phone games" I'm seeing people that I would have always said have no use for a computer (my father, age 74) compulsively getting their phones out and staring at them in contexts that a lot of people his age (including him, I wager) would have definitely considered rude just a few short years ago.

I catch myself doing this, even though there is literally nothing for me to look at on my phone as I deliberately don't have social media or games (other than Chess, ok) so that I don't do this. For example, I might pull my phone out at 10PM on a Saturday and open ThinkOrSwim before realizing it's not changed since Friday, obviously, and won't til Monday morning. Yes, this is my own personal problem, but I doubt I'm alone, and most people have a lot more distracting shit on their phones than I do.

Yes, it's my opinion and you don't have to agree, but I do think this broader phone addiction thing is a problem and I will qualify that as: something that is making our species less capable of survival in the long term.

the way he described it, it is age-specific because presumably she didn't behave like that at all, in earlier years

Yours is a boring topic that has been beaten to death. The article is about a more interesting case when someone presumably previously intellectually active and living a healthy life regresses to stupid activities like that. A glimpse of what's ahead.