Meet the real screen addicts: the elderly

HUNDREDS of teenagers, sometimes strong-armed by their parents, have trooped through the doors of Britain’s National Centre for Gaming Disorders since it opened in 2019.

Yet lately, the publicly funded clinic has admitted a steady trickle of rather different patients. Its specialists in video-game addiction have so far treated 67 people over the age of 40. The oldest, with an obsession for games on her smartphone, was 72.

Something approaching a moral panic has taken hold in many countries over the impact of digital technology on young people. Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist and author, speaks of an “anxious generation” of youngsters whose childhood is being stolen by smartphones and social apps.