I opened the screen time report on my own phone before writing this. Three hours and change. I would have guessed one.

The Pew Research Center ran the same exercise across the whole cohort using federal time-use data. Americans 60 and over spend four hours and sixteen minutes of their daily leisure in front of a screen.

That is more than half of all the free time they have. Half.

The rise happened while nobody was framing it as a story about us.

Screen time for this age group climbed about half an hour a day over the past decade. For younger Americans it held roughly flat. The habit that gets blamed on teenagers grew fastest among people in their sixties, seventies and eighties.

The devices arrived too. Fast. Pew now puts smartphone ownership at 78 percent among adults 65 and over, up from 61 percent two years earlier.

 

The third number is the one worth sitting with.

For one in six Americans over 65, the phone is the entire internet. No desktop, no home connection, no second screen to check something on. Every bill, every portal, every message from a doctor arrives through five inches of glass.

Notice also that only 14 percent describe themselves as online almost constantly. This is steady daily use by people who are not glued to anything. Four hours accumulates without anyone noticing. An errand at a time.

Now the part this letter exists to point at. All of that time is sold.

Every session is inventory. The platform meters the attention, packages it by age and county and interest, and sells it to whoever bids. The hours belong to the person watching. The revenue does not.

Where the cohort’s money sits this quarter, and the asset it spends without counting.

The honest catch is that the same pipe carries the theft.

Fraud losses reported to the FTC by people 60 and over came to $2.4 billion in 2024. In 2020 the figure was about $600 million. The agency says the real figure is somewhere between $10.1 billion and $81.5 billion, because most of it never gets reported.

The median reported loss for that age group was $900. Past 80 it was $1,650. A scam that starts with a phone call runs a median loss of $2,210.

So the attention is monetized twice over. Once by the businesses that buy it honestly, and once by the people who buy the same targeting to find a mark.

The arithmetic

Pew Research Center analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics American Time Use Survey data: Americans 60 and over spend four hours and sixteen minutes of daily leisure time in front of screens, more than half their leisure, with that figure up roughly half an hour a day over the past decade while younger age groups held steady. Pew Research Center survey of 5,022 United States adults conducted February 5 to June 18, 2025: smartphone ownership of 78 percent among adults 65 and over against 90 percent at 50 to 64, home broadband at 70 percent for the 65-plus group, 17 percent of that group smartphone-dependent with no home broadband, and 14 percent saying they are online almost constantly. The 61 percent ownership comparison is Pew’s earlier reading of the same measure. Federal Trade Commission, Protecting Older Consumers 2024-2025, report to Congress of December 2025: reported fraud losses by adults 60 and over rising from about $600 million in 2020 to $2.4 billion in 2024, an estimated true cost of $10.1 billion to $81.5 billion, a median reported loss of $900 for the group and $1,650 past 80, and a median loss of $2,210 on scams that begin with a phone call. The count of Americans 65 and over is the Census Bureau’s.

 

Open the screen time report on your own phone tonight. Whatever the number is, that is the size of the asset you hand over every day for free. The businesses on the other side of it have known that for years. The interesting question is what happens to this aisle when the person supplying the hours starts asking for a cut.

Andrew

Boomers Trade is written by someone getting older right alongside you, and watching who profits from it.