It has happened several times over the past year. Hilda, 32, has found her 77-year-old father nodding off at the dining table, his smartphone propped upright, the same short video looping endlessly in front of him.

The clips, usually Facebook Reels or TikTok videos narrated by an artificial voice, range from slapstick gags to condensed movie plots.

When he wakes, he instinctively swipes the tabletop, as if the screen were still there.

“He spends most of his free time at home, glued to his phone,” says Hilda, a marketing professional who declined to give her full name.

Her father retired more than a decade ago. With his wife and adult children working full time, he is often alone during the day.

At family meals and gatherings, Hilda has noticed him drifting away mid-conversation, reaching for his phone and scrolling in silence.

“He doesn’t really participate in family conversations any more,” she says.

Hilda’s experience is increasingly common among many families in Singapore.

Across online forums and in private conversations, adult children are voicing concern about elderly parents who spend hours scrolling short-form videos, disengaging from family life and, in some cases, showing signs of compulsive screen use.

While smartphone addiction is often associated with young people who grew up online, a similar pattern is emerging at the other end of the age spectrum – not a phone-based childhood but a phone-based retirement.

The Infocomm Media Development Authority’s (IMDA) 2020 Annual Survey on Infocomm Usage found that smartphone use among residents aged 75 and above jumped from 41 per cent to 60 per cent between 2019 and 2020, a surge accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic.

By 2023, IMDA reported that 89 per cent of seniors owned a smartphone.

For a growing number of Singapore’s seniors, smartphones have shifted from a tool of convenience to a constant companion, raising questions about loneliness, health and how digital habits are reshaping ageing in Singapore.

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