The Rise of the iPad Dad
The generation that warned millennials about screens risks disappearing into them
He came, he saw, he forgot his Apple ID password - the story of Easter with an iPad dad.
Millennials like me remember when our dads ticked us off for texting and thought calling it ‘Twatter’ constituted a joke. Mine even blocked my phone from the Wi-Fi after 9 p.m - I’d never been so grateful to own an iPad.
We were the guinea pigs of the digital age. Our parents didn’t have a clue what we were doing online, so we dived headfirst into the relentless group chats, carefully curated envy, and pings that felt urgent but never were.
Now the tables have turned. The dads who once rolled their eyes at our scrolling are losing hours to theirs. The average man in his fifties now spends more time on his phone than watching television; in his favourite chair, but not in the room.
My father avidly quizzes AI on longevity medicine, while my father-in-law treats the BBC Sport app like a life-support machine. A friend’s old man has tweeted almost 100,000 times - the equivalent of Shakespeare’s collected works three times over, though heavier on VAR and lighter on verse.
Dads have always been a bit antisocial, but technology is taking their grumpiness to new heights. One friend reports that his father chose a four hour round trip to rescue the iPad he’d left at their holiday home over an evening with his family.
It’s easy to laugh along, but when 15 per cent of men aged 55 to 64 report having no friends, loneliness is no joke for dads.
Socialising is good for the soul, and it seems, the heart. A study of nearly half a million Brits found that those who kept to themselves were 60 per cent more likely to die of heart disease than those who made time for friends or family. A pint and a chat can be as life saving as a trip to the gym.
It’s easy to poke fun, but dads have a lot on their plates - caught between helping their kids onto the property ladder and planning for retirements that could stretch well into their nineties.
It’s no wonder that a 2024 poll found that more than 40 per cent of 50 to 59-year-olds reported feeling more anxious, and that’s before Rachel Reeves kicked off the nightmare on Downing Street.
Only around a quarter of men who’ve struggled with their mental health say they’d discuss it with their families. The rest bottle it up, scroll it away, or ask Google for advice - retreating behind their screens, as their fathers once retreated behind their newspapers.
Easter is the perfect excuse to break that silence. A walk, a pint, or a full-throated board game can do more for a dad’s wellbeing than any number of Facebook groups swapping memes about potholes.
What matters is being together, laughing and telling the same old stories.
If you’re lucky enough to still have your dad around, it’s worth putting the phone down and giving him a bit of your time. He’ll act like he’d rather be watching the sport, but he’ll stay put.
What dads really need at Easter is what they’ve always needed: the messy, noisy comfort of other people.