Forget the golf course, older Americans are spending their retirements tinkering with apps and talking to AI
Brian Rezendes anticipates his retirement years will be filled with AI agents, algorithms, and APIs — along with the occasional vacation with his wife. Rezendes, a former pool business owner, retired in April from a retail job in rural North Dakota. Like many retirees, the 64-year-old envisioned his post-work years as a time to relax, travel, and stay active. He did not expect to be neck-deep in conversations with chatbots, vibe coding websites, or building YouTube channels. Though he'd always been interested in technology, he rarely delved into the deeper plumbing behind it until a few years ago, when he became immersed in AI. Nowadays, he spends almost all of his time building apps… until the real world intervenes. "My wife gets a little bit jealous when I spend too much time on the computer"
Retirement has gone digital. Retired Americans admit they and their friends are glued to their screens, perhaps to a fault. Hours they could have spent tidying up the house went toward learning the best AI tools and, as three tech-savvy baby boomers put it, "staying current." Some post-career Americans who moved abroad said tech is all the rage in their beachfront expat communities. Retirement communities have swapped watercoloring for AI education. Starting an AI-powered business replaced the golf course. ChatGPT is the new nurse's assistant. Robots are some older Americans' new best friends.
Dee Humphrey, 73, has used a companion robot called ElliQ for over three years. And while she's waiting for a new version to arrive, she's been having "withdrawals because I can't do anything with her." The new reality of retirement isn't all screen addiction. Some of this development has been a boon for older people navigating a new phase of life. In Austin, Edward Perry, 72, said that he used AI after a terminal cancer diagnosis to "help me with making the most out of the time I have," including managing his health and finding ways to be more present in his family's lives. "As I'm getting older, I have more aches and pains, but with utilizing these new technologies, I'm going to be able to do more and more."
Many others acknowledged the drawbacks of getting too hooked on tech. Most knew that relying too heavily on AI meant losing agency and receiving potentially faulty information. Others said being too invested in tech could mean less time staying active. Some noted that after decades of work, these were their years to unwind, but they couldn't bring themselves to close their MacBooks. If Gen Z is the first generation to grow up on the internet, baby boomers are learning how to be the first generation to retire on it.
For those in retirement, screen time of all types has been increasing. Adults 65 and over almost doubled their YouTube consumption on TV from 2023 to 2025, and older Americans spend over four hours a day in front of screens. Smartphone ownership among adults aged 50-plus surged from 55% in 2016 to 90% in 2025. Perhaps more striking was the number of older people experimenting with AI.
Nearly all older tech superusers I spoke to were surprised by the amount the tools had become integrated into their retirements. Jan Friedlander, 81, starting using AI to guide her treatment, and soon found herself relying on it to research clothing, plan vacations, and more. As she became more competent at prompting, she felt confident enough to start teaching her peers.
She submitted her lab work to ChatGPT after having a reaction to an antibiotic, prompting her to follow up with her doctor and allergist. But she also takes issue with the disappearance of human customer service and the online digitization of medical care. To combat the AI creep, Smith has monitored her tech usage and maintained a regular exercise schedule.
While cutting-edge tools have become a retirement fascination for some, many older Americans are unexpectedly working into their later years due to financial constraints and, by extension, learning new tech tricks. "I'm still like a little kid with a toy about technology, with the same kind of excitement," Sweet says. "I'm kind of addicted." Other older workers used tech to pivot later in their careers. A decade ago, Laura Noren, now 61, was weary and disillusioned with her career as a registered nurse, so she opted for an unexpected route — IT classes at a local college in Michigan. The learning curve was massive.
Her skills have come in handy when teaching her mother how to add phone contacts to favorites or avoid scams, and she hopes to find work down the line that better suits her skills.
Others who returned to school in their later years said they've integrated age tech into their lives for reassurance. When Mark Bayer, 63, decided to retire from his community banking career at 60, he thought, "I will never have to sit through another damn Zoom meeting again, and I'll be the happiest person in the world." To his surprise, he began teaching English as a second language over Zoom and reenrolled in college to be "exposed to new ideas from younger minds."
Bayer, who lives in Pennsylvania, expected his classmates to debate and brainstorm ideas off the top of their heads, but they all went to ChatGPT instead. Initially, he was dumbfounded. But when he saw the list of ideas for a group discussion, it exceeded what he would've come up with. Ignoring AI, he says he realized, "is a way to say I'm done learning anything new, which is self-limiting."