Most families keep in touch through a mix of texts, photos, and group chats. It works well, until you notice that Grandma or Grandpa isn’t in the group chat, isn’t tagged in the photos, and isn’t seeing any of it. They still want to be close. The tools your family uses to stay connected were built for a generation that grew up texting, and that shapes who ends up included by default.
Why Grandparents Get Left Out of Family Communication
Family communication has moved almost entirely onto phones and apps over the past decade. Group texts replaced phone trees. Photo sharing replaced mailed prints. Family updates that used to go out in a phone call now go out in a group chat everyone assumes everyone else is reading.
That shift works fine when everyone uses the same handful of apps. It creates gaps when one generation doesn’t.
A few things make this especially common with grandparents:
- Smartphone ownership lags by generation. Older adults are far less likely to own a smartphone than younger generations, which limits which apps are realistically usable day to day.
- Social media adoption dropped off with age. Many grandparents who are comfortable online never picked up Instagram, Snapchat, or the group-chat habits their kids and grandkids take for granted.
- A new app takes longer to learn later in life. An app a teenager picks up in an afternoon can take weeks for someone who didn’t grow up with a smartphone in hand.
- Asking for help gets old fast. Grandparents often notice they’re missing updates but hesitate to keep asking a grandchild to explain the same app twice.
Grandparents want to be included. The default way your family communicates may simply leave them out.
Just How Many Grandparents Are Off Social Media?
The gap exists, and it’s bigger than most families realize. Pew Research Center found that 45% of U.S. adults 65 and older use social media, compared with 84% of adults ages 18 to 29. Smartphone ownership tells a similar story: 96% of adults 18 to 29 own a smartphone, compared with 61% of those 65 and older.
Email has long been the platform older adults are most comfortable with, a pattern that held steady for years even as texting and social apps became the default for younger generations. Older adults use communication technology. The specific tools your family defaults to may not be the ones they ever adopted.
How to Stay Connected With Grandparents Who Aren’t Online
Grandparents don’t need to join Instagram to stay close to them. A few adjustments to how your family shares updates can go a long way.
Meet them on the tool they already use. If they’re comfortable with phone calls, texting, or email, that’s your starting point. A regular phone call carries more warmth than a photo they’ll never see in a group chat they’re not part of.
Loop them in on purpose. If the family group chat is where all the news lives, someone has to be the bridge. That might mean forwarding a few photos by text, printing pictures for a visit, or making a quick call to share news that already went out digitally to everyone else.
Keep the format simple. A phone call, a handwritten note, or a printed photo can mean more to a grandparent than a notification they have to figure out how to open. For a lot of grandparents, the simplest format is the one that actually gets read.
Set a regular time to connect. A recurring Sunday call, a standing coffee visit, or a weekly letter gives everyone a predictable way to stay in touch, without anyone needing to remember to reach out or learn something new. Building that kind of regular check-in rhythm matters more than the specific tool you use.
Ask your grandparent what they’d use. Some grandparents are willing to try a call, a video chat, or a simple app once someone explains it patiently, without pressure. Others prefer the phone. Either works. The goal is a habit they’ll keep up, not the one that’s easiest for you.
What Should You Talk About With Grandparents?
Grandparents often want to hear the everyday details as much as the big news, and they may have fewer chances to hear them if they’re not seeing your day-to-day life online.
Some conversation starters that go beyond “how are you”:
- What’s something that made you laugh this week?
- What’s a memory from your childhood this reminds you of?
- What’s something you’ve been working on around the house?
- What’s a story from when you were my age that I haven’t heard?
- What’s something you’re looking forward to?
- What’s a piece of advice you’d give me right now?
Grandparents are often sitting on decades of stories that never come up unless someone asks. A specific question can open a conversation a general “how’s everything” never would.
Staying Connected Across Different Habits
Multigenerational families rarely settle on one shared platform, and that’s fine. Your grandparent might prefer a phone call. Your teenager might prefer a photo. You might prefer a quick text.
Staying connected across generations often means finding a way to bring those different formats together, so each person can show up in the way that’s easiest for them. The same is true for siblings living far apart or a college student settling into a new routine: the format matters less than making it easy to keep showing up.
A Family Communication App Can Help
Sometimes the hardest part of staying close with grandparents comes down to the tools your family defaults to for communicating, which can leave them out without anyone meaning to.
That’s where a family communication app can help.
nosy gives your family questions to answer throughout the week, then brings everyone’s answers together for a Sunday reveal, in a simple format that doesn’t require keeping up with a feed, a group chat, or a new app’s worth of features. It gives grandparents, parents, and kids something specific to respond to, at their own pace.
For grandparents who’ve felt a step behind the family group chat, that can be an easy way back into the conversation.
Stay Connected Across Every Generation
Your family will keep communicating in a mix of ways: some digital, some not, some old fashioned, some brand new. That’s simply what multigenerational families look like.
A few simple, shared ways to include everyone go further than getting everyone on the same app.
nosy makes it easy for every generation to be part of the conversation, without anyone needing to learn a new social platform.
Start your family circle with nosy and give your whole family, grandparents included, an easy way to stay connected.