On the day my Taiwanese grandma A-Ma turned 80, she complained about a lingering dizziness.
When she got up from the floor mat, she fainted. Though the blackout lasted only two seconds and the doctor ruled the trigger to be temporary low blood pressure, my aunt was worried enough to dust off an old iPhone in case of an emergency.
Being illiterate, it took my grandma a full week to master punching in the four-digit passcode. I was worried during my entire visit home in Taiwan.
My cousin helped her figure out her phone
Everything changed when my 6-year-old cousin came home from kindergarten with a new obsession with Minecraft videos. Not having a phone to his name, A-ma became my cousin’s easy target. He downloaded YouTube onto her phone. A thread of over-the-top romance videos popped up on my grandma’s feed. She clicked on one after another.
Turns out, my grandma’s taste in entertainment was 30-second dramatic YouTube Shorts with ridiculous premises filmed on a low production budget: a housekeeper starved by her boss, who eventually fell in love with her. A college senior slept with dad’s best friend, who has a BDSM lair. A high school girl endured bullying, then revealed she is an heir to a kingdom. Everything that made me cringe made her giggle.
Then the effects of her phone permeated into real life. The family store she started with my grandpa in 1975 began seeing her less. Instead of stocking the shelves with my aunt in the morning, she opted for a long breakfast: two boiled eggs dipped in soy sauce with an endless side of YouTube Shorts.
The situation briefly looked up when A-ma’s friend, who ran a sticky rice shop, stopped by the store with some fresh gossip. The friend brought hot-off-the-press news about a local’s son and daughter. My grandma played the attentive listener, given that she did not have the skills to scour the market for scandals. Yet, not even 20 minutes in, I noticed A-ma started glancing at her phone. No longer a top-tier audience, the friend retreated to the sticky rice shop, defeated.
I noticed she was paying less attention
As a writer in New York who used my phone sparingly, I flew back to Taipei every three months to see family. Each time, I noticed her attention span suffered more than the last.
Her dining table was once the place I brought her behind-the-scenes anecdotes of working in a New York City ad agency, but not anymore. Last time we ate together, her eyes were glued to her screen. I sighed and threw my finished plates into the sink. She glanced at me, then back to her original program, completely mesmerized by the content.
Instead of being angry, I caught a glimpse of A-ma blushing from the corner of my eye. Like a girl reading a coming-of-age story, her cheeks flushed pink. Then she turned the screen toward me, relaying the plot of a cringey romance. Her smile stretched up to her eyes.
I finally understood her
That was when I realized it was not YouTube Shorts with horrible storylines she was watching. It was a window into what young adulthood could’ve been like if she were given the chance to be a normal girl.
As my mother told me, A-ma grew up in a war-torn time in Taiwan, where her childhood consisted of running into bunkers during air-raid drills. By 15, she was at the fishing port helping her family haul fresh catches into the local market. Years later, her parents arranged for her to marry the neighborhood boy. Then, together, they had six kids. They took a leap of faith, left the village, and set up shop in Taipei City, selling handmade beef jerky and pork floss.
Never having the chance to go to school, dress up for a party, or sneak out at night to steal a kiss from a cute boy — she didn’t get to live, not like a young girl. Before anyone or herself knew, she became an adult.
I realized, 65 years later, after a brief health scare, A-ma got this iPhone that served as a portal into a world she never had access to. Filling a void she didn’t know existed.
Last time I visited, I showed her how dictation works. With her callused thumb, she hit the microphone button and uttered: “Young. Stories.”
However, her accent, thick with a dialect, was too much for Siri to understand. For the first time, I felt like I did.
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