The zombies are everywhere.

They’re staring at their phones as they carelessly cross the road.

They’re constantly watching videos, sound-on and loudly, on airplanes or in store check-out lines.

And they’re not Gen Z screenagers — now, the kids’ aging grandparents are quickly becoming the biggest screen addicts of all.

You can see it in their glazed-over eyes, distracted driving and the worst sin of all, ignoring the grandkids.

Even more concerning, though, are the worsening financial and safety repercussions to seniors’ excessive phone time.

Last month Wired reported that a med student in India used AI to create a character named Emily Hart — a pretty blonde “MAGA influencer” who claimed to enjoy posing in a stars-and-stripes bikini — and profited handsomely from the deception.

In March the equally fake Jessica Foster, billed as a US Army service member, was exposed as a money-spinning AI fiction in a similar scam.

Youngsters can spot AI from a mile away; it wasn’t Gen Z sending over cash.

And while losing a little money to an attractive but completely fake woman online is bad enough, some older internet addicts lose far more.

Abigail, 66, recently admitted to Fox News that she had given away her life savings of $81,000 to an online scammer who romanced her using AI to pretend to be actor Steve Burton.

“I looked at it, and I knew right away,” Abigail’s daughter said. “Mom, this is not real. This is AI.”

Her mother couldn’t tell.

Last year, The Post reported the tragic story of 76-year-old Thongbue Wongbandue of New Jersey, who traveled to New York City to meet a woman he met on the internet.

On the way there, the frail Wongbandue fell and hit his head.

He died three days later; the woman was AI-generated and didn’t exist.

And as online financial rackets keep rising, older internet users are increasingly in fraudsters’ crosshairs: They are “certainly more likely to fall for scams — and lose more money — than their younger counterparts,” warns attorney Steve Cohen.

Older Americans have long ranked as the happiest age cohort, and studies consistently show that real-life activities — like regular church attendance, volunteering and joining a club — increase quality of life and feelings of joy.

In the past our seniors, with more freedom and fewer responsibilities, have had the time for such activities, and they’ve benefited greatly from them.

But get them on the same dopamine-seeking loop that younger people have fallen for, and that all goes south very quickly.

The uptick in what tech writer Charlie Warzul has dubbed “Phone-Based Retirement” is at odds with how other age groups are starting to see screen usage.

Millennials and Gen Xers are the ones putting up the fight to get phones out of schools.

When I ask my podcast guests to give listeners a tip for better living, the answer more often than not is the same: “Get off your phone.”

We know it’s bad for us.

Even teens and 20-somethings are starting to understand that their overuse of screens has been a net negative in their lives.

They’re picking up “analog” hobbies like knitting and scrapbooking, installing social-media blocking devices and urging each other to “touch grass” — that is, to consciously choose to get out in the real world and spend less time off their phones.

While my own kids could certainly use less screen time, they’re noticeably judgmental toward peers they see as screen-addicted.

“He’s an indoor kid,” my 10-year-old recently told me as he described a schoolmate.

We can’t let “indoor grandma” become a thing.

We all know how important it is to monitor our kids’ screen usage, but it’s long past the time to encourage Pop-Pop and Gama to log off too.

These are the best years of their lives; do they really want to spend them with scam artists and AI bots?

Put down the Candy Crush, Grandpa, and follow the kids outside.

Karol Markowicz is the host of the “Karol Markowicz Show” and “Normally” podcasts.