A 7.5-hour TikTok screentime report on the left; reading a book on the right

It’s a refrain I hear so often, both among friends and on social media.

“I loved reading as a child,” former voracious bookworms wail, “and now I can’t finish a novella.”

I can’t judge them – I am them. I used to tear through titles as a kid, ravenously reading through entire series of books in a week.

It did not feel good to realise that, like lapsed bibliophiles before me, my childhood habit had been replaced by short-form video and “doom scrolling.”

A particularly damning Saturday this month saw me spend seven hours and twenty-seven actual minutes on TikTok (I am as mortified as you’d be). I was sick at the time, but that doesn’t justify a 12 -hour screen day, does it?

Seeing that stat made me realise something needed to change. Namely, I needed to 1) touch grass and 2) turn page.

A shameful screenshot showing my 7 -hour TikTok screen time on April the 5th

Is my video-bingeing habit so terrible?

Speaking to BBC Science Focus, Dr Peter Etchells, an expert on the psychological effects of digital........

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