What if protecting your brain from dementia was as simple as wiggling your little fingers a few seconds each day? That’s the promise behind “pinky time”, a viral TikTok trend that claims a simple finger exercise can lower your risk of developing Alzheimer’s.

Videos promoting this supposed brain-health hack have attracted millions of views, with some suggesting that difficulty performing the movement could be a warning sign of cognitive decline. By arranging the fingers into a specific pattern and moving the pinkies up and down, proponents argue you are giving your brain a quick workout that keeps it sharp.

It’s easy to see why the idea has gained attention. A free, effortless daily habit that protects against one of the most feared conditions of ageing is an appealing prospect. But while the trend draws loosely on real neuroscience, the conclusions being made are far more ambitious than the evidence allows.

Doing something fiddly and new with your fingers, such as learning new chords on a guitar, takes real concentration. Your brain has to plan each movement, hold back the wrong ones, and constantly adjust based on what you are seeing and what your fingers are feeling.

That’s a surprising amount of........

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