A 7.5-hour TikTok screentime report on the left; reading a book on the rightIt’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 It did not feel good to realise that, like lapsed bibliophiles before me, my childhood habit had been replaced by short-form video and “doom scrolling.”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)