My Human Screen Time
✍️ Author’s Note
A passing prompt asked which app consumes most of my screen time—and whether I feel guilty about it. My answer is perhaps slightly old-fashioned. Books still command most of my real attention. Yet, at eighty-two, even that innocent habit raises a question for which I have not found a satisfactory answer: what eventually becomes of a lifetime’s library?
“My human screen time, not my zombie screen time.”
—WJJH
What app eats up most of your screen time — and do you even feel bad about it?
To satisfy the curiosity behind this prompt: books take up most of my screen time.
I mean my human “eyes-on-the-page” screen time, not the rather more zombie-like kind spent staring at an iPhone. Others will answer differently. This is simply my reality.
To protect myself from the more mechanical kind of screen time, I limit my iPhone use to between eight in the morning and eight in the evening. It helps, although I am not sure the restriction is really necessary.
And no, I do not feel guilty about my books.
It is the old-fashioned way, but then I am an old-fashioned man. I prefer books I can hold, turn, and smell. I read e-books mainly outside the house: while travelling, sitting in a café, or when I have ordered a printed book only to discover that its letters are too small for my matured eyes.
The familiar consequence follows: the more books one discovers, the more books one buys, and the more books remain to be read.
For an octogenarian, however, this raises another question. What is to become of them when my last bell tolls?
I have not yet found a satisfactory answer. My books are dear to me, and I would hate to think of them ending up in an unsavoury place—or, worse still, somewhere they will never be opened again.
July, 2026
📌Blog Excerpt
Asked which app consumes most of my screen time, I found that my answer was not an app at all. Books still occupy most of my real attention—but at eighty-two, a beloved library also raises the question of what will eventually become of it.
In what kind of world do we wish to live 