Who’s Afraid of YouTube Man?

Conventional wisdom, and conventional whinging, dictates that we live under a tyranny of screen addiction. Modern telephones are treated as a sort of heroin, promising the easy oblivion of doomscrolling and social media. And, we are told, they’re pushing it on your kids. Children will reportedly spend 25 years of their lives on their phones; the most hardened screentime-smackheads will clock up an absurd 41 years. We may be sleepwalking into a post-literate society, in which “short-form video” becomes the sole courier of information and feeling.