Pete Etchells (Piatkus)
DURING the course of writing this review, I looked at four separate screens. There was my laptop, onto which I typed this text; there was my phone, pinging and buzzing with messages from friends and colleagues; my iPad, for hunting additional details; and, in the background, a TV passively showing programmes.
So far, so normal in 2024. But what do all those screens and the time spent with them do to us? Plenty of books and articles scream warnings about the impact of this technology on our lives. We are becoming impatient, stupider, addicted, and we need to digitally detox.
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Except that we aren’t and we don’t, as Pete Etchells, a psychologist and science communicator at Bath Spa University, UK, explains in Unlocked: The real science of screen time (and how to spend it better). In it, he walks a complicated tightrope, puncturing some of the most pernicious myths about our smartphone and screen-dominated lives, while offering good advice about how to improve the time we spend with screens.
Our relationships and lives are changing thanks to technology, writes Etchells, but we don’t need to panic ourselves into pointless abstinence or reach for the language of addiction – using the term “dopamine hits” to explain tech’s seemingly addictive quality lacks any scientific basis.
As a society, argues Etchells, “we have become too apprehensive – and even fearful – about screens”. He says that our worries are “deeply idiosyncratic, grounded firmly in anecdote and lived experience”, rather than evidence. And such evidence as there is, he says, isn’t brilliant: much of the research raising the alarm comes from people self-reporting time spent with screens, hardly a good metric given most of us lack uncannily good memories. Even the newer, less subjective research suggests the effects are far less pronounced than we feared – or even non-existent.
To overcome the fear that has taken hold, Etchells suggests we stop thinking about screen time and instead focus on screen habits. The former, and worries about how much is too much, frames the argument for abstinence, while the latter is more realistic. After all, 4 hours spent working on screens is different from 4 hours listlessly scrolling through social media.
Explaining all this clearly, with useful analogies and humour (check the footnotes peppering the book), is what makes Unlocked a must-read. Its light prose adds a breezy style that mirrors the upside of similar books, while avoiding their downside by staying with the evidence. It feels as if you are in the room with Etchells as he writes, narrating his own relationship with tech as the father of two young children who he watches warily every time they reach for his smartphone, eyes round with wonder.
Unlocked is like a good podcast or popular science radio or TV series: weighty, chummy, quirky and charming. It is also a corrective, providing a realistic tonic amid the doom and gloom. Above all, it is important. Etchells has benefited from his book being released at a time when smartphone and social media “addiction” is being blamed for a multitude of social evils and tragedies. In the UK, a survey published a few weeks before this book’s release found that two-thirds of the public would support a ban on selling smartphones to under-16s.
But canny politicians (and the public) would do better to read Unlocked. That way, they can make informed decisions about whether such bans are needed, and if they would make a difference.
Chris Stokel-Walker is a technology writer based in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
