Alex B Cann column - 28/05/26

Addicted To scrolling, or The Cost Of Always Being Online.

Have you been loving the heatwave? Recent record-breaking surges in temperature have served as a useful reminder that I struggle in anything hotter than 20 degrees, and I'm really not built to function in a hot climate. I looked in horror at the photos doing the rounds on social media of Scarborough and Skegness beaches resembling "Where's Wally?", and honestly they filled me with more trepidation than a Gavin & Stacey DVD box set. I love the coast, but the best time to visit for chips by the sea is on a crisp winter day, when your only company is the odd seagull who might steal a chip. Where's the fun in spending hours stuck in traffic, followed by a desperate search for the last parking space in a cramped car park, and breathing in other folks' tutti frutti vape fumes on the beach? Not for me, thanks all the same.

Having said that, we adults do need to lead by example and leave our screens behind more often. I worry about us being 'always on', and whilst I'm no expert in mental health and wellbeing, it can't be good for you to be trawling through work emails in bed first thing in the morning or last thing at night. The French answer to this is their "right to disconnect" law, which came into force in 2016, drawing up a code of good conduct and setting out the hours when staff are not supposed to send or answer emails.

I also worry about what social media is doing to UK politics, with algorithms constantly dishing up rage bait designed to wind us up and keep us on their platforms for longer (although I'm sure they would argue this is not the case). Rational debate has largely fallen by the wayside, and I'm convinced a lot of the really disastrous stuff in the last decade, including Brexit, simply wouldn't have happened without the malign influence of social media, pitting us against each other and stirring up plastic patriots and their hornets' nests of rage against others whom they perceive to be responsible for their own poor hand in life.

It starts with young people, and a new report commissioned by the Government has found that anxiety linked to social media is driving economic inactivity among young people, in a study of the million or so who are neither working nor learning. Alan Milburn told The Times newspaper that these young folk are "not snowflakes", but are part of a "bedroom generation". He said: "They are sort of living in their bedrooms – they are on all the time, they're never off."

Sleep patterns and levels of concentration are both being affected by the modern scourge of short videos, and I fear the art of face-to-face conversation and rational debate is being lost. Take a photo posted on Bank Holiday Monday by David Lammy, captioned "Bank Holiday dip". As well as being roundly mocked by the Conservatives and other opposition parties, it sadly attracted a large number of blue-tick racists sharing their abhorrent thoughts in the comments. It's a real cesspit, and I frequently question why I'm still on any of these platforms in the first place.

Back to the report on young people: 12.8% of all people aged 16 to 24 in the UK were NEET (not in education, employment or training) in the final quarter of 2025. Social media has been identified as a driver of so-called quitting culture among young people, and curfews, restrictions, or out-and-out bans for under-16s have all been mooted.

I think we can all do our bit to spend a little less time on our screens, and hopefully in time it might become deeply uncool, a bit like DVD rental by post, phone boxes and diesel cars. In the meantime, I do worry about folk who live every detail of their lives through social media. A nice AA man called Steve told me a story last week of a female customer who wanted him to star in a Snapchat video whilst they were both on the hard shoulder of a busy motorway. Seemingly, the dopamine hit of clicks mattered more than personal safety, and that should worry all of us. Eat your tea without taking a photo. Go on holiday without documenting every moment. Live a bit more in the moment. I've even ditched counting my steps and sleep, as both totals proved consistently disappointing.

Slick TikTok videos don't make good political policies. Grown-up discussions do that.