It is now a indisputable fact (although, ironically, the source of many disputes...), that screens take up an inordinate amount of our time, and there is really no getting around this. Unless your job is completely physical, like a cleaner or a builder, then screens are likely intricately involved in your work, and even people with physical jobs often have to use screens to communicate with managers, to take courses, and to market themselves.

Most of us do at least some banking and shopping online, and we rely on screens for information and entertainment, in the form of news, blogs, articles, videos, and so on.

But perhaps most centrally (and addictively...) of all, we use screens to express ourselves and to connect with others.

I have read many diatribes regarding how terrible all this is, how screen-addiction is ruining the world and real human connection, and how we need to put down our screens and engage with the people around us in the real world... But the thing is, I have always read such screeds on screens, by people who have written them for screens, rather than putting them down and engaging with people around them in the real world... Some of them do see the "irony" in this, but I don't think it is an irony, really. Simply because you recognise the hazards of too much screen time (just as too much of anything has its hazards - even too much organic broccoli can cause you issues eventually), that doesn't mean screen-time is always an inferior alternative to other things, and that you should always and indiscriminately prioritise the "real world" over a screen.

Of course, I agree it's easy to spend too much time staring into the 'black mirror' of your screen of choice (that's why the eponymous show is so-called, by the way, because technological devices, when switched off, resemble and perform as 'black mirrors') and you've got to ensure you make time for meaningful non-screen interaction as well. It's bad when two people are out in a restaurant together, both staring silently into their screens ("enjoying my company, dear?", asks Mark drily, if my phone time in such a situation exceeds his...).

However, I strenuously disagree that "real-life" interaction is ALWAYS preferable and more beneficial than anything that can be experienced via a screen, because that simply isn't true, including and especially for people whose preferred way of expressing themselves is writing.

I have been obsessed with writing (and there is really no other word for it), since I was very young, and began tapping out stories on my parents' ancient Amstrad when I was six or seven (I wrote about a pair of naughty twins named Eric and Sam, who were secretly building a robot in their garage). From there, the obsession grew, to the extent that by the time I was in my early teens - before the internet was ubiquitous and in every home - I was spending hours every evening furtively typing away in my room, writing diaries, stories, and even novel length manuscripts. Obviously, these were agonisingly terrible and it is perhaps an act of divine mercy that many subsequent house-moves mean they've been lost, but the point is, even before the advent of "the screen" (e.g. the internet) as an ever-present addictive device, I was already hopelessly addicted to writing and often prioritised it over seeing people in person.

The internet didn't become "a thing" in my life until I was 17, when I got an email address and discovered Yahoo chat rooms (in which I encountered someone who went on to become a regular pen-friend, and at the time probably my best friend, for the next seven years). It had existed in some embryonic form before that, but not at my school nor in the homes of anyone I knew, and certainly not on phones. People didn't even have phones. I remember, when I was in year eleven (fifth-form, for my more distinguished readers), one girl from a rich American family started coming into school with a massive chunky brick mobile, and she was absolutely mercilessly mocked for it ("oh, have you become a brain surgeon in your spare time? What do you need to be contactable 24/7 for?" - which is a perfectly valid point and oh how things change...).

Although I got a mobile when I was around 18, it was just a talk and text job, and I didn't actually get a reliable internet connection at home until 2010.

Well, it is no coincidence that in the two years directly subsequent to this, I "woke up", because I suddenly had access to an incredible wealth of information that I would never have known where to look for without the internet. I think the hours I spent diving down innumerable internet rabbit holes and gleaning the kind of information that made sense of why the world had never seemed to make sense thus far, was a better use of my time than chatting with my flatmates in the kitchen or just about any other "real world" thing I could have been doing. Leading on from this is that real-world connections, pre-internet, were often established upon rather random bases, such as happening to sit next to someone in some temporary summer job, or because they're a friend of a friend, or you vaguely knew them from school. Rarely were social connections based on any particularly deep and meaningful shared understanding of the world, hence why, when many of us "awoke", we found old social connections fraying and often collapsing altogether.

So I think poor old screens get a bit of a bad rap, being blamed for destroying "real" relationships, when the probability is, they've forged many stronger and more appropriate social connections than the supposedly superior "meeting the old-fashioned way".

Now, I know someone might say, "ok, screens have a role to play in connecting with like-minded people, but once you've found them, you should put the screen down and connect in the real world."

And I agree, that should certainly be one part of your interactions.

But how does this serve you if you enjoy writing? To paraphrase Jimmy Goldsmith ("when you marry your mistress, you create a job vacancy"), when you meet your pen-pal, you lose something too, because "the writer" you interact with via screens is often not the same person as the human being you meet in the flesh. I'm not talking about "catfishing", where it is literally a different person, I mean that writing can and often does bring out a completely different side of someone than spoken and "real world" interactions. So, what if you liked the writer? What if - while you may very well like the "real human being" too - you preferred the writer? What if you prefer being the writer?

Writing is my preferred way to communicate, I'm more comfortable with it than speaking (especially - the horror, the terror - public speaking), and I think I'm better at it than speaking, to the extent I am often "more me" when writing than speaking. So, to be told this is not "real" and only eschewing screens and speaking to people directly is "real" human interaction, leaves me a little... disgruntled.

Writing is not some insular, amputated pursuit that happens secretly and privately and only for the benefit of the author. Like all creative expression, it is primarily about communication and connection. We do it because we want to connect with others, we don't do it purely for ourselves - but, pre-internet, unless you happened to be a well-known journalist or successful book author, there was no obvious way to get your writing onto a prominent enough platform that you might be able to use it to connect with others.

Well, there is now, and I am very grateful indeed that there is. So I think it's important to make significant distinctions regarding generalised "screen time" and what someone's actually using the screen for. It does make a difference whether someone is using the internet to post selfies and read celebrity gossip, or as a platform to express themselves creatively in a meaningful way. But it's all lumped together - "oh, you're on your screen again, are you" is the overarching judgement from screen-puritans, the obvious insinuation being that this is always an inferior substitute to "real world" endeavours.

The reality is that many of us have achieved things using screens that would be completely inaccessible and impossible "in the real world". In my case, I have written and made publicly available over fifty letter templates challenging the current tyranny which hundreds of people (maybe more) have used successfully. I have directly connected with thousands of people either as new "IRL" friends, or as people with whom to exchange critical information regarding how we can negotiate the current circumstances. And I have got a platform to express myself creatively, which only the internet makes available - no mainstream newspaper or other such vehicle would ever publish me, which means, without the internet ("screens"), I'd just be forced to write to myself (which I did do for a long time and which was pretty isolating and unsatisfactory) - whereas that isn't why people are creative. It's not just about them, it's about connecting with others. You can't do that if you can't put it out there.

If you happen to be a masseuse or a sculptor or a pianist - something which has a more "physical" element to it than writing - then that may present an opportunity for some moral-high-ground superiority that everyone else should just "get off their screens".

But if you enjoy using the written word (and especially if you make your living using it), then there really is no other way to get it out there - even leaflets, newsletters and books have to first be produced on a screen - and frankly, if you have woefully poor and ever-deteriorating eyesight like me, reading them on a screen is easier, too. So, it shouldn't be seen as a moral failing for people who like to write, to often prefer to do that - e.g. to use their screens - than to do anything else they could be doing "in the real world" instead. Indeed, such a perspective could be seen, to use the modern vernacular, as a form of speech supremacy, and anti-writing bigotry...;)

I'm sort of joking but also sort of not, because the reason many people start writing in the first place is the realisation that, if they simply rely on speech to communicate, they will never get a word in edgeways around all the loud-mouthed extroverts who always dominate social situations. In almost every case where I've been in a social group of any significant size, it tends to be the case that about 20-30% of people "hold court", loudly dominating the conversation, and everyone else struggles to be heard. Every time I see someone in a group setting who is completely silent, then - while they are generally dismissed by the extroverts as 'boring' - I know that that person is likely to be a good writer...

Writing, in my view, is at least as valid as a form of communication as speaking is, and sometimes more so, because the one enormous advantage writing has over speaking is that you can take your time with it and you can edit it. Speech requires very quick responses, you can't sit there and think about what you want to say for hours or days or longer, as you can when producing a written document, and nor can you "rewind" your speech and go back to edit and improve it. (This is one of the many reasons I don't like internet arguments, which - although written down - are far too fast-paced and knee-jerk for either party to really give the conversation proper thought. That's another reason why, if I'm going to respond to something I see online, I'd rather take my time with it and do it in my own space, rather than writing it TO someone else.)

So, to sum: pro-writing individuals would often prefer to write - e.g. use a screen - than to do any number of other, off-screen, things they could be doing instead - with the corollary of this being, if everyone consistently made the choice to live "in the real world" rather than to spend considerable amounts of time on screens, there would be no writers - and therefore no articles, no blogs, and no books. Which would be a thoroughly bleak and boring world indeed. And, yes, it's possible to get the balance wrong, but most people who develop a talent don't do so through "balance" and spending equal amounts of time on various different things, but rather through intensive single-mindedness. I once heard a famous footballer being interviewed and the interviewer congratulated him on his "talent".

"I am not talented," he replied solemnly. "I am obsessed."

Well, it just so happens that, in order to develop a writing talent, the tool you need to be "obsessed" with is not a football, but a screen.

And that, friends, is what you can tell your partner / relative / parents / friends the next time they roll their eyes and puff out their cheeks exasperatedly that "you're on that bl--dy screen again..." (just make sure you close down the Instagram, Solitaire, and Daily Mail sidebar of shame tabs first...).