After a long day of looking at screens for work, I used to go to bed and stare at my phone until I fell asleep. When not doomscrolling news headlines, I’d crash out to hateful comments on social media or revisit workplace dramas via mobile versions of Teams and Slack. I was always plugged in.

It was a ritual that would start well before bedtime. As the evening wound down, I’d surf algorithms for hours on end, barely paying attention to whatever television programme was on in the background, only half-listening to conversations around me. Whether it was the incessantly dystopian news cycle, toxic opinions on pop culture, or posts railing against obtuse LinkedIn speak, there was always another online scab to pick.

When sleep did arrive, it would be restless and anxiety-ridden. With my brain swimming with fears of various apocalypses and the vitriol of online agitators, it’s no wonder my dreams were full of the same. After one feverish night too many, I realised that I had to make a change. In a quest to shrug off my phone’s insidious hold, I began to search for something that would better occupy my attention. Books seemed like the natural solution, and I quickly turned to comics.

I’d been a voracious comic book reader as a youth, growing up in the early 1990s on a diet of the Beano and Dandy, before graduating to The Adventures of Tintin and Asterix. From there, I moved on to my father’s 2000 AD collection – which, to a young teenager, held a rather illicit thrill due to its intensely violent strips. I then devoured anything I could get my hands on. Preacher, The Sandman, Watchmen, Batman – I’d read the lot.

But as an adult in my 30s, I wasn’t the devout reader I once had been. That changed in late 2024, when I finally decided to ditch doomscrolling. Spurred on by the online furores that surrounded the imminent second term of Donald Trump, I realised that I needed to preserve my mental health and make new routines before I became entirely consumed with fear and anger. And who knows more about self-care than your inner child?

Instead of reaching for my phone in the evenings, I picked up a comic instead. Reading them as an adult restored a sense of childlike wonder that transcended my anxieties. I found my quality of sleep started to improve. My dreams were more fanciful and less marked by the banal terrors of day-to-day life.

I began to wake up feeling revitalised, free of the residual negativity from the previous night’s miserable doomscrolling. Inspired by the colourful imagery and ideas I found in comic books, I was able to channel a newfound sense of creativity into my own work as a journalist. I also felt less of an urge to check in on work channels after I left the office, as this had become valuable comic book time.

I hadn’t realised how my attention span had suffered due to a decade of switching from app to app at the blink of an eye. This soon got better – a result of taking the time and effort to read a lengthy comic series or graphic novel to the end. It also came with a sense of accomplishment, rather than the self-loathing I usually felt when I realised I’d just spent the last hour on Reddit.

As someone whose mind tends to spiral when left to its own self-sabotaging devices, comic books offered a form of escapism that allowed my mind to tackle fears of the apocalypse, dictators and an AI uprising in a safe environment. Dystopian sci-fi and extreme horror comics may not seem like cosy bedtime reading, but they felt like a healthier outlet compared with the unhelpful fearmongering of online commenters.

Rediscovering my love for comic books isn’t about burying my head in the sand by cowering in imaginary universes. It’s carving out some time for self-care in a world that’s become increasingly demanding of our headspace. Leaving behind my evenings glued to my phone has boosted my mood, my creativity and general outlook on life. I let my inner child back out and haven’t looked back since.