Experts say that concerns about the amount of time we spend on screens are misplaced, with the vast majority of time actually just spent dealing with cookie pop-ups. New research has shown that average daily screen time could be reduced to about eight minutes if websites didn’t ask us about our cookie preferences.

Academics at Semaphore University found that adults spend an average of eleven hours a day trying to work out the difference between Functional Cookies, Targeting Cookies, Performance Cookies, and Strictly Necessary Cookies.

“Even people who automatically click ‘Accept All Cookies’ on every website still spend several hours a day trying to get the pop-up box to close,” lead researcher Belinda Nguyen said. “There’s this notion that we’re spending hours every day scrolling social media or looking at porn. But in reality, we’re mainly just trying to Reject All Cookies,” she explained.

She said the remaining eight percent of screen time was mainly spent shutting pop-up boxes about joining a website’s newsletter.