Reading from RoyalRoad or WebToons is hardly mentally stimulating, but I feel it's at least better than random tweets or vertical short form content. There are quite a few stories that I've come to really enjoy and look forward to reading when the new chapter comes out.

It's not like I've stopped reading books, but there is a lot of time between releases of a book series and each book requires quite a lot of time commitment, whereas a single web chapter require much less time to read.

Also, kinda sad but... tbh as I get older I've gotten a bit calcified in my literary habits; I'm now a bit reticent and less eager to discover new book series and have decided to stick to a few authors I'm more comfortable with (time requirement to discover if I like a new one is just too much). With web stories, just a few chapters let me know if I like the vibe, and picking/dropping stories has much less friction.

A device like the X4 would be ok for epubs downloaded from the internet, but for stuff like what I read now, due to its lack of internet connectivity [1] would mean I'd be reading LESS.

I'm not saying it SHOULD have internet... its purpose as a doomscroll-killer makes it obvious why it won't... just that these things have unintended consequences.

[1]: afaik, it has wifi but not an internet browser or app support that would allow constant linking/updating from such web sources.