The bad news is that newspapers are in decline. You only have to look around any commuter train carriage to clock the year on year drop in circulation. Practically the only papers you see now are the freebies – the Metro in the morning and, on the way home, the Evening Standard. Everyone else has their eyes fixed on a phone, tablet or laptop screen. A few are reading, but most are playing games or watching films or television programmes.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not here to rail against the new-fangled pursuits of a younger generation. The wealth of information, entertainment and connection that the digital world has brought to us, in its myriad colours and capabilities, is truly amazing. But I am troubled by the cost to news and newsprint. Even in digital forms that ought to be their salvation the papers struggle to compete for attention, displaced by more vibrant media.

In theory, there should have been no problem because computer technology is so empowering. In my professional life as a scientist its pixellated efflorescence has been nothing but a boon. In the late 1980s I wrote my PhD thesis on our research section’s only PC, tapping out one green word at a time on the small black screen. Now I can scribble blog posts on my phone while standing on the train and ping the text to my laptop for editing.

Since the arrival of the internet I have been glad too to depend less and less on trips to the library. These days I make only rare forays in search of old books or journals that are not yet online. Not that I have any aversion to that venerable institution – long may libraries survive at the centre of our civilisation – but I won’t miss hoisting musty tomes off the shelves and onto the photocopier platen. The memory of that heavy labour animates my enjoyment of the capacity of web to make spiders of us all, twanging the lines of information that radiate across the world from our desks. It’s a capacity that through the slow revolution of open access should eventually free the flows of research findings to and from all corners of the globe.

But the practical benefits of digitization for newspapers have been more mixed. As well as competing for the attention of readers distracted by games and videos, newspapers have had to battle the internet giants such as Google and Facebook, who are hoovering up huge portions of their content and advertising revenue. There may be great convenience in these operations for casual readers but these are existential threats draining the vigour from our democracies. The press – or at least that section that is not owned by the powerful – can still sometimes hold the powerful to account. Think of the Panama papers, or Snowden’s revelations about the activities of the NSA, or Nick Davies’s exposure of phone hacking at News International.

I don’t mean to be all pious about this. All I’m looking for most days is a stimulating read. I’m old enough to know that quality is something you have to pay for but, to be honest, it’s been a struggle to maintain the habit. In the past few years I had come to think that the conversion to digital might ease the pressure that forging a career in London had brought to bear on news-reading appetites acquired in my youth. I had long given up a daily paper, unable to accommodate it in the press of a crowded train or a crowded work-schedule, relying instead on the thick wad of Saturday’s Guardian for my fix, doubling up on occasional lazy weekends with the Observer. A few years ago I thought I might restore a daily habit by embracing the early experiments in digital newsprint. I was tickled to have the Guardian and the Observer pinged to my iPad every day, before I’d gotten out of bed, all at a monthly cost that was about the same as buying the weekend papers. The convenience and reduced size of the format suited my commute. It was cheap enough not to be bothered if I didn’t have time to read every issue.

But lately, for all the wonder of digital technology, I have hankered after print. The little screen is all very well – so very modern – but I have missed the expanse of paper. And so, last weekend, I traipsed to the local supermarket to buy the real thing.

I sat at the kitchen table with the paper spread out and immersed myself. The pleasures are simple and deep and have yet to be reproduced on any screen that I have used. Browsing is easier and feels more natural than with a… browser. Despite the ease of search that computerised versions offer, you have more command of the content as the eye ranges across a double-page spread, skimming the headlines and noting those stories that you will return to read in full. And you know where you are with a paper newpaper. By which I mean you know where you are in the story and how far you have to go. I was relieved to escape the seemingly endless scolling that disorients digital reading.

There was also pleasure in the physicality of the interaction. I had not lost the skill of whipping the wide bundle of sheets to initiate a fold, or the knack of pulling out creases and shaping the page to frame the article selected for attention. And those muscle memories brought to mind other recollections – an instant reconnection with a childhood in Ballymena that bears the imprint of newsprint. My father, a dentist in the town, picked up the Irish Times and the Guardian on his walk to work, to peruse in his lunch break and bring home at the end of the day. In the evening the Belfast Telegraph would thud onto the mat at the front door. On Sunday he bought four papers. I look back in wonder at how he had the time. I don’t think there was ever a plan of instruction but we were awash with news and the lesson was absorbed anyway. As much as television, newspapers were our window on the world.

In my switch to digital in the last five years I feel I have let my own children down. Personal devices are a little too personal – they suck you out of the room. And social media, for all the connectivity it brings to reading news online to generate the froth of commentary – sometimes tasty, often testy – lacks the intimacy of experiences shared within your own home. With a paper paper it is easier to involve the family, especially with the weekend editions. “Look at this here.” “Read that – great story.”

While it’s too late to rescue the situation for my children – they have flown the nest – I can turn my own clock back. The digital subscription will do for the working week, but when the weekend rolls round again, I will be off to the shop to buy a real newspaper.

@Stephen_Curry is a professor of structural biology at Imperial College.