Long life | 23 July 2015

The smart phone is a wonderful thing. We are never out of touch anymore, neither with friends nor with the world at large. But increasingly we read of the harm that it is doing us. We are no longer its masters but its victims. It makes us tense, anxious and insecure. We respond with unnatural haste to every noise it emits; and even when it isn’t peeping or squeaking at us, we neurotically check it all the time for messages that might have crept in surreptitiously. Psychologists and sociologists are having a field day warning us of its dangers. Our obsessive phone checking is affecting our brains, they say. It blights our relationships and stops us concentrating on anything. And a mental disorder known as Fobo — Fear of Being Offline — turns some of us into petty criminals as we go around stealing other people’s phone chargers.

An academic study in America has found a link between compulsive phone use and depression, though I’m not quite sure if it’s a symptom or a cause of it. The survey found nevertheless that people diagnosed with depression spent four times longer using their smart phones each day than people who were not depressed. While some people cannot bear to be separated from their smart phones for a second, even sleeping with them under their pillows, others take offence if you fail to respond when they call you. Because it is so easy for anyone to stay in touch, they take it personally if their calls are not promptly answered. The smart phone has become a very divisive thing.

Most popular

Ameer Kotecha

Lindt has cheapened itself

Dr Larry Rosen, a professor of psychology at California State University, described in the Times as ‘one of the world’s leading authorities on our relationship with technology’, recommends fighting the control that the smart phone has over you by turning off all its alerts and notifications and allowing longer and longer gaps between the times you check it, rather like cutting down on smoking.