It has come to this. The United Kingdom, a nation that once gave the world the steam engine, the telephone, and the full English breakfast, now finds itself staring into the luminous abyss of a smartphone for fourteen hours a day. Yes, fourteen hours. That is not a life. That is a shift at a particularly boring call centre where the only benefit is that you can do it from your sofa while your own reflection slowly fades from the windows like a ghost that has given up.
Mental health experts, those brave souls who are presumably still looking at something other than a screen, have declared an epidemic. An epidemic of thumb-scrolling, doom-scrolling, and life-scrolling. The therapy clinics are now offering specialised ‘phone addiction therapy’ for those poor souls who cannot bear to be separated from their digital leash for more than a minute. The therapy, I am told, involves taking the phone away for increasingly long periods, starting with ten minutes and building up to a full day. A full day without the blue light, without the dopamine hits, without the existential dread of reading other people’s holiday photos. It sounds like hell. But then again, so does a fourteen-hour day of TikTok.
Let us be clear. This is not an addiction in the traditional sense. It is not like gin, which at least has the decency to make you forget your own name after a few glasses. No, phone addiction is a slow, insidious erosion of the soul. It starts innocently enough. A quick glance at the news at breakfast. A scroll on the train. Then suddenly, you are at work and your phone is in your hand, a cold, black mirror reflecting your own hollow existence. You check it again. Nothing new. But you check it again anyway. And again. And again. And before you know it, you have spent half your waking hours staring at a screen while the real world, with its real trees and real people and real gin, carries on without you.
The experts, in their infinite wisdom, have decided that this is a problem. They say it affects mental health, causing anxiety, depression, and a chronic inability to look anyone in the eye for more than a microsecond. They are, of course, correct. But what do they propose as a solution? Therapy. More talking. More sitting in a room with another human being, presumably without phones, forced to confront the silence. And what will people do in that silence? They will panic. They will reach for their pockets. They will feel a phantom vibration where no vibration exists. They will break down and weep for the loss of their digital pacifier.
I have a better idea. If you must stare at a screen for fourteen hours, at least make it a compelling one. Watch a film. Read a book on a tablet. More importantly, stop pretending that the life you are not living is somehow better than the life you are living. You are not missing out by not checking Instagram. You are missing out by checking it. The world is full of actual things, like the way light hits a puddle after rain, or the taste of a proper scotch egg, or the sound of a stranger laughing in a pub. These are real. And they do not require a battery.
But do not listen to me. I am a gin-soaked wreck of a journalist who has been fired from every publication in the land. But I am also right. So put down the phone. Go outside. If you must bring a device, bring a book. Or better yet, bring a friend. And if you cannot find a friend, bring a dog. They do not judge. They just wag their tail and wait for you to look up from that infernal screen. It is a start.
