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.