Mark’s Sparks Will Fly Blog

HANGING ON THE TELEPHONE… OR MAYBE NOT April 4, 2024

I ended Tuesday’s scrawl by announcing that in an effort to staunch the screentime addiction that bedevils so many of us, I’m about to forswear my smartphone in favour of a simple ‘burner’ device. What I didn’t address in that bald, if not bold proclamation were some of the underlying reasons for such a dependence.

Fear Of Missing Out, or FOMO, is one of the more obvious ones, and one that the software designers fervently focus on when designing and updating social media and indeed almost all smartphone applications. Whether it’s keeping up with friends and family in a way that required more physical effort in the Bad Old Days (BOD), or being tempted to buy or do things that we’d otherwise have to work at or for, FOMO tethers us to our smartphones for hours on end, which I also touched on previously.

Paradoxically of course, FOMO is also a big cause of the anxiety epidemic, and its attendant loneliness, that I referred to in Tuesday’s blog.

But as observed in the first of a new series, ‘Helen Lewis Has Left The Chat’, on Radio 4 this week, services like WhatsApp and SnapChat enable a simple slip of the digital tongue to trigger misunderstandings which then quickly become toxic and often cause great mental and emotional distress, especially when used within dedicated groups, because recipients just can’t stop themselves jerking their knees in a way that they probably wouldn’t face to face. Which is exacerbated by the weird – wired? – sense of entitlement and self-importance texting seems to induce.

Now humans weren’t evolved or designed to use electronics, especially use them for absurd amounts of time every day, and ironically, it’s the short attention spans we’ve become habituated to courtesy of excessive screentime that are actually part of the smartphone’s allure: we know subconsciously that if we are bored or sated by an item we’ve read or watched, a mere swipe or click can lead us to something else and so on and so on.

Which is of course why children, whose brains have become developed by and are now wired to expect endless streams of seductive digital information, are experiencing serious and widespread learning difficulties. Which in turn prompts classroom disorder and violence against teachers, sometimes even from outraged parents of little Emily or Otis, who valiantly try to address it. (According to the National Union of Teachers, one in five teachers claim to have been on the receiving end of this). Indeed Education Secretary Gillian Keegan last week announced plans to “minimise disruption and improve behaviour in classrooms”, albeit some three years after her government first called for a ban on phones in schools!

I fear that like so much that plagues our digitally-obsessed society since the BOD – and just wait ‘til Artificial Intelligence really kicks into gear – this may be a case of horses and stable doors, but there is one area where the smartphone, or even just the basic mobile, can prove beneficial. According to Age UK, “…more than 3.3 million people in England over the age of 65 live alone, and more than a million older people say they go over a month without speaking to a friend, neighbour or family member.” A whole month!

Yes, people can become socially isolated for a variety of reasons, such as getting older or weaker, no longer being the hub of their family, leaving the workplace, the deaths of spouses and friends, or through disability or illness. But whatever the cause, it’s shockingly easy to be left feeling alone and vulnerable, but for many a mobile phone offers at least a partial solution to that and if their brains haven’t become inured to the digital physiogeny.

I actually have a friend and know of other oldies who, like I’m about to, just use basic mobiles to talk and minimally text family and friends but interestingly, that’s to make arrangements to meet for tea, coffee or a pint, compare notes on a book, t.v. programme or film or hook up for a wider social occasion. In the BOD we used landlines for this, and I’ll admit to being a bit of a luddite who still makes as many on mine as I do on my smartphone.

So for those 3.3 million people the mobile has or could become something of a lifeline. But in case you haven’t got or won’t get one, Age UK has conveniently suggested some antidotes to the loneliness that many of us feel to varying degrees. The list includes: smiling, even if it feels hard; getting involved in local community activities; filling your diary… oh yes, and learning to love computers and keeping in touch by phone!

So I’ll let you know how I get on with my twelve quid Nokia 105…

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