Calling time on mobile phones

There have been various studies carried out into mobile phone usage but the one that stands out is the one which suggests the average Brit looks at their phone 28 times a day or 10,000 times a year.

Nearly everybody in the country owns a mobile phone: 95 per cent of British households are believed to have one and I should imagine those who shun them are old enough not only to remember ration books but to recall the last time Coronation Street wasn’t a complete load of irrelevant cobblers.

There is no doubting the benefits of mobile technology - gone are the days when you would arrange to meet a pal at a fixed time as nowadays you can give them real time updates on your progress via Snapchat, WhatsApp, text or, if you are still living in 2001, you can phone them.

But are we turning into a generation of phone-obsessed zombies? There are many out there who think we are and there are fears that lives are being put at risk because of this obsession.

In America, (where else?) there has been an increase in the number of pedestrian deaths with one official report suggesting that mobile phones were a factor. That’s right, people are so engrossed in what is on their small screens that they are walking in front of traffic.

This is becoming such a problem authorities are introducing innovations such as red and green into the pavement, in the hope this will catch the attention of distracted mobile phone users. This may sound all rather far-fetched but we are all an accident waiting to happen. How many times have you had a near miss of some description because you were reading an urgent message from the boss or watching a cat video?

In our house, all sorts of chaos unfolds when I choose to ‘quickly’ check Twitter while I should really be doing bedtime. We have allowed our lives to be dictated to by technology and it is up to us to show some willpower and leave our phones alone - at least until we are in the safety of our own homes.