No... I don’t want to be ‘liked’ any more

Computers would make our lives so much easier and so much more productive we were told. We would all be down to 15-hour weeks and the major problem we would face would be what to do with the vast amount of leisure time stretching out ahead of us.

I was in no doubt that my golf handicap would be hovering around scratch and that I would have to budget for extra Factor 50. Somehow this did not happen. No one has time to even think about the driving range. A day spent fishing could only be done along with 20 phone calls and 55 emails.

Everyone I know who is making a living is on call 24/7. While they have all become very polite and do not check their phones at mealtimes you know that when they go to the bathroom it is not necessarily to answer a call of nature.

The computer age cannot have caused weaker bladders.

I am supposed to have good virus, etc protection. It costs enough. Yet I still find myself deleting about 20 emails daily that are touting weight loss solutions. I have no idea what website I looked at that unleashed this deluge on me and it is unfortunate that I am at my best fighting weight. None of them have an ‘unsubscribe’ button.

This is typical of all the online nonsense that is burning us out. That is before I delete all of the German sales pitches I get — and I have not been in Germany for a decade and have never looked at a German website.

I do not think this digital burnout is yet another made-up psychological condition. I recently heard of an American high tech company that was paying its employees a substantial additional payment on condition they did not do email, social media or work calls during their holidays. The company had come to the conclusion that their employees needed a real digital break and that, if they did not get one, their productivity suffered during the rest of the working year. It makes sense to me.

Since the advent of email we demand rapid responses. If someone does not reply to a business mail in a day we find it odd. The sender could not care less if you are climbing Kilimanjaro.

Social media is increasingly a promotional device and it is designed to be more addictive than cigarettes. You put up your post and then you check your ‘likes’ and ‘comments’, most of which are from ‘friends’ you have never met. But you are still delighted when they give you a little heart. You keep coming back.

This week a real person with a good brain told me about checking through the night.

“It is ridiculous the number of people online at 3am,” he told me, bypassing the irony. “Now I turn off my wi-fi so I don’t feel I have to check.”

Sad, mad or what?