What happens when you take the phone away?

‘‘My phone is in my hand all the time,’’ says Sarah. ‘‘It’s everything that connects me to everybody else.’’

Forty snapchats a day, 150 messages on messenger, 80 to 100 texts – this is normal activity for Sarah and her friends. ‘‘I’m checking my phone basically all day.’’

But what would happen if that phone was taken away?

‘‘It would definitely be a lot harder,’’ she says, when asked to imagine a world without her mobile.

So that’s what we do, separating Sarah from her phone for 24 hours.

‘‘I feel real left out of everything,’’ she says after just three hours.

‘‘It was terrible,’’ says Sarah, when she finally gets her phone back.

‘‘I was kind of anxious. Like, walking places when I’m usually just on my phone. I had to walk and just . . . walk.’’

What we see happening with Sarah, is that when you take her phone away, you take away her connection with her peers and her world. And everything – everything – is done via her phone.

Some people would say, ‘That’s terrible, she can’t survive for a day without her phone?’

But most grown-ups are actually constantly checking emails and text messages as well.

Sarah’s also hyper-connected with her friends – they’re constantly talking and arranging all sorts of things.

So when you take this little thing away it’s like her connection to the entire world disappears.

And then there’s Robert. An aspiring professional gamer, this 15-year-old spends 12 hours a day gaming. And that’s a school day, mind – on the weekends it’s more like 16 hours.

‘‘I just enjoy it. A lot. It gives me a lot of pleasure. And I don’t want to get rid of things that I enjoy,’’ says Robert.

We could have long discussions over whether or not this is a good thing or a bad thing.

On the not so good side you could say, ‘well, he’s inside, he’s not outside. He’s not with people, he’s playing video games, and it’s not real’.

But on the other side there actually are people who make careers out of this stuff. And he is having contact with people – it’s just online and with his friends who come over to play.

And how is that any different to the kid who spends hours and hours by himself at the park practising kicking rugby balls because he wants to be an All Black?