Face it — we’re all addicts and it’s harming our health

THIS Wednesday, I popped into a coffee shop to kill some time. I got a window seat and spent a blissful halfhour sipping a latte, watching passers-by, and the sparrows fighting over crumbs around the tables outside.

My behaviour was rather different from other customers — and for one very good reason. I’d forgotten my phone.

Not so those around me. Most seats were occupied by individuals who were entirely pre-occupied with their smartphones, their expressions blank, eyes fixed on little screens, swiping, tapping or just staring. Those with laptops and tablets were similarly focused.

I observed a couple at one table, friends or partners, who didn’t address a word to each other the entire time I was there. Whatever was happening on their smartphones was far more fascinating than they were to each other.

at what point, I wondered, did it become acceptable to have a coffee with someone and then ignore them? Or walk down a street looking neither left or right but only at the device in front of you, risking injury to yourself and others.

Why are we so intent on zoning out of the world around us, preferring to filter our experiences through the digital universe instead? My experience was such a depressing illustration of the way technology has inveigled its way into our lives and taken over.

We now give up hours of every day to stare at screens. Gadgets that promised to make our lives easier and free up our time are not only stealing time from us, but also isolating us from our families and friends.

Instead of speaking, we text or email. Rather than meet face-toface, we use digital platforms.

It’s little wonder that a major public health initiative, Scroll Free September, which was aimed at improving mental health by detaching us from the digital world, has passed without note.

LAUNCHED by the Royal Society For Public Health, the campaign urged people to sign up to go ‘scroll-free’ for a month, taking themselves off Facebook/ What’sapp/Instagram etc.

It was heralded as the world’s first large-scale ‘social media-free trial’ and I have no doubt it would have been beneficial, reaquainting people with real life and human interaction. unfortunately, so addicted are we to our phones that no one wanted to join in.

I use that word deliberately: we need to realise we are addicted to constant, digital stimulation. We know from brain scans conducted on individuals using electronic devices that every interaction — whether reading a message, checking out a post, registering a ‘like’ etc — triggers the release of a tiny amount of the ‘feelgood’ chemical, dopamine, in the brain.

It’s exactly what happens when a smoker lights a cigarette, an alcoholic has a drink, or a gambler places a bet. dopamine — a neurotransmitter that enables nerve cells to communicate with each other — sets up ‘reward’ pathways in our brain that leads to behaviour becoming addictive.

Like lab rats that learn to press a lever to get a sugar cube, we’ve become enslaved to technology because it’s an easy way of releasing this potent chemical and getting that hit.

If people were able to view a scan of their own brains and see how, with every scroll, they are chasing ever more hits of dopamine, I think they’d be horrified.

I’m as guilty as anyone. When I realised I’d forgotten my phone, I felt an irrational sense of panic. I was as twitchy and anxious as someone craving nicotine or a shot of vodka. doesn’t that sound suspiciously like addiction?

Just like every other addiction, we need to find a way to wean ourselves off it — and the first step is admitting that we have a problem. Then, this week, I urge you to take action. Set a maximum limit per day of free time that you spend online — and stick to it.

When you’re travelling, why not just look out of the window? Let your brain roam free for a while.

and make it an unbreakable rule that you never walk along a street while looking at your device.

Finally, review your social media profile and consider limiting yourself to one platform only.

It won’t be easy. Breaking any addiction is hard, but it may be the only way of getting our lives back.