Let’s look up from our screens

A self-confessed phone addict, Caroline Quentin says we could all benefit from turning off the tech occasionally

Caroline Quentin on digital detox

We live in a wonderful age. Surrounded, as we are, by computers, mobile phones, ipads and laptops. I often hear teenagers reproached for being glued to their mobiles, but I know grown-ups, myself included, who find it virtually impossible to disengage from their electronic devices.

I was at a ‘girls’ lunch’ recently – six women of a certain age, who meet at a restaurant

– to catch up over a bowl of pasta and a glass of wine. My mobile vibrated on the table (at least I’d remembered to put it on silent) and I asked the assembled company if they’d mind if I took the call. ‘Not at all,’ came the cry from my friends, who all hastily reached for their own phones, too. It was as though I’d broken a spell and given us all permission to take our estranged lovers back into our waiting arms. We all gazed at our rectangular sweethearts in silence for the next few minutes, searching their glass faces, for affirmation, stroking their hard little bodies with our soft fingertips, such intimacy in such a public place!

The waitress arrived at our table to take our order and the phones were swiftly put away – out of sight, perhaps, but definitely not out of mind. It was then that I realised I’m not alone in having intimacy issues regarding my mobile. I genuinely have separation anxiety if I forget to take it out with me. Sometimes, if I lose sight of it, I consider a world without it and fly into a panic. This is the microchipped chum that knows all my secrets, keeps my diary, knows the numbers of all my friends and where they live. Moreover, it knows what I’ve ordered from my favourite shops, when my train leaves and from which platform, which radio programmes I listen to…

Just occasionally, though, I long for some respite from the ‘blue light’ that illuminates my every waking hour. The constant ‘ping’ of emails and texts that tell me everything factual but nothing about feeling. I miss face-to-face communication, the slight smile before a sentence indicating humour, the giggle of a friend rather than the chilling HA! HA! and an emoji of a yellow-faced sun person with blue fountains gushing from his pin-prick eyes.

Can an email dropping into an inbox ever equal the joy of a handwritten card dropping through the letterbox? My mother’s generation kept scented letters in small fading bundles, wrapped in ribbon, hidden under silk petticoats. Letters that would be cherished for years, that could be read and re-read, held close to the heart, or pressed against a tear-stained cheek.

I love the convenience of the modern world, but I’m determined to look at faces more and screens less, to pick up a pen occasionally and express myself in words, not symbols. As for the piece I’m writing now, I’m using a computer and I’m grateful I can ‘ping’ it over to Gaby, our editor, that I haven’t had to seal it in an envelope, buy stamps and trudge to the postbox in the rain. But next time I’m away from home, I’ll write to my husband, by hand. He’ll still get the inevitable text, ‘LFT READING SPECS ON KITCHN TABLE, SEND ASAP’, but he’ll also open a letter and, who knows, in years to come, he may find it tucked away in his undies drawer, hold it to his cheek and be reminded that, one day long ago, his technologically dependent wife loved him enough to put her phone down, pick up a pen and, instead of LOL, sign off with ‘enduring love’.