I turned off and tuned in… to the real world

JO WOOD, 63, is a model, TV celebrity, entrepreneur and ex-wife of Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood. She has four children – two with Ronnie – and ten grandchildren, and lives in London. I WAS well into my 30s when mobile phones became commonplace and even older when the internet became part of everyday life. I grew up in an era when you agreed to ‘meet by the phone box’ at 7pm. But boy have I embraced the technological revolution.

Today I rely on my devices to keep in touch with my family, to help me check flights when I want to go to my house in Spain, to navigate my way around a strange city, and to answer any question I care to ask.

I look up organic recipes, bank online, do my shopping, create playlists and stream films.

Instagram is fabulous for recording bits of your own life and dipping into the lives of others.

Now, however, like hundreds of thousands of other people around the

I FOUND MY ELECTRONIC DEPENDENCY VERY EASY TO KICK

world, I have started to consider what this 24-hour-a-day connectivity takes away from us instead of what it brings.

And there’s one trend that’s truly captured my imagination: the digital detox. Disconnect to reconnect is the mantra – turn off your phone, power down your laptop, take your headphones off your ears and your eyes away from a screen. Then you’ll be free from electronic enslavement and can turn your full attention back to the real world.

I’ve been watching the movement grow but have never had the courage to try it myself. I do usually put my phone on to airplane mode at night so it doesn’t interrupt my sleep and I try not to have it right next to my head when I’m chatting.

But a full scale switch off? That always felt like a lot to ask.

So recently I turned off for a month; four whole weeks. Just me, and my grey matter making a re-entry into the real world instead of running it in parallel with the virtual one.

I feared it would be a huge challenge but I found my electronic dependency unexpectedly easy to kick. I didn’t think about it once other than to recognise how free I was without my phone.

I’ve reconnected now. But I will be able to manage my online life better for having gone offline. It’s not just computers that need to reboot, it’s users too.