Ditch that phone and see why the idle are rich

ThE doctor laid down his half-moon specs and asked: ‘Do you ever stare into the distance, letting your eyes lose focus, allowing your mind to simply drift?’

A former colleague was in his annual company medical and knew a trap when he saw one.

‘never!’ he declared with a firmness only an employee with a glittering future at the firm could muster.

‘Pity,’ said the doctor. ‘Very beneficial in this age of computer screens…’

That medical gem seems more important than ever as ofcom says 78 per cent of us have smartphones and check them on average every 12 minutes.

It’s the way we live and who hasn’t pulled out their phone, imagining it signalled a call or message?

There’s even a name for this – phantom vibration syndrome.

David Laramie, a clinical psychologist in Beverly hills, reported two-thirds of people experience ghost ringing or vibration. It’s partly down to the always-on nature of the technology and of our 24-hour society.

once, only a few lived in the ‘city that doesn’t sleep’ but now the majority of us – even in rural Scotland and even on holiday – struggle to stop checking email or Facebook, needing to be connected all the time.

‘I’m on the train,’ used to be detail enough. now we get blow-by-blow accounts, with pictures: ‘I’m buying a coffee!’ ‘here’s the coffee!’ ‘Drinking my coffee!’ ‘Finished my coffee!’

Among the casualties of this need to fill every waking minute are children.

I see it in the way they consume music, ripping through tunes – often not even finishing a track – like bubblegum for the ears. Spit it out before it loses any flavour…

I remember vinyl and, unlike today’s fast-food music, the experience was slow. You had to save to buy the record, order it and wait for ever for its arrival.

When it was finally on the turntable, we pored over the sleeve notes.

(I remember the delight of spotting messages that were etched into the runout groove close to the LP label. The four sides of The Clash’s 1979 double album London Calling urge: Tear / Down / The / Walls.)

This immersive experience means I still recall a lyric from an obscure track by Scots-Aussie rockers AC/DC… ‘Know I ain’t doing much / Doing nothing means a lot to me.’

ISn’T that what children today have really lost, the chance to do nothing much? What opportunity is there for internal ideas to form when there’s always an external cacophony from Fortnite, or yet more mates’ selfies to be ‘liked’?

Yes, online games can promote teamwork; let children talk to friends half a world away. But frenetic modern life does mean they have less time to savour what they’re doing. It’s a flashing of thumbs on computer joysticks and on to the next thing in seconds, with a detrimental effect on attention spans.

I used to holiday in Knapdale in Argyll where there wasn’t electricity. now it’s in a Un Charter that no child shall vacation without wi-fi.

The art of doing nothing should be encouraged, but how can we teach our children to let their minds drift if we’re tapping on our own phones every 12 minutes?