I had to be online 24/7
Losing her phone made her as losing her twins in a shop. Now, as a Marie panicked as Claire survey lays bare the scale of midlife women’s tech addiction, its editor says . . .
PAGES 44-45
Settling into my seat on a flight back from a business trip to San Francisco, i did a routine swipe over the outer pocket of my handbag to check my phone was in its usual place.
A split second later, a panic hit me the like of which i haven’t felt since losing sight of my toddler twins in a French supermarket more than a decade ago.
Ransacking my hand luggage, i was like a woman possessed before the true horror dawned: i had left my phone in the airport lounge. Would they hold the plane for me so i could go back? Would it be better to miss the flight than lose the phone? What would i do when i got to Heathrow, with no phone to check if my taxi had arrived?
looking back, i feel utterly ridiculous for reacting this way. After all, i’m a grown woman, a married mother of teenage twins, a boy and girl, and the editor of one of Britain’s biggest glossy magazines. i’m more than used to handling a crisis and coping when things go pear-shaped.
i have also — although it’s easy to forget — made my way through more than three decades of life without any sort of screen. So why was i so panic-stricken and bereft without this bleeping device at my fingertips? the simple, rather amazing, answer is that, at that precise moment, losing my phone was a personal disaster.
i had arrived at a point where i had to be connected 24/7, and if i wasn’t, i felt as if i had lost control of my life.
How else could i keep up with the 300plus emails that landed in my inbox each day? Or check all the content put out on Marie Claire’s website and social feeds, read news bulletins and stay in touch with a vast network of work contacts, from writers to fashion PRs?
not to mention managing personal social accounts and WhatsApp groups, plus the endless emails from my kids’ schools about sports fixtures and parents’ coffee mornings.
no wonder i was in the habit of picking up my phone every ten minutes from the moment i woke up to going to sleep at night.
My smartphone had turned from the tool that enabled my life, to the tyrant that ruled it.
How did this happen? it’s not as if i’m particularly in love with tech. i’ve never been an early adopter of social media platforms (i got an instagram account only 18 months ago) and i’m certainly not addicted to the minutiae of Kim Kardashian’s online life, or the latest celebrity twitter spat.
But as technology continues to blur the boundaries between work and home life, i’d reached a state of both guilt and exhaustion, where it felt as though i wasn’t doing my job properly or managing family life if i wasn’t connected all the time! My smartphone represented an extension of myself.
Being an editor today is a totally different experience to when i first became one 20 years ago.
not only am i responsible for filling the pages of the magazine, i also have to market the brand — and myself — via social media.
Why else would i make myself car sick during Milan Fashion Week frantically posting pictures online between shows? Or secretly wonder, while chatting to an A-list actress, at what point i could ask for a selfie? Or even chase Prince Charles around a polo field to set up a fake photo bomb? (With some nifty manoeuvring, i got him in the background of a selfie. Bingo.)
You would think i’d know better. i have, after all, chaired panel discussions on the topic of sensible internet use with leading experts, and commissioned numerous articles to help our readers get the best out of technology without feeling overwhelmed by it.
We even set up a Marie Claire survey on it, the results of which make for uncomfortable reading (see box below).
like most of the women who took part in the survey, i have mixed feelings towards my phone. On the one hand, it gives me an ongoing sense of security and connectedness. On the other, it is a source of horrid anxiety.
indeed, the women in our survey offered extraordinary insight into our relationships with these despotic little gadgets.
One woman insisted on having her phone by her side while giving birth to her son. Another, when swimming, kept her phone near the pool wrapped in a towel so she could check it between lengths. My favourite story was of the woman who interrupted a sexual encounter to reply to a text.
While my husband can confirm things haven’t got that bad, i have missed train stops and received terrifying glares during school concerts while sneaking a quick peek at my screen.
And if you think it’s only twentyand thirtysomethings who have it this bad, think again. Fifty-three per cent of 40 to 50-year-olds said they felt they were spending too much time on their phones, with one in five of those claiming to check their phone every five minutes. that’s about 192 times a day, in case you’re counting.
the dangers aren’t trivial, either. the act of picking up a phone distracts attention from the real world, sometimes critically. Safety campaigners blame a sharp rise in playground accidents, for example, on distracted parents and grandparents with smartphones in their hands.
no surprise, then, that this national obsession has spawned the new campaign Scroll Free September, which is encouraging people to give up social media for a month for the sake of their mental health.
evidence suggests excessive use of smartphones can cause psychological problems such as depression, insomnia and low self-esteem, and while i haven’t got to that stage, i do worry about the impact on my 14-yearold children, who would scroll through their social feeds from dawn till dusk given the chance.
Back to that San Francisco flight — i did manage to hoof it all the way to the lounge and back (panting and red faced) just before the ‘fasten seat belt’ sign lit up. the relief was palpable, but it lasted less than 24 hours.
the next morning, my beloved phone died while i was on my way back to the airport for a family holiday. the gods were definitely trying to tell me something — and that’s how i ended up having an accidental phone detox.
it lasted two-and-a-half weeks,
and being on holiday for the first seven days was the easy part.
Yes, I persuaded my husband to let me use his phone to post ‘just one’ picture on Instagram because the sea was too blue to go unrecorded (and unenvied by my followers), but other than that, I was able to resist the itch in my fingers to tap and scroll.
Back in the office, though, I was desperate to get my mitts on a working phone, but, alas, discovered the protocol for repairing a company device took ten days. So how did I cope and what did I learn? There are things I genuinely missed but managed without, such as podcasts (U.S. documentary series Slow Burn on my walk to the station, The Archers on my way home) plus functional tools including traffic app Waze and Citymapper, an Hold the phone: Magazine editor Trish Halpin tries to do without a modern essential excellent journey-planning app. Also, the instant messaging platform WhatsApp, since it seemed the only way I could keep track of my teens gadding about during the summer holidays.
Emails were a different story. I’ve become so used to checking work emails last thing at night and on the morning train, I felt genuine anxiety for a few days, especially as I was waiting on a Hollywood star to confirm a cover shoot.
Going cold turkey on Instagram also gave me the jitters. How would I know where everyone was on their holidays? Or what they had for breakfast . . .?
After a few days, though, I started arriving at the office with a clear mind and no idea of what was awaiting me. That felt not only refreshing, but exciting, too.
And I quickly discovered, when I fired up my computer, that there was nothing heart-stoppingly urgent that couldn’t be dealt with after 9.30am.
AnOTHEr wake-up call was how much I relied on my phone instead of my memory. Getting to meetings meant remembering addresses because I couldn’t check them on my phone.
And, oh, the stress of not being able to get in touch instantly with the person I was meeting in half an hour!
One morning, I spent an entire journey fretting about not getting to a breakfast with a beauty company director on time — and therefore keeping him waiting without being able to phone and tell him why.
Of course, my worries were unfounded: though I was ten minutes late, he didn’t bat an eyelid. But I’m not sure everyone would be so gracious. Another business colleague might have been furious if I hadn’t let them know I was running late.
It’s a classic example of the smartphone creating needless pressures in our lives.
Two weeks without those pressures really was a tonic. I’m not sure anyone noticed the difference as I tend to internalise my stress, but now that I have a new phone, I’m trying to keep it at more than arm’s length by not having it on my desk in the office, leaving it out of the bedroom at night and resisting looking at social media on the weekends.
I’ve decided the way forward is to trust myself. I know that I’ll deal with everything that comes my way in plenty of time because I always have.
What’s more, it’s dawned on me that the smartphone enables people to reach me when its convenient for them, regardless of whether it’s convenient for me.
Well, no more. If I’m not at work, I’m going to quash the instinct to react to every ping and beep and leave looking and scrolling until a time that suits me.
It may have been accidental, but my phone detox changed my life for the better — and I’m never going back.
THE 30th anniversary issue of Marie Claire is on sale now. For more details of Marie Claire’s Screen Break campaign go to marieclaire. co.uk/screenbreak