Let’s be clear from the outset.  I do love my mobile phone (or my cell phone, for the Americans in our midst).  Having grown up without one (because they hadn’t been invented yet), I understand and appreciate its advantages. 

Conducting research is a breeze these days when you have Google on your phone.  No more getting on your bike and riding down to the local library to look up lots of books when completing an assignment.  I did that for years as a secondary student, and it got even worse once I progressed to university.  I once carried so many heavy books home from the university library that I broke my backpack.  (I believe my record for book-toting was sixteen).

I love that my mobile phone is a repository for texts, emails, maps, podcasts, electronic tickets, news updates, cat videos and so many more fun and useful things.

However, as with so many other things in life, the advantages are counterbalanced by the problems.  Here’s where my blood pressure rises.

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As a teacher, I see the impact that mobile phones continue to wreak upon the social skills of younger generations.  It’s a real issue.  Over the past few years, I’ve witnessed a significant increase in the number of secondary students with formal diagnoses of social anxiety, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and so many other conditions.  Many of these can’t be attributed exclusively to mobile phone use, of course, but I’d argue that it’s a contributing factor. 

My students are aged between twelve and eighteen, so they should have learned the art of having a conversation many years before I meet them.  Many of them just don’t get it.  To be clear, I’m not talking about every kid, and I’m also not talking about kids who just don’t enjoy answering questions in class or talking to the teacher in front of their peers.  I’m talking about what happens when these students are with their friends at lunchtime or socialising down the street after school.  They don’t understand the etiquette of talking with someone. 

What do I mean by that?  Well, they don’t make eye contact.  They don’t ask many questions or show much interest in what the other person is saying.  They don’t seem to listen, or believe that it’s important to listen, so they interrupt each other rather than waiting for their turn to speak.  They don’t understand that the anecdote they’re bursting to tell should relate in some way to the observation the other person has just made.  Sometimes they don’t speak to each other at all because they’re texting.

These kids struggle to communicate effectively with each other, but more worryingly, they don’t seem to understand unwritten rules about using mobile phones in public.  Have you seen them travelling on public transport or sitting in public places like a café or restaurant?  Have you witnessed these behaviours?

• Looking at their phone while someone is speaking to them
• Answering their phone during a conversation
• Making calls to someone else during a conversation
• Texting someone else during a conversation
• Taking selfies during a conversation
• Posting selfies to social media during a conversation
• Taking photos of people whose appearance they find amusing and posting them to social media
• Watching videos on their phone in public
• Listening to or watching inappropriate things on their phone in public
• Watching videos or playing games in public with their phone on full volume, so that other people trying to have a conversation struggle to hear each other
• Having loud phone conversations in public about intimate topics  
• Having loud phone conversations in public while someone is trying to take their order or serve them at a checkout

I’m sure you’ll have spotted extra ones that I’ve missed.

Most of these social faux pas are committed by adolescents.  However, many of them are also committed by adults in their twenties and thirties who don’t appear to know any better.  If anything, it’s more irritating when this happens.  When kids have bad habits, they might grow out of them.  If adults have the same habits, then this is less likely.

There have been some particularly egregious examples of worrying mobile phone use.  My dearest friend was recently on holidays with her family in a beautiful resort in the tropical top end of Australia.  The landscape was stunning and their accommodation was luxurious.  After a fantastic day, they all went out to an upscale restaurant for a celebratory dinner.  What she saw there shocked her.

Her husband and two boys talked excitedly about their favourite activities from that day and their plans for the following day.  They discussed the menu as they selected their meals.  They smiled and looked each other in the eye.  They were actively paying attention to each other.

As my friend looked around the restaurant, she saw that her family was the only family doing this.  Everyone else in the venue, without exception, was staring at a screen.  Mothers, fathers, teenage children, younger children – they were all either gazing at their phones, texting or playing games on iPads.  None of the children were required to sit politely at the table and make conversation with their parents.  They greeted the waiter with a grunt and barely looked up from their screens while ordering their food or receiving their meal.

The coup de grace for my friend was when she spotted a family with a very young baby – no more than a few months old – sitting in his high chair with a mobile phone propped up in front of him. 

How is that little chap’s brain developing, do you think?  Will his parents demonstrate sufficient interest in him to engage and converse with him, or will he be doomed to a stultifying life in front of the electronic babysitter while they focus on pursuing their own interests?

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Sometimes I daydream that mobile phones have ceased to exist.  Maybe Earth was hit by a massive cosmic shockwave of EMP (electro-magnetic pulse) that knocked them out.  Maybe the shockwave was so powerful that, instead of rendering them temporarily useless, it permanently destroyed their functionality.  Maybe they were cooked by solar flares or solar radiation.

I daydream that social media, cancel culture and cyberbullying have disappeared. 

I daydream that online so-called “dating”, with all its undue emphasis on appearance, superficiality, ghosting, stalking, exploitation, potential for physical danger and increased pressure to engage in so-called “casual” sex, has vanished.

I daydream that the ubiquitous “internet in my pocket” is a thing of the past and we live once again in a world where we dial people up on landlines and talk to them.  More shocking still, we arrange to meet up with our friends in person and have conversations face to face.

Farewell to incessant texting, message alerts, scrolling, doomscrolling, FOMO (fear of missing out, a condition that just makes us scroll faster and more frequently), 24/7 availability, inability to switch off, information overload, rewiring of our neural pathways, scamming, sexting and instant portable pornography. 

They’re all gone for good.

Now I feel better.