Dan Morris: The Apple and BlackBerry crumble - have smartphones stolen our souls?

Even in op-eds, it’s rare for journalists to come flying in so quickly and strongly with such a forthright judgment, yet such is my passion, anger and disillusionment with the subject at hand, I thought I would dispense with the usual mincing of my words.

To get the obvious hypocrisy out of the way, I am a smartphone user, and have been ever since they first reared their troublesome, Terminator-esque heads back in the noughties.

I use a smartphone because I must. As a journalist I must be as tricked-up as the most tricked-up kid on the block in terms of my ability to access information and keep up-to-date with the events of the hour. If Joe Bloggs is hearing about something two minutes after it happens, I’d better be hearing about it after one - wherever I am. Therefore I can’t afford to allow my personal views to stop me using tech that ensures my finger is never off the pulse.

However, I wish I could, and let me be crystal clear - if I wouldn’t be handicapping myself professionally, I’d throw the wretched thing in the Severn.

Why, oh why, do I bring this up now though? Smartphones aren’t new, neither is the debate over their positive/negative impact on modern life.

Recently the BBC’s Panorama team challenged two social media-obsessed West Midlands teens – a boy and a girl – to live a week without their smartphones.

One of said youngsters proclaimed at the start of the programme that she would often be up until 5am, playing games, watching TikTok, etc - all possible because of the handy pocket-sized devil device that lets her do this anywhere. Her mother talked about how she would sacrifice family time for the lure of the screen, and how much she wished this wasn’t the case.

While smiles were, perplexingly, abound, I found this utterly heartbreaking. Social media has become anti-social media, now leading young people to sacrifice face time (no pun intended) with their nearest and dearest in favour of paying homage to whichever so-called ‘influencer’ is promoting genetically modified chick peas that week in the hope of scoring a free handbag/holiday.

And, of course, it doesn’t stop with the kids. I’ve walked into bars and pubs before and stood aghast at the fact that despite said establishments being busy, hardly any of the patrons were interacting. Groups of people sat at the same table were simply jacked in to their phones, ignoring those around them (presumably friends) in favour of the digisphere. To me, this was only one bus stop away from us all being hooked into the Matrix. One speakeasy A-board years ago had it right - ‘No, we do not have free wi-fi - talk to each other!’

As Panorama’s experiment proceeded, the young lad was found to be sleeping better and waking with more purpose. Yet quite soon he was sitting at an electronic piano giving a storming rendition of ‘I don’t have a phone, I’ve lost the will to live’.

The lass struggled from the off. She was becoming irritable, agitated and feeling lost. Troubling results in both camps only a couple of days in.

Said young lady went on later to comment how, without her phone, she had enjoyed the simple pleasure of dog walking and being outdoors.

Later still, she sadly reflected on the body negativity she had felt at the shocking age of nine thanks to social media portrayals of so-called feminine beauty.

The call for increased restrictions and a minimum age for smartphone use in the UK is growing, and on our patch, moves are being made. In the West Midlands, schools are having bans brought in, and in good old Salopia, the Shropshire Smartphone Free Childhood group has already hosted a series of public meetings where parents have discussed concerns over children’s smartphone use.

Technology brings a world of benefits to modern life, and even with my bountiful disdain of them, I must accept that smartphones are a part of this. Yet to paraphrase the immortal Jeff Goldblum à la Jurassic Park, just because we ‘can’, doesn’t necessarily mean that we ‘should’.

It’s wonderful being able to do my shopping, order a pizza, and, admittedly, talk to long lost pals without having to get up from my chair. But if even one child is experiencing horrific bullying, abuse, addiction or depression thanks to the 24/7 accessibility smartphones give to social media and the wider web, it isn’t worth it.

I’m a father to a two-year-old, and by the time she wants a phone, Lord only knows what they will be capable of. Yet based on the current epidemic (and this, folks, is without question what it is), she will be steered as far from the ‘anti-social media-dependent’ course as possible, and a smartphone will be far from her grip for as long as I am able to make this so.