Are you a slave to your phone?

Recently a friend posted on Facebook that she had left her phone somewhere and it felt like she had lost her right arm. Instead of thinking it was an OTT remark, my first thought was “what a nightmare!”. I am the first to admit it, I am a slave to my phone.

The first thing I do in the morning is switch it on and check emails, Facebook and Twitter. The last thing I do at night before switching it off (yes, it does get switched off at night, but that is a recent progress), is, you guessed it, check emails, Facebook and Twitter.

I am a smartphone junkie.

Although in my defence I am better now than when C was newborn. In the first few months of her life I had it on me whenever I was awake, which, with a newborn, was often. I had a breastfeeding app, a baby sleep app (not to make them sleep but to track when they slept), and I used to go on social media/read emails on it when I was feeding C, so it was never far from my grasp.

I am (slightly) better now, in that it is not on me every waking moment of the day, but Hubs would still tell you that I’m a slave to it. And it is an addiction. We’ll be snuggled up on the sofa, watching a film, and if it isn’t 100% gripping I’ll start thinking about having a quick nose on Twitter. Hubs goes mad if I do this (rightly so), so I sneakily do it, by saying “I’m just going to check IMDb to see what else that actor has been in”. Terrible, I know.

Like a true junkie I am aware of it, hate being called out over it, but seem to be incapable of controlling it.

But I have recently changed mobile phone suppliers and whilst I now pay much less each month, I now pay a lot more for data when abroad. So the data roaming that I had recently got used to when travelling is a big no-go for our current two week holiday.

Interestingly I was quite up for the challenge. I wanted to see how I could get on without using my phone incessantly. And it’s been really liberating. My phone still goes everywhere with me (as it doubles up as my camera), but I am only using it as that, and for the occasional text message.

I have actually loved breaking the shackles that tied me to my phone. At home I charge it once every 24 hours, and that’s with it switched off for around 8 hours at night while I sleep. In the last 10 days I have charged it twice.

By not constantly checking my phone I am taking in what is happening around me, having conversations with Hubs and our girls, and not obsessing over what I’m missing out on. It’s given us real quality time together as a family, which I’m loving.

I have not gone completely cold turkey though as I have got patchy wifi on my laptop which I brought with me so I could blog during C’s naps, and I have snuck onto Facebook and Twitter a bit, but it is very occasional.

So does this mean I can keep it up when I get back home? I am a realist, and so I know that once I am home, and I have more or less unlimited internet on my phone, then the lure of it will be too much to give up totally. But, having said that, I am going to try and completely cut back on how much I use it, and I might even switch it off during movie night. Probably.

What about you? Are you a slave to your phone? How would you feel if you lost it? Please reassure me I’m not the only phone addict out there…