Why it’s time we woke up to the menace of the smartphone

At the very least, she has helped spark a long overdue conversation about our reliance – over-reliance – on smartphones in the week when it was revealed that 57 per cent of children sleep with a handset by their bed, and 39 per cent say they could not live without their phone.

Let she who hasn’t looked up from her sudoku app to find every other family member engrossed in a tiny screen cast the first aspersion. We all like a little R&R, but the terrifying truth is that the average person in the UK spends more than a day a week online, much of that on a smartphone.

The figure for our children is similar as attested by polling, carried out last year by CensusWide for music streaming company ROXI, which showed kids under 14 spending around 23 hours a week on smartphones and other gadgets – twice as much time as talking to their parents.

Technology that was supposed to be their portal to the world has become their world. No wonder then that 54 per cent of parents worry that their kids are missing out by spending too much time isolated on their devices – yet 40 per cent admitted to giving children devices in order to keep them occupied.