My Word | Is it time to dumb down our phones?

Still, it is actually something I came up with by myself because that’s what I’m paid to do — write pithy insights into human and canine behaviour. It’s a tough job, etc.

Anyway, I have found this particular piece of pithiness can be applied to all sorts of destructive addictions — alcohol, chocolate, sex, cat videos or gambling.

This is pertinent because lately, I’ve been chastising myself about an addiction that afflicts a lot of people, mainly under the age of 60 — staying connected, specifically through mobile phones.

The problematic phone behaviour of children, teens and millennials is a known and well-researched phenomenon.

Google ‘mobile phone addiction’ and you’ll come up with more pages than the Game of Thrones books.

You’ll find information on mobile phones and mental health, addiction signs and symptoms, ways to break your addiction, and drug help. And that’s just page one.

But what about the mobile phone habits of baby boomers and retirees?

When commitments and work drop away, what do we do with our time?

Anecdotally, my mobile phone use has increased since I retired.

Two years ago, I would wake up and perhaps check my emails while I ate breakfast before going to work.

These days, I check my mobile phone before I get out of bed.

Emails, the war in Gaza, a new Beatles podcast segment, updates from my Impressionist painting materials and novel writing user groups, the latest on the Bruce Lehrmann/Channel Ten hearing, the weather, a video on vintage hat collections and a Black Friday guitar sale and more ‘Christmas is approaching’ sales.

Terrific — that’s before I’ve looked at Facebook and Instagram, had a shower, eaten breakfast, fed Finski or looked out the window.

The pattern of my day is now set. Bursts of real life, interspersed with pointless stuff.

Judging by the Facebook activity of my senior friends, I don’t think I am alone in this pattern of behaviour.

Our phones are like supermarket check-out shelves crammed with momentary hits of dopamine in the form of digital junk snack food.

I no longer keep my phone in my pocket around the house. I leave it in odd places — a bookshelf, next to the indoor kitchen plants, on the table in my painting room, or maybe on the loungeroom sideboard.

This drives the Chief Gardener mad and occasionally makes me frustrated, but I do this so I can’t just graze on digital junk when a passing moment arrives, like waiting for the kettle to boil or the toaster to pop. Sometimes, it’s good just to let your mind wander and avoid the trivia sinkhole.

I’m not yet brave enough to leave the house without my phone, but the day is approaching when I will purposely do that.

This human tendency to be diverted by trivia and repetitive nonsense is not exactly new.

The Romans had the games and the Victorians had Penny Dreadfuls — cheap magazines featuring detailed stories and drawings of grisly murders or heroic accounts of battles and sporting prowess.

And yes, Penny Dreadfuls were held responsible for youth violence, suicide and the general descent of society into collective madness.

Irish poet Seamus Heaney, writing a few years before the arrival of the internet, complained of being swamped by stuff that “slows the spark and puts sludge in the veins”.

However, smartphones have made the situation infinitely worse.

I am now considering getting a ‘dumbphone’ with no internet access, just the ability to make and receive calls. The only way I can then access social media and news about vintage hat collections is to make a conscious decision to sit down in a room with a big screen.

I wonder if there’s a smart user group for people living in small rooms with big screens?

John Lewis is a former journalist at The News