Phone addictions are a real problem – and working from home might be making them worse.
That's according to The Observer columnist Martha Gill, who told Newstalk Breakfast that cancelling plans to scroll by yourself is a dangerous habit on a par with gambling.
“I guess I’m advocating for our phone usage to be characterised as an addiction,” she said.
“We’re normally talking about smaller part of the population who have a particular problem and therefore it’s more straightforward to think about dealing with it – but when everyone’s doing it, it’s quite hard to see how we might.
“I think it is an addiction because it’s something that is extremely bad for us and we’re finding more and more evidence suggests it’s bad for us.”
Image shows a woman looking at her phone, AlamyAccording to Ms Gill, there is a global trend of people spending more time on their own and she believes that our phones may be a key reason why.
“We’ve been talking about phones and are they bad for us and are they causing – particularly in young people – soaring mental health problems,” she said.
“But really the links between the sort of correlation between everyone spending time by themselves in their bedrooms and everyone’s mental health getting worse has only just begun to be drawn."
Work-from-home policies
Ms Gill said that pulling back on work-from-home policies could be a good first step to tackling societal phone addictions.
“There’s a huge culture war over working from home at the moment, but I think the sort of progressive view is that you should let people work from home and the more sort of right-wing view is that you should make people go into work,” she said.
“But I think there is a progressive argument for employers being a bit stricter on pulling people back to work because it is good for us."
Ms Gill said that there is less incentive to come into the office and socialise if you are just met with a row of empty desks.
Main image: Smart phone addiction concept. Hand is handcuffed. Image: Filip Obr / Alamy. 1 April 2018
