I spent a week not taking my phone to bed with me*

*And failed miserably ... here's what I learnt from my attempts to banish my phone from the bedroom

I had this post all worked out. I got the idea last Friday. I was going to write: I spent a week not taking my phone to bed with me and this is what happened. And what happened was going to be that I banished my device from the bedroom for a full seven nights and I was going to preach my learnings to you from atop a smug mountain, telling you of my delicious deep sleep, my uncluttered mind, my improved attention span, my positive mood... in short, I was going to inform you that my life had changed and yours could too if you just followed my angelic example. 

But that's now how it went down. I managed three nights. That's it. Three nights of plugging my phone to charge in the living room and scurrying off to my now device-free bedroom. And those three nights were blissful. I did have much better sleep. I did wake up in a much better mood. I even managed to read an entire book (Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier) just by swapping scrolling for some old-fashioned bedtime reading. The best thing was waking up, maybe some sunshine coming through the window, having a little stretch and a think to start the day, rather than immediately bringing a screen to my face with its flashing emails and whatsapps and all the news you could ever want to consume first thing in the morning. I really was, I think, happier for those three nights and mornings.

Then I cracked. The next night I needed to do some work so I had my laptop in bed. I told myself it wasn't my phone but I soon found myself doing all the things I do on my phone - searching for stuff I don't actually need to know or read right that minute, checking Instagram and Twitter, opening up a handful of news sites, whatsapp, refreshing my emails, and then falling asleep to a Youtube video where a very keen fan of Taylor Swift analysed the meaning of every track on her latest album. 

After that night, a little like when you fall off the wagon on a diet and think 'in for a penny, in for a pound', my phone was back in the bedroom. Often finding its way from charging on the nightstand to tucked underneath my pillow. And listen, I love a phone in bed sometimes. I love saving up something I really want to look up, getting into bed after a long day, squirrelling around in the sheets until I am wholly comfortable and swiping away into a Wikipedia or Reddit rabbit hole. I love slowly going through The Times app in the morning, propped up on pillows, learning what's going on out there in the world from the comfort of my bed. But those pockets of enjoyment are few and far between nowadays. More often than not, I feel like a zombified lump unable to look away from my phone, unable to stop swiping, unable even to put it in a separate room for more than three nights because this six-inch glass-and-steel object has mastery over me, and that's a horrid feeling. 

Worries about my relationship with my phone have been tugging away at my mind recently. I am starting to wonder things like: am I actually addicted to it? is it right that this device has been engineered by the brightest minds to make it as unputdownable as possible and given to a schmuck like me? (I do not fancy my odds in a battle that pitches my mind against the brains of Silicon Valley). And here's my most serious worry: am I going to scroll my life away? I'm too embarrassed to tell you my screen time but it is horrendous and it frightens me. I don't believe anyone on their deathbed wishes they had spent a little more time on Instagram, or the corners of Reddit, or flicking through mindless celebrity stories on the Mail Online. 

I have started to daydream about going on holiday somewhere with no phone signal or heading off on one of these digital detoxes where you hang around in a hut in Wales and, I guess, get your mind back? I read those articles about people who have swapped their smartphones for old-fashioned flip phones that don't attach to the internet and I feel jealous. There's a group of teenagers in Brooklyn who call themselves the neo-Luddites. They want to live without social media and iPhones. They meet up in Prospect Park every weekend to sketch pictures, read books and just be together. I want to be in their gang. 

But the thing is, I can't be. I cannot wholly disconnect. I need to be online for my work - not to the point where I'm spending hours upon hours crawling the internet daily but I couldn't just give up my social media accounts. And what's more, I don't think anyone who wants to participate in this world really can do that either. For all the time I waste on Instagram, there are benefits to being on it that I don't want to lose. Every now and again social media is actually that - a means of communication to facilitate social connection. I like seeing what my friends are up to on Instagram, I like showing them what I'm up to, I like how easy it makes it to keep up with friends and family who live far away, I like the conversations I have on it, I like the connections you can make on it. I wouldn't want to lose all that - but I also don't want to give up hours of each day in exchange for it. That doesn't seem like a fair trade. So I'm after a middle way - how do you dip into that online world every now and again without having to live there?

I don’t know how. But I believe this desire to live with technology but not allow it to consume a life will only become more and more pressing in the future. I suspect the people who have any kind of plan to tackle this problem are going to be in high demand. My friend

Lee Tilghman

writes a brilliant substack

Offline Time

which is all about this desire to live a life less online. It's a newsletter for 'folks who are tired of the illusions of social media and want to spend less time online, yet still see its benefits and aren't ready to be full-on Luddites.' I remember Lee told me about her newsletter a couple of years ago and I didn't really get it. But now I think she's tapped into probably the most pressing issue facing Western society today: how to harness the benefits and joys of technology and ultra connected-ness but not become a zombified lump forever scrolling?

I do not have the answers. But for what it's worth, I'm going back to my experiment. Yes, I did fail for the last four days but tonight, I'm leaving the phone outside the bedroom. I'm going to luxuriate in turning my bed into a tech-free zone. The smartphone is a cunning opponent, it may take a few attempts to establish this new habit but I'm not going to give up because I think a life with at least a little less scrolling is worth the fight.

A couple more things…

There are no recommendations this week because I feel I’ve been out of the loop with all the bits and bobs although I did make a cushion in my sewing class yesterday and I can highly recommend taking a class and making something - a cushion, a hat, a pot, whatever! The uncomprehending joy I get from looking at this cushion - crooked sewing and all - is something we should all experience.

Oh and a piece I wrote about everyone around me getting Botox and feeling tweakment FOMO was in yesterday’s Times.

That’s it for this week! Thank you for reading all the way to the bottom. It means the world to me that you have checked out Things We Don’t Talk About (But I Do). If you hit the ‘heart’ button below it will help me get more visibility on Substack and if you have any thoughts, please tell me in the comments.

Thanks as ever for reading xxx