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Available for over a year

I wonder if you’ve checked your phone or tablet yet today? If I’m not careful, it can be the very first thing I do upon waking. Apparently, the average person will check it 150 times in a day. And I admit I’m probably quite average. Ouch. But we are slowly waking up, too, to the idea that such compulsion can be harmful, especially for children; and one charity, 5Rights, called yesterday for the Government to issue a public health warning about the addictive nature of social media. Meanwhile earlier this week, Simon Stevens, head of the NHS, urged social media companies to take more responsibility for the effect they are having on young people. And Simon Henderson, head teacher at Eton, revealed that he’s begun a phone curfew for some of his boarders, to help them sleep better. He collects them up in the evening and hands them back in the morning. “We thought there’d be outrage from the boys,” he said, “but they actually liked it.” It’s hard for any of us to switch off well, partly because so much technology is designed (with the help of psychologists as well as tech experts) to be ‘sticky’. It was only when I began struggling to get my son off his console at mealtimes that I realised there’s no pause button or ‘save’ function to his games. You have to keep going if you don’t want your progress to be lost. Tristan Harris, a former insider at Google says that the goal of every tech company is explicitly to gain and then keep our attention. He’s started a movement called Time Well Spent, calling for humane technology which is designed with human flourishing in mind. But it is, of course, up to each of us to ask what, and to whom, we’re willing to give our attention - which is, after all, the most precious of gifts. Perhaps we can start with giving our attention back to young people, instead of walking life’s path with our own eyes locked down on a screen? Looking out, and looking up, has to help! Saint Paul spoke of keeping our eyes on whatever’s “true ... noble ... right ... pure ... lovely ... admirable.” Maybe for you that’s literature, art, nature - or the person you’re with. For me, as a Christian, it also means giving attention to God; training myself to see the divine within the most ordinary of contexts. I once led some school kids on an outdoor retreat to unplug, and we practised stillness, awareness, breathing - as well as looking for butterflies and things we might otherwise miss... and I asked at the end, What did you notice? And one lad, with a look of wonder and a great big smile, just said, “Peace! I noticed peace!” And there’s no emoji on Earth for me that quite captures the loveliness of hearing that.