I’m shocked by my mobile dependency

11:10am Saturday 19th July 2008

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FOR the first time ever, my mobile phone stopped working. Just like that. The feelings of loss, isolation and, I’ll be brutally honest, panic were instant – and just as quickly replaced by the total shame of such dependency.

Had I really become that reliant on my little communication brick? I had staunchly refused to get a mobile during the late 1990s, when they really took off, and only gave in when I started driving (for breakdowns and emergencies only, I might add). However, it seems I may have been in denial for a number of years as to just how much it’s become part of my day-to-day life.

To my growing embarrassment, I can remember every phone I’ve owned, from the large BT block that used to rip through electrical goods every time a message or call was received (I dread to think what it did to the brainwaves) to my ultra tiny Samsung that I repeatedly lost.

I suppose my attachment really began when I moved away from home. Without access to a landline or email, it was my only means of keeping in touch with people, and perhaps it became like an electronic security blanket (or maybe this is just a desperate attempt at justifying my current state of despair).

It’s not even like my phone is an ever-ringing hotline. When my message alert goes off, I know it’s going to be one of a handful of people; when it actually rings, the group of potential callers decreases even more.

On arriving home from work, I frantically dug out an old mobile, which thankfully I had the matching charger for, swapped my sim card and waited for all my important messages to come through. Well, sod’s law being what it is, I had in fact received a fairly significant message that had come through a number of hours beforehand that was too late to reply to.

On that note of disappointment, I then realised that all my up-to-date numbers were not saved on my sim, leaving me not only with a broken phone but no way of contacting anyone to lament my loss. This time it was not so much panic that washed over me as annoyance at the hassle of trying to regain all the lost details. A less shameful emotion, but still erring on the side of sad.

My friend had gone through a similar experience a couple of weeks ago, so upon telling her of the whole incident I was relieved to hear she too had gone through the same range of emotions.

This helped alleviate some of my shame, especially as she did not consider herself to be a mobile junkie either.

If the both of us, who profess not to be so devoted to our mobiles (like I said I, at least, may be in denial) can get in such a state when it breaks, how on earth must these people feel who have it glued to their ears ninety per cent of the time and have repetitive strain injury from too much texting?

Although I imagine such people must have a rack of standbys, a bit like a shoe rack, that they can just pick up and put on. Always ready for that one occasion when the critical call comes through.

The thing is, it’s not only our own intimate connections with our communicators that affect us; we also get frustrated when others fail to answer, or reply to, text messages and voicemails. Don’t even get me started on those who haven’t even got a voicemail system set up; the infinite ringing is enough to send anyone over the edge.

Then, when you finally get through to someone, out come the accusatory lines such as “Didn’t you get my four text messages and two voicemails?”, as if the person in question has been deliberately ignoring all attempts at contact just to evoke a sense of paranoia.

Like it or not, always being within reach, either physically or electronically, has become part of our daily lives as much as getting out of bed in the morning, which makes my reaction perfectly justified in the grand scheme of things.