A growing addiction to smartphones and social media, are we being helped or hindered?

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I’m growing warrier and warrier of how long I spend on my phone each day. With weekly screen time reports being shown to me and the isolated feeling of lockdown hitting hard, it’s becoming… a lot of hours! But even before lockdown, it seems we have all become slaves to our phones and social media, they’re in every aspect of what we do. Did an event really happen if we didn’t put it on some form of social media? So let’s do a little bit of a dive into this with the author of Ideal Angels, Robert Welbourn.

Trigger warning for suicidue and drug use within this book. 

Robert has written a fleeting, observational book of a week-long relationship between a man, a woman and her phone. This truly is a unique and fascinating novel that not only tells an engaging and interesting story but also states so clearly how we as humans have become so attached to our phones. My favourite scene was in a nightclub where our main character notes how many photos are being taken that will be deleted the next day and how overwhelming the constant view of electronic screens can be. Another moment I found interesting was how a character was asked to be in a relationship via a Facebook invite, how very 2020…?

I spend a lot of time on my phone, I won’t pretend I don’t. But when I read this book it reminded me to live. The narrative perspective is told in an imperative style, it feels like we the reader are the narrator and we are being instructed on what we should be observing, which really put the ownership on the reader.

Buy a copy of Ideal Angel here and see for yourself this unique narration and interesting observations of this modern world. 

Upon finishing this book I was very eager to ask Robert some questions about his inspiration for this book and his own thoughts on our smartphones.

Hi Robert, first off, what an interesting book. This narrative style totally sucked me in and really made me think. So I suppose my first question to you is, how many hours do you think you’ve spent on your phone this week? I’m interested to know if you fall prey to the glow of the screen like the rest of us, or if you’re more reflective about time spent on your tech?

I think I’ve spent far too many hours on my phone this week, but thanks to the joys of technology I can give you an exact number – 20 hours and 34 minutes. As of writing this it’s 13.59 on Saturday afternoon, which means the week is 134 hours old, and I’ve spent 20 and a half of those hours on my phone. A quick calculation tells me that’s about 15%. There’s definitely something ironic about my phone telling me I spend too much time on it, but I’m sure smarter people than me have explained that phenomenon much better than I ever could. I’m very reflective of the time I spent on my phone, but that doesn’t stop me. Do as I say, not as I do.

You’ve made some spot on observations in this book of social media/phone addiction, what inspired you to put pen to page and talk about this topic?

What inspired me to write about it really was my hatred of social media; I still hate it now, but as an author I need to use it unfortunately. It definitely has its upsides; every day there’s something new and heartwarming that goes viral, and makes us all feel good about ourselves. But to me, that doesn’t outweigh the bad. Look at Facebook and their droves of misinformation; do you think Brexit or Trump would have happened if Facebook didn’t exist? I doubt it. 

When reading this book it didn’t feel so much like a critique of phones, but more an observation and if not by the end, a recognition of what they can help us achieve? Do you think our smartphones are more of a hindrance or aid?

Smartphones are definitely an aid, without a doubt. I spent three months in Asia just before this book came out, and I don’t know how I would have survived without my phone. Google Maps is a lifesaver; I have no idea how my parents did anything, how they went anywhere, without it. And look at things like Wikipedia, a massive database of basically everything known to man, accessible with a couple of taps. It’s quite frankly mind blowing to be honest. Whilst what we do with them may not always be the best, for our physical or mental health, I don’t think anyone could argue in good faith that smartphones are a bad thing.

I don’t know what the right word to describe the narrative perspective in this book is, the best I can say is it feels like a Fight Club esk narration in my own head. Did you find this style easy to write in? Were there any struggles when it came to how you moved the story along and included speech?

I’ll take a comparison to Fight Club any time, so thanks for that! I was actually inspired by Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney, which is the only book I’ve ever read which is in the second person narration, as Ideal Angels is. It was challenging at times, but to write in that style, particularly when it comes to stream of consciousness, I find, not easy, but it definitely suits me as a person. My mind is always going a mile a minute; don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying I’m a great thinker or anything, but the fact is, my mind rarely turns off, and so something like writing Ideal Angels is a release to me, it’s a way to get some of that pent of energy out of my brain, and allow me to relax a bit. Writing to me is a form of therapy; that what I wrote turned into a book, and that book got published, is absolutely amazing, and I wouldn’t change it for anything.

And finally, my closing question, if you could give us three words to encourage people to read your book, what would they be?

Three words to encourage people to read it? That’s tough. How about:

Please please please?

No that doesn’t work, so how about?

Pretty, pretty please?

But in all seriousness, whilst I love to write, and find it comes naturally to me, I’m not a very good salesman. I’ll give you a serious answer, and hope it works and I sell loads of copies:

Love isn’t easy.

Thank you to Robert for answering my questions and sharing a bit more about his book with us. I hope you guys enjoyed it and also enjoyed the dicussion about smartphone and social media use. What do you think, do they hinder or aid us?

 

 

 

 

 

 

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