Sussex columnist: Why I'm scared to get my daughter a mobile phone

Just like when most people have family gatherings, it was so nice to all be together and make lots of memories.

But what, perhaps, marked their trip as different from a lot of other people’s (and, I guess, their lives in general) is that they don’t have a computer or mobile phones.

That means all arrangements for their trip had to be made in the old-fashioned way – by making actual telephone calls and speaking to human beings.

There was no scouring the internet for deals, using QR codes to zip onto websites, no posting pictures of their trip on social media and no using their phones to order taxis, check flight times or anything else that the rest of us have become so accustomed to.

They just came down, were present the whole time, and didn’t spend half their time scanning Facebook or replying to an endless stream of WhatsApp messages. It was completely refreshing.

I’d often wished they had social media (largely so I could send the odd photo of my children to them easily) and almost felt sorry for what they were missing out on.

But as we sat in the pub on a Saturday night, and almost everyone around us tapped away on a mobile phone, ignoring the people sat around them, I was reminded of the benefits of not being contactable 24/7 and living in the moment.

Yes, they might not be able to order whatever random item they ‘need’ to be delivered the very next day by Amazon Prime.

And they definitely can’t put photos ‘on the grid’. But do they think their life is any the poorer for it? Absolutely not.

We’re told mobile phones, the internet, wifi, AI, etc., are all examples of the modern world ‘progressing’. But with a nine-year-old daughter who is already asking us to buy her a mobile phone (definitely not happening!), I’m really starting to wonder if progress is all it’s cracked up to be.

When I was at school (it almost needs a black-and-white montage of people going to school 100 years ago inserted here), when you went home at the end of the day, that was it. You could switch off from everything, have a little break from your friends (unless they happened to call your landline and get through around your mum’s calls to her friends) and enjoy family time.

But now, children can be in touch with their friends all afternoon and all weekend, from the second they get a phone.

My daughter thinks that’s great, but it terrifies me. And once you open that floodgate, it feels like it’s pretty hard to close it.

I know she thinks it will be great fun having all your friends and all that information at your fingertips. And there are definitely times when it is very useful. (And I’m sure when she and her brother are out in the world on their own, I’ll be very glad to be able to keep in touch with them throughout the day).

But I long for her and my son to have childhoods uninterrupted by the modern world…

Where your only access to friends was the rotary-dial telephone in the lounge.

When plans had to be made and kept because it wasn’t so easy to be late, lest you leave someone waiting for ages (although I did spend many a half-hour standing outside the old Miss Selfridge in Churchill Square in Brighton, waiting for friends whose buses were late in my teenage years) or to bale out of plans at the last-minute.

When people actually spoke to each other, rather than texting everything (and if people claim they haven’t texted someone else in their household when they’re both at home together – the ultimate symbol of modern laziness – they are definitely lying).

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I know I sound like a dinosaur, and I don’t want to get rid of my phone and laptop.

It’s just seeing others living happily without all the mod-cons does give you pause for thought.

Maybe I just need to start some kind of crusade to get people relying on tech a bit less, and being in the moment a bit more. Like ‘no mobile Mondays’, or something like that.

Plus, less-ready access to the H&M app sure would be good for my bank balance!