James Innes-Smith

Guest Columnist

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WHEN did you last receive a phone call from someone you actually wanted to speak to? I can’t remember when a friend last rang “for a chat”.

As a consequence, my voicemail is full of messages, not from old acquaintances but from scammers and annoying utility companies begging me to switch to a smart meter — when will they get the message?

As we march ever deeper into the digital age where even texts and emails will be supplanted by some new form of AI communication, I for one will be glad to see the back of the old “dog and bone”. This March 10 marks 150 years since Graham Bell made the first successful, intelligible call, famously telling his assistant: “Mr Watson, come here I want to see you.”

Ironic then that at a time when phones have never been more ubiquitous we are using them less and less; even when we do make the occasional call, few of us hold the actual device to our ear, preferring to communicate via an earpiece to avoid the risk of contracting a brain tumour!

But phone-related cancer isn’t our only concern.

A recent study by Trinity College London of more than 1,500 people aged between 16 and 29 found that 30% of them feel anxious using the blower a condition known as “telephobia”.