There’s no joy an idiot with a smartphone can’t kill

Studies show that generation Z have less sex, drink less alcohol and watch less television than was previously the norm for their age group. I guess anything that eats into their phone time has to go. I’m a baby boomer but I’ve also greatly reduced, if not eradicated, these three activities, largely due to a simple lack of enthusiasm. Meanwhile, though, my smartphone continues to enthral me.

I’m also a Roman Catholic, and Lent began last Wednesday, traditionally a time to cast aside anything that might be distancing you from God. A friend told me she is giving up Daily Mail Online. As a man who doesn’t have much left to give up, I considered putting my phone aside till Easter Sunday, a total of 46 days, but even Jesus didn’t spend that long in the wilderness. In the end – that is to say, after about 11 seconds – I decided against it. I mean, what about my Doctor Who alerts? Still, like the Lord, my phone giveth, and my phone taketh away.

There is endless talk about the effects of unrestrained phone use on the young but the same behaviour poses perhaps less obvious threats to my generation. Conversation, in boomer circles, has been profoundly damaged by the relatively recent introduction of facts.

In my experience, the best conversations are the ones where no one really knows what they’re talking about. I’ve participated in many such debates about, say, football or politics. They’re so gloriously unhindered by evidence, so recklessly inventive, that they constitute a sort of folk art. But I’ve seen a few of these discussions completely ruined by a participant who is well informed. Once this interloper starts rattling off a player’s Opta statistics or outlining the procedural difficulties of mounting a party-leadership challenge, the joy of unfounded speculation is gone. When you attack such harmless ignorance, bliss generally dies in the crossfire.

Previously, knowledgeable people were extremely thin on the ground, but now the smartphone has given everyone the chance to be a killjoy. Consider what we risk losing. I heard a woman on the bus, talking about when she became a vegetarian in the Sixties. “Of course,” she explained to her friend, “in those days, vegetarians were still allowed bacon. And chicken salad.” I tensed, anticipating a Google-based refutation, but all was well. No one was fact-checking her. I certainly wasn’t. I was too busy considering the possibility that she might be right, enjoying the nowadays almost obsolete thrill of not knowing.

I’m not against learning, of course. My own rule is I’m allowed to Google stuff I don’t know but not stuff I don’t remember. Apparently, the brain is a bit like a muscle and, thus, it needs exercise. I once watched a grey-haired woman on a plane operating a device that was offering up, on its screen, various maths challenges, riddles and word games. If I remember rightly, it was called a Brain Gym. I’m not allowed to look it up. She was literally exercising her brain.

The smartphone is the antithesis of the Brain Gym. It does all the work for you. In line with my own rule, I once spent two-and-a-half days trying to remember the name of Marlon Brando’s character in Apocalypse Now. All I knew for certain was that it began with R. Then, as I lay in bed, gazing into the darkness, it suddenly came to me: Kurtz. I was elated. Not only had I triumphantly remembered the name without artificial aid but my brain had gone through a 60-hour workout. If I’d mentioned my struggle in a pub, before I was liberated by my night-time epiphany, some idiot would have just Googled it: no brain-stretch, no jubilation.

Before smartphones, most adults had to memorise a dozen or so phone numbers but there’s no need to remember anymore. Worse still, there’s no need to misremember. Misremembering produces a creativity all of its own. For years, my absentmindedly mumbled version of Frosty the Snowman began “Frosty the snowman/ Had an independent face”. I have no idea where this second line came from or, indeed, what it means. I know it bears no resemblance to the original. Yes, foolishly, I allowed myself to check. Now, unlike the woman on the bus, I stand officially corrected. My personal Frosty is forever melted by a hot blast of information.

My son has to hand his phone in when he gets to school and doesn’t get it back till home-time. There should be a similar system for adults attending any social gathering where a phone might kill the joys of remembering, misremembering and uninhibited conjecture. Two wrongs don’t make a right but they can sometimes make a night. Anyway, no Softmints till Easter Sunday.

Photograph by Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy