Roger Rabbits with Jim Bunny

“Look up” begged the nice lady on TV. “Please look up.”

So this zombie did – up over the iPhone, up over the 65-inch, 36 months interest-free Samsung. It was Saturday morning and Zombie was having a double device “happy” on the couch. Phone and TV. Plus scrambled eggs. And a scrambled mind because the head had been hijacked by all the numbing crap I was reading on my phone.

Stories like “I am pregnant to a Martian”. Didn’t she take precautions? Are there paternity tests for extra-terrestrials? Can you make inter-galactic alimony payments? See what I mean?

Then I did what Nice Lady asked and my gaze continued on an upward trajectory as far as it could – to the ceiling, which I decided probably needs a couple of coats of natural and non-toxic ceiling white. But that wasn’t the point.

Her point was that on average, we zombies spend four hours and 37 minutes on their phones each day. One day per week, six days per month, or approximately 70 days per year. You can argue the numbers, but give or take a couple of hours, we are still addicted to our devices. And Nice Lady was suggesting nicely that there are much better, more fulfilling things to do with that time. Like having a picnic for one under a tree on the traffic island on Cameron Rd, learning Icelandic, or seeing if you can fit in your fridge.

Did you know we check our phones on average 58 times per day. That doesn’t seem many. But time is a precious, finite, irreplaceable resource and probably shouldn’t be wasted. I wonder if someone who’s just been given a terminal diagnosis scrambles for their mobile to pack in as much tech time as possible before logging off forever.

Nice Lady was basically telling us to put our mobile phones down and smell the hyacinths and gardenias. Look up, at the sky, and start appreciating what’s going on around us.

“The blue stuff,” reminded Nice Lady, “is the sky. It could change your day if you let it”. You might see a cloud skudding – skud, skud, skud. Clouds before the wind. A free show of nature’s forces.

And we might have seen the godwits doing a low pass over The Strand as they exit on their 12,000km feed and breed trip to Alaska. Look up, wave and wish them “bon vol” – “have a good flight”, “hope you get tailwinds”. Get the point? On The Strand, three office types arrive with their lunch to soak up some essential Vitamin D and absorb the sights and sounds at a quiet special place. Except they didn’t. They took out their sandwiches and their phones, and didn’t look beyond the little screens for half an hour before going back to the office. Why bother?

A blue whale could have broached off the pontoon, orcas could have been mating out on the briny, a tsunami could have swept up the harbour and they wouldn’t have flinched. I hope they do dopamine detox at the weekend. Did they even notice the fishing trawler cast its lines and chug out into the stream and give me the need to read ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ again? I am not being self-righteous – I know the urge, know the need. The phone will ping while driving and it’s all I can do to ignore it. How many times have I pulled over to get a call or message I didn’t need to know about. Do I ignore a ping in the dead of night? And in the morning do I reach for the phone before the eyes have prised open?

Ever heard of wall riders? They are people, especially kids, who use the guidance and security of walls to creep along so they don’t have to look away from their phones.

Some more unsubstantiated but believable numbers for you. Apparently, 80% of teens check their phones hourly and 72% felt the urgent need to respond to texts and social networking. Also, 36% of parents argued daily with their kids about device use. That I would believe. The gym amazes – I walked in the same day I met Nice Lady and counted 27 people there. Twenty of them were on their phones. Not sure of the aerobic value, but they were paying someone good money for a membership only to spend that time on their phone.

A gym conversation goes something like this. “Can I borrow that machine for a minute?” “No, I’m using it.” “No you aren’t, you’re on your phone.”

Cue hissy fit, indignation, feigned hurt.

On the treadmill before the mat has done one single revolution, a speaker call is made. “Hi – I’m having a workout … ” No you aren’t, you are talking on your phone. You don’t even look like you’re breaking a sweat. And when the phone call ends, the workout ends. Buggered from all the yapping. Enough to drive you outside to look skyward. Hang on … that’ll be the phone.