Phone anxiety

I left home without my cellphone today.

I was only going to the gym. It's a fifteen minute drive -- well within walking distance if my car ever let me down. The route is through a town centre, full of houses and businesses; there are always people on the streets. In the unlikely event that I suffered some terrible mishap, I wouldn't have been far from help.

I didn't have a mobile phone until I was forty years old. I told myself that I didn't need one, and would never have one: they were the Devil's work. That resolution lasted until I found myself changing a wheel by the side of the highway, with traffic thundering past only feet away. What happened to all the breakdown telephones we used to have on highways? They don't need to be maintained any more, because everybody has a cellphone.

Since then I've watched myself become more and more compulsively attached to mine. I even take it with me when I walk from one room to another in my home.

And yet, nobody ever calls me as a matter of urgency. In the twenty years I've owned a cellphone, I've never had to use it make an urgent call for help. I'm not even sure who I'd call, frankly. The one environment I can envisage needing emergency support -- out in the hills -- there's no coverage, anyway. I certainly don't expect to need my phone on the fifteen-minute drive to the gym, much less in my own home.

I don't know what it is, that makes me feel so helpless without a phone to hand. I managed for most of my life without one, after all. Now, if I put my hand on my pocket and I don't feel my phone, I get a sudden adrenaline rush, as if I'd found a snake in my wardrobe. I'm rather ashamed to admit that I even keep a fully-charged spare phone, in case my main one breaks.

It's not just me: everybody I know is the same.

I guess we've become addicted to the sensation that we _can_ call whomever we want, and that anybody can call us, at any time. It's a reassuring feeling, in a way, even if these calls never happen. Not having the phone to hand is like taking away an addict's fix. A cellphone ought to be liberating but, instead, it's often a fetter.

I'm determined, this year, to leave home more often without bringing my phone. I'll start with short trips, and try to build up to going a whole day without it.

Who am I kidding?

Published 2026-03-12, updated 2026-03-12

Phone anxiety

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