COLUMN: Scroll, scroll, scroll, a nice quick hit of dopamine and I'm done...

Are we all now addicted to our smartphones?

Let’s admit it, we are!

I’ve become more aware of this inanimate object on my desk, at my kitchen table, on the sitting room table and in my bed. I have a smartphone tic; the device is almost like an extra limb.

I can’t control myself, I just have to check it. Scroll, scroll, scroll, a nice quick hit of dopamine and I can leave my phone down for another while.

But I have it in my hand nearly every ten minutes, except during the day when I’m more likely to be on the phone talking rather than scrolling mindlessly through social media.

In the evenings, I could go down a YouTube wormhole and two hours could pass.

A few years ago I decided to address my relationship with this wonderful and wicked piece of technology that is such a huge part of my personal and professional life - but nothing has changed. If anything, I’ve gotten worse.

I know I’m on my phone an unhealthy amount.

If I were to estimate, add up all the seconds and minutes I feel a compulsion to scan a timeline or Twitter feed, I guess I would spend well over five or six hours a day on the smartphone.

Maybe that estimate is way off, it could be north of ten hours.

It isn’t that I’m absorbed by it for hours on end, my smartphone tic is a short burst, a quick refresh on social media or a brief scan of the headlines on a news app, but they all add up.

There are two exceptions. Netflix - which has the US series of The Office - and when I’m cooking dinner in the evenings I watch maybe two or three episodes on my phone. And then there’s the YouTube wormholes. For most of the evening, I’m dipping in and out; probably every five minutes.

I’ll watch a bit of TV (more technology and digital screens) and then the tic will take over and I’m back on the smartphone. I don’t even have a lot of apps.

The worst habit to arise from the smartphone tic is the Facebook timeline trawl at night-time in bed.

A common sight is two incandescent smartphones beaming from the bed for anything between 10 and 20 minutes before my wife and I decide to nod off.

It’s unhealthy.

Anyway, I’m going to try and once more address my usage and try to control the tic. So from now on, the phones will be charged in the kitchen and I’m sticking to it this time.

I find social media can make me anti-social and I’m alert now to somebody sitting at a dinner table in front of real people and taking out their phone for a moment to look into their digital lives.

I’m alert to it, but changing my own habits and taking on the tic is going to be a slow process.

But I’m hoping small changes will help get me on the right track.