This march of technology has left us all sitting idle

Kelner's view

I was listening to Today on Radio 4 and, even in the blear of early morning, I was able to recognise the heavy irony in the juxtaposition of two pieces of news.

First came the dramatic findings from a Lancet report, released to coincide with the Olympics, that a lack of exercise causes as many deaths as smoking and that people's inactivity should be treated like a global pandemic. And the very next item was the summary of an Ofcom survey into the nation's media habits, among the results the rather startling fact that the average daily TV viewing for the adult population of Britain was four hours. Four hours! Maybe, I thought, these two discoveries may in some way be related. I must say that four hours a day strikes me as a rather long time to be sitting in front of the telly. The Ofcom survey makes fascinating reading, as it gives a rounded picture of what goes on these days in the British household and it reveals how technology has infiltrated almost every aspect of human interaction. The headline finding was that, for the first time, people are more likely to keep in touch via a text message than a phone call.

No kidding! Because we are all so important and everything we do is so crucial and we are so pressed for time, we can't waste those vital moments actually talking to someone. Who hasn't felt that joy when you call someone and you get their answering service?

You can leave a message, you don't have to spend time talking to them and you get the kudos for taking the trouble to call them in the first place. Bliss. But where will this all end? James Thickett, Ofcom's director of research, said yesterday: "Talking face-to-face or on the phone are no longer the most common ways for us to interact with each other". Not surprisingly, this shift is particularly noticeable among the younger age groups, although it may come as a surprise to the parents of a teenager who has to fork out every month for a mobile phone bill. Nevertheless, does this mean that the movement away from human-to-human conversations will continue to such an extent that future generations will lose the ability to converse without the help of an electronic device?

The march of technology has also done much to fracture leisure time among families, given that, in many households, a selection of different devices are being used by different family members in different rooms. The young people, of course, will be multi-tasking: texting, Facebooking and watching telly at the same time. More platforms than Paddington Station. However, an interesting development identified by Ofcom's respondents is that the advent of huge television screens has brought families together. Why stay in your bedroom peering into a laptop when you can join the family and watch on a screen the size of an advertising billboard?

Or better still, if you want to live long enough to see the next series of The X Factor, go out for a run!

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