Technology has turned us into a zombie nation ADDICTION: Smartphone technology has made us more stressed, more time poor and more stupid. The drug of the nation. Breeding ignorance and feeding radiation ... Specifically I'm talking about smartphone technology. Addicts continually try to justify the habit, preaching that our lives are easier, we have more time to ourselves, we're more informed and that our work/life balance is in check. Garbage. We've never been more stressed, more time poor and more stupid. These devices also ensure there's no balance in our work life. Remember the days of yore when (mostly dad) would come home from the office at the end of the working week. He'd drop his suitcase at the door on Friday night and wouldn't pick it up (or think about it) till Monday morning. Weekends were free from workplace distraction so you would do chores around the home, have picnics, go on Sunday drives, socialise around the Clark Rubber above-ground pool. Families would talk to each other and play parlour games. Friends would pop around for a cup of tea, a spot of conversation and a Butternut Snap. This world has been lost. Smartphones now go with us everywhere 24/7 and should there be a spare few minutes (or even seconds) between school pick-up, crossing at the lights, checking the post box, queuing for sausages at the butcher, waiting at the ATM, watching the kids play sport or even when stopped at the traffic lights (sorry, SAPOL - we all do it), we're checking our bloody phones. It's imperative to see if any important messages have come in that need URGENT attention. Alerts from Oz-Sale about a 40 per cent reduction on Birkenstocks, emails from work that could wait till back in the office or notifications that a Tweet got favourited. Life-changing stuff. The days of having a chat vis-a-vis with a friend are a thing of the past, too. So much bother and really, who has the time? In between monitoring Facebook to see if our status update got any likes and sending out tweets we've just got time to text "Hope u r gr8. C U soon. But we're not gr8 living like this. The only thing that's going to CU soon is a packet of anti-anxiety tablets, because being connected to work 24/7 is making us sick. Gleaning news stories from 140 twitter characters does not make us more informed, and many parents reading this have heard "why are you always on the phone?" come from the mouths of babes and then felt sick with guilt at the realisation that they've put the wires before the weans - again. Recently I was overseas and in another time zone. Nobody called me, and having turned off my data roam I wasn't "connected" for the first time in years. Leaving my phone in my room when I went out, I still nervously reached into my back pocket every 10 minutes. But then something happened. I remembered life before the iPhone, the joy of being in the moment, free from the distraction of a message alert. I looked up, not down to a screen and noticed buildings, nature and the blue expanse of sky. My mind wasn't racing ahead to the next thing I had to do. I was focused and I was present. How wonderful it was. iPhones have a place in the world. I'm not so stupid to think they don't serve a valuable purpose and I do enjoy instant access to information (and the stopwatch timer - handy when boiling eggs). I will still carry it, but I'm determined to create some boundaries around its use. I want to turn it off when I come home. I want to end the addiction and instead fill my time with things and people that really matter. I think ismart. Originally published as Technology has turned us into a zombie nation