Saturday
We are sitting down to dinner, all four of us, something that only happens a few times a week. My 13-year-old son Harry has his headphones on and is giggling at a YouTube video on his phone, occasionally getting cables caught up in his fork. My 16-year-old daughter Laurie is also multitasking as she eats, scrolling through memes on Instagram and getting flecks of fish curry on her screen.
This is no way to eat a meal.
My wife and I once tried restricting mobile phone use. We turned off the wifi at night, but my children used their phones in bed and ate through their data allowance in a couple of days. Looking at my family, though, it’s obvious we need to address the situation again. This time, we’ll do it using the “contract” about family phone usage that Tesco Mobile has devised with family tech expert Andy Robertson.
“Right,” I announce, in my best Victorian Father voice. “The entire family is going to reduce its reliance on mobiles.”
After much mocking laughter, we eventually agree on some basic rules. No phones at the dinner table. We will try to limit our mobile phone use. The children won’t accept friend requests from – or talk online to – anyone they don’t know. And this time, to avoid nocturnal data problems, everyone will leave their phone in another room when it comes to bedtime.
Sunday
Sitting on the sofa, I realise that I am baffled by what my children really do while pretending to watch their favourite TV shows.
“What are you actually looking at?” I ask my daughter, whose face is glued to her phone.
“Just … stuff. Instagram. Tumblr. WhatsApp. I can’t actually watch TV on its own. I have to have something else to do.”
“This,” says my wife, “is why I used to smoke.”
To distract our children from their phones, we play board games for the evening. It actually works – although, after an hour of hilarity and excitement, the game descends into rage, bitterness and tantrums.
Monday
We are on holiday abroad. Within minutes of stopping at a restaurant or museum, the children have worked out the wifi password and are busy scrolling through Instagram and watching YouTube videos.
So we pledge to completely avoid phone use when out and about. For a couple of hours, this is great – they engage with the sights, photograph buildings, ask questions and patiently listen as I bluff my answers. And then we get hopelessly lost and end up having to resort to Google Maps to navigate our way around the city.
Tuesday
It is evening in the holiday apartment, and we play cards. As the only games we can actually play are Snap and Go Fish, we try to learn the rules to poker. Of course, we have to look them up online, on our phones, and have to repeatedly check back on whether a flush beats a straight.
Wednesday
We continue our lengthy poker session. My wife and I are surprised when my son clarifies some of the more arcane rules and then explains, in great detail, how to play a variant of poker called Texas hold ‘em. It turns out that he has been playing a Texas hold ‘em app on his phone for much of the day. We have unwittingly created a gambling expert.
Thursday
Thanks to this experiment making me engage with my children’s phone usage far more, I realise that I now know what my children actually do on their phones. My son plays ridiculous shoot-em-up games, discovers obscure music on Spotify and YouTube, and watches endless drumming tutorials. He is also adept at quickly looking up information to use as ammunition in an argument, making him invariably right about all sorts of things.
My daughter is scrolling through endless memes on social media and watching episodes of John Oliver and Trevor Noah; giggling at comedy videos about history; or playing logic puzzles or quizzes on the Sporcle website.
During our holiday she read an entire playscript in German on her phone. Frankly, this is a relief. My wife and I have long lived in fear that dark forces on the internet could be preying on her, so we’re far happier with the German theatre discovery.
Friday
The week is now over. Cutting down on phone use has not been easy. You realise how reliant we are on them for things such as maps and basic information.
But I’ve realised something: there’s no problem with this. The problem is the kind of listless, passive reliance on your mobile for the sake of it. Restricting phone use actually reminds you that the internet is quite amazing. You could be learning Italian on Duolingo, teaching yourself how to change the oil in your car using an online tutorial, reading thousands of academic papers, or watching countless arts documentaries.
I pick up my phone, flick through social media and consider getting into a furious political argument with someone on Twitter. Instead, I put the phone away and start reading a book. I should do this more often.
Photography: Laura McCluskey for The Guardian
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