Suzanne Harrington: I've learned the hard way about zombie clicking on your phone
The phenomenon of the early-morning sign-up is costly and you just need to be awake at 5am with a phone in your hand
People always go on about drunk posting, waking up in a panicked sweat, heart pounding as you frantically scan your phone to see what damage you have done — not to anyone else, but to your own reputation as a human being.
Making a digital fool of yourself... maybe a dignity-melting stream of consciousness to an ex, a Karen-XL rant, or just posting something that makes you look mental... is all too often the result of getting your blood sugar alcohol ratio in a tizz, and triggering goblin mode. It’s the online equivalent of being found naked in Tesco. We’ve all done it.
Actually, I never have, but that’s only because I stopped drinking to blackout before social media became the giant brain-chewing behemoth it is today. Otherwise, such horror would be a regular feature, adding a whole extra layer of existential dread, coruscating anxiety, and the urge to crawl under a rock forever to the standard crippling hangover. Phew. Dodged a bullet there.
Yet what people do not go on about, in terms of out-of-hours phone damage, is the phenomenon of the early-morning sign-up. This is far more costly — maybe not to your mental health, but it tears chunks out of your wallet. The scary thing is you can’t blame any residual refreshments still working their way through your system: this is not about alcohol or any other substances.
You just need to be awake at 5am with a phone in your hand. I say awake. More like in that halfway place between sleep and consciousness where you are most susceptible — I’d go as far as to say vulnerable — to your phone’s power, its prompts and exhortations. Click, tap, download, sign up. Verify your password. Scan your eyeball. Ping! All done.
You might doze off again, only to find on awakening a bit later that you have joined a political party, booked a holiday, subscribed to both the and , zombie-clicked your way through the Sweaty Betty sale. Signed up to cycle 50km by Tuesday in aid of hedgehogs. All from under the duvet, eyes and brain still half shut.
I thought it was just me.
But no. Turns out I am not the only menopausal woman lying awake at 5am, head whirring like a fan, even as my pre-frontal cortex — the impulse control bit — lies next to me on the pillow disengaged, unplugged.
A friend who has never owned a dog in her life signs up to foster Romanian street dogs — the bitey ones — after scrolling through a sad reel pre-dawn. Another orders a hot tub on her credit card. Yet another signs up for a course, forgets about it, and later phones the bank complaining of fraud.
None of these women were drunk. And yes, they were all women. (Do men do this?)
So forget the shuddering doom of drunk posting — what you really want to be asking yourself is have you checked your PayPal recently? Is there a cooling-off period? A returns policy? A support group? Because we pre-dawn scrollers need it.
