Could you last a day without your smartphone and its apps?

EVEN MY mum is hooked. The last time I visited, she refused to go offline. “I’ll just finish this game of bridge, if you don’t mind,” she said grinning, propping her iPad on the kitchen table for a quick game over dinner before heading out to play it IRL (In Real Life). I read a book on my tablet and we ate our stir fried chicken in a contented silence.

‘It’s almost absurd the extent to which we’re using our devices, says creative director of the Miss Ali Stage School, Alison Vard Miller. Earlier this year, she directed a play The Apps of Life about a Dublin family consumed by technology. Vard Miller is passionate about educating children to switch off occasionally.

“The play just reflects back to the audience what we do daily. Children are so hung up on Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat, and it’s a real problem. I want them to re-connect with each other.”

According to the 2014 Thinkhouse Irish Mobile Youth Report, 90% of young Irish people (aged 15-35 years) check their phones when they wake up, and almost half spent between two to four hours on their phone per day.

How long does the average 16-35 year old spend on social media every day? #SMDay pic.twitter.com/ckE42EDFuG

— THINKHOUSE (@ThinkhouseIE) June 30, 2015

My personal daily app use begins and ends in bed. Upon being woken by the alarm app, I check my email and a selection of news apps, and switch on the Today FM app while getting ready for work. Listening to traffic and dreary weather reports from home ( I live in London) do everything to quell a bout of homesickness.

A quick hayfever app check, and I set off for work.

Grey squirrels skitter over headstones in the graveyard on the way to the Tube station as I squash my earphones in, tap on Spotify Premium (€9.99 per month for unlimited downloads), and realise that once again it’ll be Roxette’s Greatest Hits, as I’ve forgotten to download any new music.

At lunchtime, I order a wedding present on Not On The High Street, a card on MoonPig, and search for Michelle Keegan’s honeymoon broderie anglaise skirt on ASOS. Listening to Taylor Swift on YouTube on the way to the shop, I notice my YouTube history includes ‘How to Poach an Egg’ (for a romantic breakfast) as well as the more mundane ‘How to Fix a Leaky Tap’ and ‘How to Connect an iPad to a Printer’.

Seriously, how did we find out this stuff before YouTube? Calls home to parents?

After work, I grab a coffee at Starbucks using phone to ‘Shake to Pay’ before attending a writing group at Piccadilly. Transferring overheard conversations and observations from the Yellow Notes app, I open Werdsmith (a writing app that gives you the all-important word count), and set the Timer app for a word race with myself. Dictamus (dictaphone) is also invaluable for after-work interviews.

Using CityMapper (a can’t-live-without London navigation app which can also be used in Paris and Berlin) to get home, I prop my iPad on top of the microwave to listen to the New Yorker Short Story podcast and RTÉ’s Doc on One while ironing, and eat dinner while tweeting a humorous picture of a quirky hedge I spotted earlier, cut into the shape of an elephant.

With more hot weather predicted in London, I use Around Me to find the best rooftop cocktail bars in my locality. During a brief powercut, I flick on Flashlight (torch), a battery-depleting app that was surprisingly handy on a recent camping trip, and also works well for making shadow puppets when babysitting.

“For an app to be successful, it has to be useful and has to offer a service, and the user has to come back to it regularly,” says Stephen Conmy, co-founder of The Appys, the annual Irish app awards which celebrate the best apps and developers in Ireland.

According to the Thinkhouse survey, while most young Irish people have up to 20 apps downloaded, they usually look at less than 10 daily.

Indeed, some dejected apps loiter on the third page of my home screen. Scrabble, Doodle Jump, and Commodore 64 classic Boulder Dash were all good friends while I was studying, and the Roma Pasta app had to go to make space for others, despite its handy (used once) spaghetti portion-measurement tool.

Despite early promise, my two-year subscription to Netflix has yielded little more than a fully-stocked ‘My List’ of unwatched shows. Although the €9 per month subscription fee over the last two years was worth it for Big Business, Beaches, and a handful of inspirational Ted Talks.

But these are just my choices. A straw poll of friends and family’s app choices was curiously revealing.

A banker had Transferwise (cheap money transfers between banks) and Daft (property), a doctor had Read (medical journal updates) and Wanderlist (work task organiser), a teacher had Pinterest and Book Creator, and an academic had Duolingo (learn languages through games). How telling is it that I’ve just downloaded Spendometer (an online spending tracker tool)?

“The app industry is without doubt the fastest-growing publishing sector in the history of human kind. It is phenomenal,” says Conmy.

Last year, The Appys winners included the Paddy Power iPad, the Official Wild Atlantic Way, and Official Domino’s Pizza apps. With over 50bn iPhone and android apps being downloaded per year, there’s no better time for good quality, Irish-developed apps to take a share of the market.

“The apps produced for Irish companies, like banking apps, are right up there with international apps, and there are great tourism and fast food apps. There are very, very talented app developers coming out of Irish universities,” says Conmy.

At the end of a long day, I settle into bed, concerned I’m developing a double-chin from a constant screen-ward gaze. If I’m being organised, I’ll have checked my weather app before I get my clothes ready for work the next day.

Turning off the light, I use my phone to have a quick browse through the highly-addictive Mumsnet Talk app, where the Relationships forum is a soap opera of cheating spouses, dysfunctional parents and internet dating stories. A Whatsapp message whooshes in around 12 midnight and I spend the next hour chatting to a friend at home.

Next download? ‘Checky’, an app that monitors how many times you look at your phone in a day. No, you don’t want to know.