Joyce Fegan: Phonesick? Individual abstinence alone is not the solution

"One study from Carnegie Mellon University that Hari cites in his new book found that we have lost about 20% of our brain power because of our online living"

The human brain evolved from thousands of years of us living in small, multi-generational family groups. We talked more, touched more, held eye contact more, all of which fed the brain in a 'rich way'. File Picture: iStock

Seven years ago I wrote an article for this newspaper about the experience of getting offline for a week — looking at why we were spending so much time online in the first place.

Instagram had been around for just five years, the iPhone was around for just over eight, and all-you-can-eat data wasn’t really a thing — you absolutely needed wi-fi to get online, unless you wanted to incur a massive phone bill every month.