I’VE been a very vocal critic of how addictive phones are for a while now. But if this lockdown has taught me anything, it’s that I’d be lost without mine.

I got my first smartphone back in 2009 I think. I held it in my hand and felt the weight of it – in my mind it was so heavy because of the weight of information it held within it that I could access at any time. The entire history of human civilisation catalogued and searchable through Google. I could find out anything I wanted.

That time me and my pals sat up into the early hours of the morning trying to remember who starred alongside Danny Dyer in the 2007 film “Outlaw” when none of us had a smartphone or a computer handy? That’d never happen again. If I wanted to now, I could slink off to the toilet and find out using my phone, return to the living room and say with confidence – “It was Sean Bean” – to much acclaim from my pals, thinking of me as some kind of oracle on film.

But after a year or so of being transfixed by my phone, spending a disgusting amount of time scrolling through social media, playing games and looking up trivial information, I became disillusioned with it. This thing, this wee device, had taken over my life. That’s when the memes people tend to laugh at now started to do the rounds. Drawings of people handcuffed to their phones, their faces and bodies being sucked into the screen, even giant phones with whips herding people like sheep. They’d be tragic if they weren’t so ridiculously funny.

But there is a wee nugget of truth in these daft drawings. While sitting on my phone laughing at people who moan about being addicted to theirs, I’d find myself having completely zoned out from a social situation, my pals or my family having moved on the conversation and now I had no idea what they were talking about. I’d find myself near enough twitching at work when I had to go on the shop floor and leave my phone in the staff room. “What if I miss something good online?” I’d think while serving customers. “What if someone important is trying to get a hold of me?”

I started to flout the rules and would sneak the phone out onto the shop floor with me. Hiding in the stock room behind mountains of shoe boxes scrolling through Twitter. But then I got caught. Then caught again. And again. Until the boss decided to start checking my pockets before I started my shifts. That was the end of that.

My pal, however, had an ingenious solution to this. He was the same as me, his brain every bit as addled by his phone as mine was, and he was forever getting caught on his when he should have been serving customers. He devised a plan though. So cunning and deceitful the devil himself would have been proud of it. He’d wear a pair of shorts under his work trousers then he cut a slit big enough to pass his phone through in the pocket of the trousers. When the boss asked him to empty his pockets, he could do so with confidence, turning them out like a cartoon character demonstrating how skint they are. The boss would eye him suspiciously but could do no more. It was class.

Before lockdown, I’d moan constantly about how I felt permanently tethered to my phone. “I cannae put this hing doon,” I’d say to my girlfriend, snapping back to reality after going all glassy-eyed while playing some daft game. Taking “a wee break” from writing to check my emails then seeing the time, imagining only five minutes had passed when in reality it was close to an hour and I was reading the top five wildest conspiracy theories about bees or something.

But now I can’t help but think I’d be lost without the thing. How would I get through the boredom and loneliness without a wee video call from my mate? Without being able to send my maw pictures of the dug? Without being able to write down ideas for things I’m writing while I’m out for my government-sanctioned daily walk? (I could obviously take a notebook and pen to do this but I don’t want to look like an amateur detective or something.)

I suppose all this has taught to me have a healthier relationship with my phone. It’s not the evil, life-sucking computer I thought it was. It’s not there to ruin my productivity and steal all my time – it’s there to help me with work, stay in touch with my family and pals and generally make my life easier. Never thought I’d say this, but phones are actually class so it’s time to find something else to moan about.