How addicted are we to our phones? Some of us are going to rehab

Marios's phone pings and lights up. He's just received a WhatsApp message from me asking for an initial chat about this story. He wants to answer straightaway. The urge, he later tells me, feels overpowering. However, he's currently in the middle of a therapy session about his phone addiction. He can't answer it now. He holds his nerve. But as soon as the meeting finishes, he's back on his phone and an hour later, we meet on a video call. "I'm so sorry," I say. "The last thing I wanted to do was disturb your session." "Don't worry," Marios sighs. "This is the feeling I've had for many years: this uncontrollable need to be on my phone. "It's like carrying around your own drug dealer. "My drug is always in my pocket, flashing, beeping me and reminding me to take a dose." On a bad day, Marios, a personal trainer from north London, can spend more than 14 hours staring at his screen (Instagram, he says, is the killer for him). But now, he is trying a 12-session course of private therapy to try to curb this compulsion, which he believes is driven by loneliness. One look at my screen time statistics tells me I checked my phone 116 times yesterday. I also spent over three hours gawping at

Jun 28, 2026 → Jun 28, 2026