PUT down that mobile phone and pay attention! Who, me? Alas, I‘m too engrossed. I haven’t spoken to human in weeks. I’m too busy tweeting about my whirlwind life to hundreds of strangers. When I’m not doing that, I’m checking my Facebook. Perhaps somebody out there likes me as much as I do?

At the click of a button I can take on the world. On my phone I can record the number of footsteps from my charger to my toilet. While I’m there, I can chart my bowel movements. When I’ve finished that I can check what the weather’s like. Without once having to look out of the window. Sometimes I’ll be so entranced with my phone that I will completely forget where I’m walking, and bang into someone. Why bother looking up? Soon the entire human race will curve at the shoulders, bent by hours wasted, hunched over phones.

Everywhere I look, everyone is tapping away. Without technology like this we might crack up. We might succumb to desperate measures, like talking to each other. When our phones got smart, we got stupid.

When my phone got smart I became celebrity obsessed as never before. I can’t even get to the breakfast table now without clicking through to see what Harry Styles is wearing. I willingly allow garbage to be beamed into my superfast, twitching hands.

When my phone got smart I became self-obsessed as never before.

Remember when vanity was something you’d be ashamed of? Now it’s encouraged. Take the “selfie”. In an instant you can snap a picture of yourself and “share” it with the world. Then you can panic when no-one pays the slightest attention.

The “selfie” is like a spoilt child shouting “look at me!” I’m not saying it’s wrong. But look how quickly it’s become acceptable to walk around in public snapping pictures of yourself. 20 years ago people would have thought you’d gone mad. Now they’re at it too. It’s even in the name of today’s most popular brand, the iPhone. I Phone, I this, I that – the modern day equivalent of me, me, me.

You can invest in a “selfie stick”. This is a long stick which you clip your phone on to so that you can take photos of yourself from further away. Imagine tourists walking around a museum full of priceless artefacts, randomly waving hundreds of sticks around? You wouldn’t allow it.

Yet I saw this happen at the Louvre a few weeks ago – masses of sticks slashing around the Mona Lisa. In this century of self obsession pictures of the Mona Lisa are worthless,-unless I’m in them too.

It’s the modern way – clinging on to my mobile phone as thought it’s a life support machine. Is it only a matter of time before someone comes along and switches it off?