When Oh When Will My iPhone Make Coffee?

So my eldest came home the other day saying they had been discussing in the R.E. class whether or not it was possible to live without a Smart Phone. Fortunately the general consensus among her peers was that yes... it was quite possible, people had lived without them for 100s of years. I enthusiastically joined the debate assuring her that the Smart Phone itself didn't really create anything new (apart from Candy Crush which isn't necessarily a good thing) but was a good tool to help get things done efficiently. It's not like I'm reliant on it to get my morning coffee or anything....

As she walked out of the kitchen secure in the knowledge of her mother's continued survival in the event of a cellular armageddon I realised I had told a a Big, Fat, Whopping Lie and let's hope she doesn't read this. OK it is true to say that the smart phone is just a tool - the apps of which can be replaced by old school technology. I can carry a paper diary, a camera, a notepad, a calculator, a video recorder while I am walking to my bank to transfer some money before dragging the 4 kids to Tescos for a fun afternoon - stopping at a payphone en route to call my partner to say I may be late for dinner - about 4 hours late at this rate...

The efficiency and convenience of having all these things at our finger tips allows me to enjoy a quality of life and fit everything in that I need to do. Since the Tesco app hit my screen what was once a Saturday afternoon's nightmare has now turned into a quick 10 minute scroll through my favourites while sitting in the car waiting for the kids to finish ballet. I can book cinema tickets, trains, summer holidays even; I can keep in touch with all my friends, search for houses, play chess. For goodness sake it even works as a torch and don't get me started on temporary child entertainment with the ever popular Minion Rush - or educational Toddler Maths. And I can train it to scream at me to remind me to do all the things I need to do to get everyone safely through from sunrise to sunset. 

Now what I do with that time it has created is another matter and there is no hard and fast rule about where it goes. But without it I certainly could not do the job I do and be the Mum I want to be. 

So sweetheart in all honesty while the world would survive, your mother has serious doubts she would survive with her sanity intact. I love my Smart Phone, it is not the nemesis that competes with family life but the friend that gives me the time to have that lounge disco on a Saturday afternoon with the kids.  

All I need to do now is work out how to get it to actually make that skinny, double shot latte....