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Technology is destroying real intimacy in our relationships says Paul Levy You know how it goes: you’re trying to talk to your grandchildren, but they’re constantly checking their beeping phones. ‘I’m listening . . . ’ they insist. Except you know only too well they’re not. At home, over dinner, you want to catch up with your husband, but he’s busy checking his emails on his iPad. He says ‘Yes’ every so often but, again, his attention is obviously elsewhere. Part of you wonders who is messaging him so often. You feel a pang of mistrust; maybe you don’t even kiss him goodnight. Then it occurs to you that you put an ‘X’ at the end of your text messages to each other more often than you kiss in real life. For many of us, this behaviour is slowly becoming the new normal. But it shouldn’t: because technology is destroying real intimacy in our relationships. I have been studying the digital world as a senior researcher at the University of Brighton since 1990, but it was six years ago when I started to notice myself spending too long on my smartphone: hours online at night and constantly responding to it in the day, even when surrounded by friends. I realised I was beginning to get addicted — and I wasn’t the only one. So, I began studying the effects of our virtual lives on our physical relationships, and have since spoken to hundreds of couples whose partnerships have been threatened by their addiction to technology. | 
