Does your phone tell you off? – Zella Compton

My phone is judging me. And it’s annoying. I love the notion that I have more computing power at my beck and call than when men went to the moon in the 1960s.But I don’t often use it, so I wasn’t aware it was spying on me, collecting data.
Zella's mobile phone has been spying on her.Zella's mobile phone has been spying on her.
Zella's mobile phone has been spying on her.

And that data is about my health.

Cheeky thing – it thinks that it knows everything about me, and how far I move each day – or how far I don’t.

The problem is though, that my phone isn’t always in my pocket.

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A lot of the time, annoyingly to my children, I leave it on the kitchen counter when I walk the dog, or go to the shops, or faff around the house, unless I am making a phone call.

But it carries on anyway, counting non-steps as if it knows all about me and according to my technology, I am a couch potato.

I could build a huge metaphor for Brexit here – something about not having all the facts and yet making pronouncements without even a glimmer of understanding of what’s going on.

But I think we’ve all had enough of the disarray that the country’s fallen into given the debacle that is our MPs scrabbling to fight for party power and trying to decipher what leave means as it simply bares no relationship whatsoever to the big red bus which inspired so many.

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Suffice to say, my phone is operating without full knowledge.

It’s unable to comprehend it’s left behind and is making the assumption I carry it with me at all times. But how annoying is that?

To find out, after I’ve walked the dog three miles, cycled to work, cycled home and been out of an evening, that my phone is castigating me in code for only taking 1,000 steps.

It’s the worst type of personal trainer ever. And even if I was interested in impressing it, I don’t want to take it everywhere with me as I rather like ignoring the world.

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I don’t want to be like Pavlov’s dogs, reacting to every notification from email, texts and Whatsapp. Instead I’ll amuse myself by judging my phone right back: nonsensical.

It’s small, pretty and shiny, but it’s destroying the planet

There’s a movement gaining steam to ban plastic glitter from supermarket shelves and from being used in products.

Apparently, supermarkets take such a long time to change their practices as they order two years in advance. I can believe this but also find it extraordinary that two years ago, someone in ASDA decided to wrap all tomatoes and apples in plastic given that they must know of plastic’s environmental impacts?

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Glitter’s small, gets everywhere and is pretty, so not necessarily the first thing you think of when it comes to saving the world. But come on, take one step at a time and start with eradicating this toddler-wielded menace before it’s finally too late.

We no longer have to live up to ridiculous beauty ideals

I was outraged to see an advert for Gillette’s Venus razors showing a female shaving her arms.

Surely this is encouraging a whole new rash of self-conscious women?

They will be destined forever to be stuck in the cycle of shaving, again and again, because of some perverse ideal of beauty propagated by the media and a razor company’s profits.

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Don’t encourage women to shave their arms. Not, at least, until men shave their full bodies.

If you’re a father, brother, uncle, son, or cousin, go tell the women you love that body hair is a beautiful part of life. And if you’re a woman don’t let this subtle, underbelly, nefarious advertising ruin your life.

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