HERE is a question many of us ask ourselves these days: is it time for a detox? I’m not referring to cutting out all known toxins (especially alcohol) and living on a diet of carrot and beetroot juice with the odd bowl of quinoa thrown in for roughage. No, it is a diet that affects hand, eye and mind - namely, a digital detox.

The very phrase implies an assumption that too much time spent on a digital device is inherently bad for you. And, by extension, bad for society. If true then we in the UK need to wake up to our digital addictions as a matter of urgency.

According to a study by the Communications regulator Ofcom, UK adults spend an average of eight hours and 41 minutes a day on media devices, compared with the average night’s sleep of eight hours and 21 minutes.

That means we indulge more in the unnatural dream of online surfing and internet content than our hard-wired mechanism for sanity: health-giving sleep cycles punctuated with dreams.

Of course, few of us can be smug on the number of digital units we consume a week. Bingeing on Twitter and Facebook has wasted precious hours of my own life. Time that could have been better spent on education, friends, family, exercise, walking in the country or reading a good book.

The problem is that the damn stuff is too addictive. Or the medium is somehow so enticing it lulls our collective critical faculties, much as watching TV is scientifically proven to slow down your heart and blink rate, inducing a numbing effect we call, perhaps euphemistically, relaxation.

Certainly online activities are inherently solitary, even if you are supposedly interacting with countless “friends” on Facebook. Maybe the issue is the quality of that interaction. A face-to-face chat with a physically present friend is naturally more stimulating and layered with nuances than a text exchange, however witty the texters.

York Press:

Going digital - but not everyone has access to broadband, says Tim Murgatroyd. Photo: Pixabay

But it is also the case that being online is simply essential for coping in the modern world. Think of how bills are paid, job vacancies discovered and applied for, bank accounts accessed, goods and services ordered. You can’t even claim Universal Credit without going online. And that is true of many crucial public services, one way or another, even if it just means using email. While a digital detox might seem desirable it would raise numerous practical difficulties in most people’s lives.

That brings us to another new phenomenon: digital deprivation.

Such a phrase may feel laughable in the face of the very real physical deprivation and poverty an increasing number of our citizens face in the UK. After all, lacking a home appears a more genuine cause for alarm than having no access to reliable broadband services. Yet, in reality, poverty, homelessness and digital deprivation are linked.

According to Ofcom figures for 2017, roughly 20 per cent of UK adults – one-fifth of the country – don’t have broadband access at home. And the statistics prove that it tends to be low-income households who suffer most from this problem.

The end result is not just a struggle to access the online services that smooth so many of our lives. A lack of access to the internet affects people’s ability to participate in all kinds of public debate, from keeping informed of the news to lobbying your MP or councillor.

In a world where public libraries and schools are increasingly underfunded due to the government’s policies, broadband access can also be crucial for the educational opportunities of children from low income families.

So I would like to make a radical suggestion. Maybe it is time we considered high-speed digital broadband access as a right for all citizens, whether they live in rural or urban areas. After all, if you wander round York city centre internet access comes free.

Not everything in life has to come with a profit margin, as (according to opinion polls) Britons are increasingly feeling about basic amenities like water, rail and power. Whether we choose as individuals to detox or not, digital deprivation is a power cut too far.