When Alexander Graham Bell was granted a patent for the telephone on March 7, 1876, he was not to know how dependent we would become on them.

Had he time-travelled to the 21st century, I wonder what he would have made of a world populated by people who are, literally, glued to their phones.

I wonder, also, whether the American engineer Martin Cooper, who invented the world’s first hand-held mobile phone in 1973, foresaw how the gadget would take over our lives.

The average adult looks at their mobile every 12 minutes and six in ten could not live without them, according to research by the communications regulator Ofcom.

What would Graham Bell make of that?

It is a far cry, even, from the days of my youth. When my youngest daughter was recently being left distraught after her phone broke, I attempted to appease her with tales of how it was for us, at her age.

Like every home, we had a clunky grey plastic phone with a circular dial. There was no fast tapping in of numbers. You stuck your finger in and waited for the dial to rotate. The higher the number, the longer it took. It always puzzled me as to why the emergency services used 999, when by far the fastest option was 111.

Phones were often in living rooms, offering little or no privacy, no matter how sensitive the topic of conversation. Our phone was on the windowsill next to the dinner table. When I was a teenager my friends would regularly ring in the early evening, causing my dad to huff and puff before reluctantly answering it. He knew it would be for me.

I then had to awkwardly chat, or - more often - tell whoever it was to call back later.

I was quite lucky, in that my dad worked from home, so we had a second phone in his office. But on the down side, he was regularly on the phone, so we could not make calls.

For many years we were on a ‘party line’- a misnomer, as there was no fun in sharing a line with others. It enabled you listen in to the conversations of strangers, which we kids often did.

Telephone numbers were far simpler in those days. Our number was Wainstones (the name of the hill behind our house) 526. My best friend Wendy’s number was Wainstones 227.

In years to come, Wainstones was dropped in favour of the nearby market town Stokesley, with a new six digit number. Now it falls under Middlesbrough.

Teenagers nowadays don’t know how lucky they are to have mobile phones. I always had to ask my parents if I could use the house phone. In fact, I still do, whenever I am there.

If, after school, or a night out, my friends and I wanted a lift home, we had to find a phone box. And as a student, I had to queue to use one of just three phones in a cramped space under the stairs in our hall of residence, to keep in touch with my family.

Young people have personal phones on tap, 24 hours a day. That is why they are so reliant upon them. Had they grown in my generation, and been part of a world without them, they would be more blasé about them and not see them as an extension of their bodies.

They are great for personal safety, and a reassuring presence, but phone dependency has got out of hand.

We can't relinquish them for a moment, not even in the theatre. And people still use them while driving, despite the ban.

Unless you’re on Death Row and waiting for a reprieve, no-one needs to check their phone every few minutes.