As we finally emerge from the food coma of the Christmas blowout, our attention turns to New Year’s resolutions – and how to keep them. Usually they’re the stuff of tea-towel slogans: eat less, exercise more, be kinder to your mother, be kinder to his mother. But increasingly, added to the list is a very zeitgeist-y acknowledgement of our addiction to technology: less absence, more presence.

If you’re going to attempt a digital detox, it has to be set up for success, not failure

On this point, even King Charles joined the chorus in his Christmas address, urging us to prise ourselves away from our phones and attempt a digital detox for the sake of our wellbeing.

You don’t have to love the monarchy to agree. Swathes of research suggest that excessive use of phones and other electronic devices is linked to anxiety, depression, stress, sleep problems and countless other ills of our 24-hour culture.

Not that this is a particular revelation. For, smuggery and back-slapping alert, I’ve been doing regular and sustained log outs for decades. In fact, I couldn’t manage without a digital (and before that, analogue) detox. As an observant(ish) Jew, every week I surrender all gadgets for 25 hours over the........

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