My phone buzzes a lot. It lights up and grabs my attention during meetings, when I’m falling asleep and when I’m walking the dog. It just flashed while I was writing that sentence. But normally, it’s not interrupting my day with friends wanting to see me, or with declarations of love from a suitor (OK, never), or even with work emails. These alerts are not even from a person – they are increasingly from apps.

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When I first got a smartphone, I didn’t realise how useful these could be. I had the basics – email, some social media accounts and a version of the old Nokia game Snake for boring bus journeys. It took me a stupidly long time to realise that my life could be easier and more organised if I utilised some of these apps. So I got a running one, and it timed all my outings and I liked that. I got an app that told me when buses were coming, and that was just great for when I left the office at night. I downloaded a zillion podcasts (currently all about the US presidential election), and browsed Reddit far too much. Recently, I’ve been lifting weights, and guess what? There’s an app for that. I want to speak proficient enough Italian so that I can ask for a coffee to take away without gesturing to the road and being laughed at, so I got a language guide. From there, it was an open door: eBay, Spotify, Uber, dating apps and even (and I am not proud of this) Bitmoji.

For the most part, I emphatically declined their pleas to send me push notifications, or know my location. I was smart, I wouldn’t let these apps be the boss of me. And yet, the alerts come, day and night. In the past week, I received a passive-aggressive message from the language app telling me that it would no longer bother telling me I haven’t been practising my Italian, since it obviously wasn’t working. Then there was a mournful message that arrived during a meeting from the running one, which genuinely said: “If you’re working out with someone else, it’s OK, just log it with us too”, which made me feel like I was being unfaithful, instead of just running in the gym most days.

I get messages from the dating app, which tell me that matches are about to expire, and they don’t seem to care that it’s 2am; I might be losing out on true love and I’d better buck up. I eventually deleted a meditation app that was asking if I was feeling stressed, because yes, of course I am – now.

Even the programmes already installed on your phone don’t let you be. If you have an iPhone, you’ll have a health app. It tells you how many steps you’ve walked a day. I am now locked in a competitive walking ritual with myself. Under 10,000? My muscles will atrophy!

The problem with these programs, (and, yes, I’m aware that I use the word “problem” lightly – world news is over there) is that they rarely make you feel fantastic about yourself. For every run that your fitness app gives you a virtual high five for, there will be many other occasions when you haven’t worked out and you’ll see that little widget glinting at you, reminding you of your failure. You might’ve been ill, or depressed, or busy working on a brilliant new project – the app doesn’t care.

When there are so many things in life to make you feel guilty or disappointed in yourself, to have extra ones feels absurd – especially since I invited them in. It sometimes feels like groundhog day – for ever the second week of January, when you’ve given up on your resolutions and hate yourself.

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The other big drawback to these helpful widgets is that they can encourage obsessional behaviour. One stretching app I downloaded showed my progress day by day – if I skipped a session, my improvement markers reset to zero. It was incredibly disheartening. And I mentioned that I might feel mildly inadequate if I don’t hit 10,000 steps, but other people have written at length about how they find themselves enslaved by the number – marching up and down the stairs at midnight, just to hit that target. Is that the kind of activity you imagined that you’d be engaged in when you decided to download an app to help you get fit?

Modern technology helps us in so many incredible ways that it would be churlish to complain too severely about apps that can enhance or simplify our lives. But perhaps the companies that design them should have a think about how they want to make us feel. Nagging guilt trips and passive-aggressive notifications are not conventional sales techniques. From now on, I’ll be more cautious when I download these little widgets. My success or failure in finding true love, or finally learning how to do a handstand might well be helped along by my smartphone, but none of us should measure our progress in life by it. If I really want to feel guilty, I can always phone my mother.