Mobile technology is a wonderful invention. It allows us to keep in touch with work colleagues, friends and family wherever we happen to be and at whatever time of the day. The likes of iphones, email and social networking internet sites allow us to communicate with people we might otherwise not hear from and aid us in our business lives. They keep us in the loop - enabling us to be “out there” even when we’re tucked up bed.

But therein lies an increasingly serious problem: The fast expanding virtual world of Twitter, text messaging, video clips and music downloads can, and do, get in the way of our real-life relationships and leisure pursuits.

The easy accessibility and addictiveness of Facebook, ipods et al has turned many people’s attention away from face-to-face relationships and into cyberspace.

Professor Nada Kakabadse from Northampton University, who last year carried out study of mobile technology use, was quoted this week as saying: “From my research, you’d be surprised how many people had their BlackBerry next to their beds. They would pick up messages two or three times a night.”

She added: “It certainly created friction in some of the relationships of the people I spoke to. In some cases it led to divorce when one partner felt the other wasn’t paying enough attention to normal human interaction.”

The late Princess Diana famously said there were “three people in this marriage”: these days, an interloper is as likely to be Twitter as another man or woman.

Because of the instant nature of mobile technology and the opportunity it provides to send one-line messages to people, it can be hard to resist. A friend of mine is hooked on the Facebook game Bejewelled Blitz because each turn takes just one minute. The problem is, as she ruefully admits, one minute leads to many more minutes and even hours.

While you’re interacting in cyberspace, even in a cursory way, you can’t be giving your full attention to the person sitting across the dinner table or cuddling up to you between the sheets. And this can damage and demean flesh-and-blood relationships. No one wants to feel less important than a friend or colleague who’s floating somewhere in the ether!

IT gadgetry is clever and beguiling, but it cannot replace the touch of a hand, a sympathetic smile or a deep conversation.

Today’s world relies on mobile technology as never before, but if we want our friendships, family ties and romantic relationships to thrive in the same way, we have to nurture them. And that means learning to log off, close down and press the “off” button.