THE latest developments in new technology always baffle me. This is where children come in handy. They taught me how to text, engage with Twitter and put music on my iPod. But while many of the new products they introduce me to enhance my life, others can be a curse.

When my eldest was home for the weekend recently, he updated my smartphone: “Look at this, Mum,” he pointed out. “You’ve now got a free app which counts every step you take.”

It seemed like a good idea at the time. When I checked, I was clocking up about 2,500 steps a day, which seemed like a respectable enough number to me.

But then 16-year-old Roscoe started investigating on Google and announced: “It says here that ‘a sedentary person may only average 1,000 to 3,000 steps a day’.”

“Sedentary? Me?” I shouted down from the top of the stairs after having run up and down them for the umpteenth time that day to put clean laundry away, bring down dirty washing, clean toilets and sinks and collect and dispose of rubbish.

Well that certainly upped the ante. Now I had to make sure I had my phone on my person at all times, even at home where I don’t get a signal, so that it could pick up my every move. From putting the milk back in the fridge to going to answer the phone and getting up to change the channel, it was all going to be on record from now on.

Feeling under constant scrutiny, I started to take my phone every time I went for a short run, which is about two or three times a week, too.

It turned out my app, which was beginning to feel like something out of George Orwell’s dystopian novel, 1984, can also track data for my heart rate, blood pressure, nutrition, respiratory rate, calories burned and sleep.

Before long I felt tagged like a convicted criminal, with my phone tracking my every waking moment. But I easily managed to up my steps to 5,000 a day: “That’s not bad, is it Roscoe?” I said.

He wasn’t so sure. “Have you seen this NHS ’10,000 steps challenge’?” he said, pointing to his laptop. It turns out health experts urge people to take at least 10,000 steps a day in order to maintain good health.

“It helps lower blood pressure and reduce the chance of a heart attack,” Roscoe told me, just after I had read out an article in the paper about new scientific research which shows mothers of sons are at greater risk of heart disease.

The Italian scientists, who tracked the health of more than 100,000 women for eight years, think this may be because sons are less likely to pull their weight at home by helping with housework. And they may also be more troublesome, putting their mother’s heart under extra strain, they claim.

Ignoring the possibility that he and his brothers could, perhaps, do more housework and be less troublesome, Roscoe helpfully suggested that there was only one thing for it – I would clearly have to do more steps.

As the mother of five boys, I should probably be aiming for about 50,000 a day. But at least getting up to an average of 10,000, the equivalent of walking about five miles, would be a start.

So every time I go to town, I now park on the outskirts and walk in and out. And when I take the boys to after-school clubs or football training, I walk instead of sitting in the car or driving to the supermarket while waiting for them to finish.

The step counter has become such a constant, nagging presence that, while waiting to collect Roscoe from his Saturday job serving teas at a National Trust site, I didn’t dare sit in the car when he told me he would be 15 minutes late.

Desperate for my guilt-inducing app’s approval, I walked up and down the 40 or so steps at the side of the building several times instead. Anyone watching must have thought I had lost my mind, but at least my step count went up.

There are times when I suffer withdrawal, such as when my phone is plugged in to charge. And, once, I did a walk of roughly 6,500 steps, but forgot to bring the phone with me, which was maddening.

I am walking much more now than I did, so this new app has got to be a good thing. But, increasingly enslaved by my desire to meet my daily target, I fear it also has the potential to slowly drive me insane…

AUTHOR Gervaise Phinn, who spoke at the Dales Festival of Food and Drink in Leyburn at the weekend, told how, on his way to London on the train, he heard a four-year-old loudly announce to the whole carriage: “I can see my dad’s erection in the window”. “Reflection. Reflection. He meant reflection,” said the red-faced dad.