Techno Britain forgets how to remember

More than a quarter of the UK population cannot remember their spouse's phone number[1], a survey commissioned by Protect Your Bubble.com reports today.

What happens in an emergency if your bag has been lost or stolen? Most people would reach for their mobile ... but if it's gone and you need to use a public phone, who would you call? Whose phone number can you remember off the top of your head?

Stephen Ebbett from Protectyourbubble.com comments: "As a nation, we've become increasingly reliant on gadgets, particularly our mobile phones and it seems the cleverer our technology becomes, the less we use our minds. We rely on our phones for storing our telephone numbers - which is great until we lose them.

"When something goes wrong, we instinctively want to call our nearest and dearest for help, but without our phones, these days, we're lucky if we can remember any numbers to call! We found that men were slightly better at remembering their spouse's telephone number than women, 56% versus 54% respectively. But interestingly, both men and women were better at remembering their parent's telephone number than their spouse's (65% men and 70% women). This is probably because they've known it for longer."

Protect Your Bubble offers some simple tips to help you recall important telephone numbers:

1. say them out aloud several times 2. try grouping the numbers e.g. 8461 becomes eighty-four, sixty-one 3. look for patterns in the number sequence e.g. 6912 could be multiples of three, so it becomes 6 - 9 - 12 4. look for patterns on the keyboard e.g. 1379 are the four corners of the keypad.

For peace of mind and cover against accidental damage, breakdown and optional theft and loss Protect Your Bubble provides gadget insurance for mobile phones as well as many other gadgets. The insurance provides worldwide cover for theft (optional) accidental damage and breakdown on all insured gadgets plus accidental loss cover mobile phones and other gadgets except loss for laptops, MacBooks, desktop PCs or PC monitors 

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Notes to Editors

Research conducted amongst 501 UK adults by Aurora Market Research (May 2009)

[1] Based on those who have a partner, husband or wife