Smartphones and sex are bad bed partners. Durex wants people to have more sex. It is exquisitely ironic that the solution to the problem of mobile phones interfering with people’s sex lives is a mobile phone app.

The climax of Durex’s Connect campaign, to help couples boost their sex lives, is a smartphone app that synchronises couple’s phones so that they sleep together. Why is obvious.

The app is being launched in time for Earth Hour. Which is clever.

The app follows the launch of a viral video in which people respond to the idea that the solution to sex problems is simply using the off button. The video had 30, 801, 277 YouTube views between March 11 and 25. Apparently, there is interest in the problem.

Considering that 30% of people admitted to answering their phone during sex in the study Durex conducted through Durham University that ignited the campaign, the solution should not be surprising.

Admittedly, it was not a huge study. 30% or particpants equals 10 people. Here are the key findings nonetheless and for your amusement:

• Participants expressed frustration when partners spent time on smartphone apps when together, often lying in bed messaging other people while ignoring each other
• Participants felt that smartphones encroached onto sexual activity, with 12 of the 30 having delayed sex because of technology use
• Some participants reported hurrying sexual activity in order to respond to messages on smartphone
• 10 participants had answered their phone during sex
• Participants expressed worry about privacy related to sexual texts and pictures

Here’s why phones are useful to relationships:

“We met and had sex obviously, but we kept in touch by text and emails and that kind of built the foundation of our relationship.”

“I don’t know what older people used to speak about, they didn’t know what was going on in other peoples’ lives. There is only so much you can talk to about with somebody you see everyday – these sites give us talking points.”

And here are some other ways they are not:

• Smartphones had been used as a way of facilitating cheating by partners of three participants.
• Four participants spoke of tracking their partners’ activities through monitoring their use of social networking sites, apps and their texts.