“Why would I need a book to go on a Digital Detox?” Instinctively we know that those around us spend too much time in front of a screen, and we might even try the occasional evening/day/weekend off. You may even notice that everyone feels better for it. But most of us don’t go [...]

I was asked this question on Twitter recently, and it’s a really tricky one: “I use my phone a lot for work so it is v hard to switch off – any tips?” A lot of us find ourselves in this position, it could be that your work spans multiple timezones, that you work [...]

During a book signing recently, I found myself in conversation with several parents who were in the process of buying a smartphone for their eleven/twelve year olds for the very first time, none of whom were particularly comfortable with it, but most who saw it as a necessity rather than an [...]

School holidays bring dramatic change in most households, and we’re no exception. One of the things that changes is the number of people available to cover our Church rota, and so it transpired that I was asked to lead the evening service last night at ECB – and our ministry team [...]

We’ve been taking a day off from gadgets and the internet for well over three years now – that means no smartphones, not internet, no computers and (mostly) no streaming or gaming for the whole family. There are six of us – seven if you count the dog.  Myself, my wife Caroline and [...]

We were very lucky to get invited to appear on BBC Sunday Live last week, and excited to share our three year experience of giving up gadgets for one day a week – but that paled into insignificance next to the whole Chris Pratt experience that awaited us at the studio. Chris Pratt is the [...]

This Sunday was surreal for us – it’s hard to imagine a more exciting and unusual day than heading into London with whole family to appear on the BBC and talk about social media and taking a break from the tech.  We were up at 5am, excited to meet Sean and Emma, then drove into […]

It has been a crazy couple of weeks for us. When I wrote Digitox, I hoped to help a few other families break their internet addictions and get closer together – I wasn’t really prepared for some of the amazing things that have happened to us, and the kind reception the book is [...]

  You’d think that in the UK we have weather forecasting down to a fine art – after all we spend so much time discussing it and every TV channel offers frequent updates. Not only that, but I have no less than four weather apps on my phone which I love to check – the best [...]

Ben (our eldest) is not going to love me for this blog – but we all had a great laugh at his expense last week when he looked at a house next to a ‘Pokestop’ and said “I bet they love living there”. Some context – we’d been for an early evening dog walk [...]

Some Sundays are tougher than others – but usually it’s one of the children that has their ‘moment’. This weekend it was me. It should have been easy, we had friends over for a BBQ as our eldest son turns 18 this week and we thought we’d gather a few people and [...]

It was Caroline’s birthday on Sunday – which should provide a little less strain on tech consumption, but still throws up it’s fair share of technological pitfalls. We all spent a late night watching Eurovision (phones safely away so we laughed with each other, rather than [...]

We had an unexpected break in the weather last week, and with our two eldest children (Ben and Gabe) away at scout camp, we decided to take the younger two (Jessica and Noah) for a long walk somewhere new. My Wife (Caroline) is a graphic designer, and is currently putting together a series of [...]

This article was first published on my CultureTransform blog on 13th May 2014 Like 35 million other people, the YouTube video “Look Up” struck a chord with me last week. I’ve posted a link to the the video at the bottom of this blog. Having also watched the BCC documentary [...]

This blog was first published on the 14th July 2014 here. We’ve been experimenting at home with the idea of taking a day off from technology for one day a week – how hard can it be?  Very hard.  Some context – I have four children aged fifteen, twelve, ten & four (boy, [...]