#39 - Mark Saxby - Reclaiming Connection: Beyond Screens

In this episode of Rediscovering Connection, I chat with Mark Saxby, a UK-based journalist-turned-social-media-reformer who’s on a mission to help us use technology intentionally—without letting it steal our time or joy. From his “Be More Colin” campaign to his work with kids through Positive Social, Mark shares how stepping back from screens can unlock richer relationships, better mental health, and a life lived on our terms.

We dive into:
✅ Why social media doesn’t always deliver the connection we crave—and what does
✅ How Mark turned Twitter into a tool for real-world friendships
✅ The “Be More Colin” movement: reclaiming focus at work and home
✅  Protecting kids from the addictive pull of smartphones
✅ Finding balance between personal expression and professional presence online  
 
If you’ve ever felt glued to your phone—or wondered how to break free—this conversation offers practical, uplifting ideas to rethink your relationship with tech.

🎙️Tune in for a refreshing take on living well in a digital world.

Timestamps
00:00 – Intro: Meet Mark Saxby and his mission to rethink social media
03:15 – From journalism to social media: Mark’s journey and aha moment
07:00 – The power of Twitter for building real-life connections
11:30 – Why we overshare online—and how pulling back sparks better conversations
15:45 – “Be More Colin”: Cutting phone time to boost work and life satisfaction
20:00 – Social media’s impact on kids: Insights from Positive Social
25:30 – Setting boundaries: Tips for parents and personal phone audits
30:15 – Personal vs. professional online: Where to focus your energy
34:00 – Mark’s passion for speaking and winning people over
37:00 – Closing thoughts & how to connect with Mark  

Links
Find Mark Saxby Online:
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/marksaxby 
Email: mark@statussocial.co.uk
Positive Social: https://positivesocial.org.uk/  

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I hope our conversation inspires you to rediscover connection in your personal or professional life.

Subscribe now and let the magic unfold.

Love & sparkles,
✨Shelley

About Your Host

Hello you, I’m Shelley Doyle, founder of The Communiverse.

Through our 90-day program, The Social Wealth Roadmap, we empower remote and relocated leaders, founders, and creators build real-world social wealth—so they feel connected, trusted, and supported, both online and offline, no matter where they are in the world.

We also support hybrid and distributed teams, combining cutting-edge research on social well-being and social wealth with two decades in corporate communications to deliver mind-shifting talks, workshops, and programs around the world.

Find out more at TheCommuniverse.com or find me on LinkedIn.

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Transcript

Mark: 0:00

A few years ago, I remember I met up with some friends, and I'd not seen them for years. And I said, oh, this has happened. And they went, oh yeah, we know, we saw you, we saw on Facebook. Oh, I've got this bit of news. And we saw that on Facebook. And I thought, I've got nothing to tell them. Nothing to tell them. And then from that moment on, I thought, I'm no longer posting on Facebook. So when I do meet people, when I do catch up with people, I have loads to tell them and they have loads to tell me because I don't read through my newsfeed on Facebook either. So I don't know what they're doing. And it is interesting, isn't it? Somebody will say, Oh yeah, I've got a new job, but you must have seen it on Facebook. No? Didn't see it? But they just presume, because they post it on social media, that everyone knows their news. And of course, one is they're under the misapprehension that suddenly everybody on, whenever you post on, on, on a social network, that everyone sees your post who's following you, which of course isn't true at all. Plus the fact that they expect everybody to be glued to social media in the way that maybe they are. So I find it, um, yeah, I found it much more liberating by posting less and enjoying those moments around the dinner table, as you say, uh, where you can just have really rich conversations and, and go into kind of more detail and more stories and get across that feeling and that excitement in a way that. You know, it's only limited how you can do that on social media.

Shelley: 1:18

Hello and welcome to Rediscovering Connection. I am Shelley Doyle and I have a very special guest from the UK with me today called Mark Saxby. Mark is really creating a movement on social media and it's really about how we use social media positively, both in our professional lives and in our personal lives and even in the lives of our children. Um, I've been following Mark's work for a couple of years now. I see you popping up on LinkedIn all the time, doing some great stuff, going into schools and also speaking to professionals around the UK. So Really, really excited to delve into kind of your journey a bit, Mark. I'd love to know what kind of led you to, to this. and then I really can't wait to just hear a bit more about, your current projects, the Be More Colin, et cetera. So welcome. Thank you so much for making the time to be with us today.

Mark: 2:18

Thank you. Thanks for having me. I'm looking forward to this.

Shelley: 2:22

So, um, I imagine you've had a few different walks of your life so far. What's really made you gravitate towards social media being the kind of focus of what you're talking about these days?

Mark: 2:34

Yeah, so I was, uh, I'm a journalist by profession, spent 20 years in, uh, was in newspapers and magazines, had my own press agency and then worked for, um, for TV and then radio, so finally ended up at the BBC for 11 years and it was during my kind of last few months at the BBC that they trained me in how to use social media to find news stories, uh, and I just realized that there was a really new. It's a really interesting way of being able to use it to build relationships, to reach out to people, particularly using Twitter in the days when Twitter was a lot nicer than X is nowadays. So you could have conversations, make new friends. And I think one of the big, really interesting things for me was we'd moved to our city, Derby in England, when we had our children were about maybe three, I think our oldest was three or four. And we found it really quite tricky to make friends. Working in a place where you kind of, you know, didn't really want to be friends with people who are in the, in the office because I was their manager. So it was quite challenging to find new friends. And we found that Twitter was a really good way to build relationships with people and then meet up with them in real life. And they've become lifelong friends. So that whole element of social media being used truly socially, rather than just here I am, look at me, was just, just made me realize how amazing it could be.

Shelley: 3:53

So intriguing and actually I do have one connection who was a guest on my podcast that she is called Richard Bartlett, and he is on Twitter or X avidly today, and he has just, he's just hired an amazing villa in Barcelona, and he's just doing kind of retreats and it's all done through Twitter, so he's like, who wants to come in fact he even He even found individuals on Twitter through his own community to put in like the money so he could then like pay for the rent for the year. So it's encouraging to hear that you found the positive way back and actually even though it might be searching for diamonds. Actually, people are still doing this today. So thank you for the reminder of this, because I think social media does get a bad press for the inherent dangers. And, you know, the time, I think research is saying that we're spending between two and a half and three and a half hours every day on social media today. Does that correlate with the kind of stuff that you're seeing?

Mark: 5:01

Oh, I think it's probably more. I mean, the average person in the UK spend six hours a day on their mobile phone. Um, young people spend an average of eight hours a day. Um, I would suspect that with young people probably most of that eight hours is social media. So two to three hours a day could be quite conservative for some maybe excessive for others I certainly don't spend that amount of time on social media every day Um, but I think for some people yeah There is enormously but it's certainly what I would say is there's too much time spent on social media every day Um, I think when you're using it from a business point of view, then great! You can grow your business through it, and that's brilliant. If you're on there faffing about, wasting your time when you could be spending time with your family or your friends, or doing something more exciting like getting outside, then that's not so good.

Shelley: 5:52

And I guess in correlation with those hours as well, the research also says that for health and happiness, we should be spending between two and three hours in social interaction every day. So whether that's in person or, you know, through virtual media. Um, so, yeah, I think when people are kind of feeling the impacts of disconnection and loneliness and they think, well, I haven't got time to be connecting with people, it's, it's not about making more time in our life. It's about educating and diverting some of the time that is maybe a little bit misspent these days.

Mark: 6:29

Yeah, there was Professor Adam Alter did a great, great TED talk about screens stealing our time. And it said that, he said that evidence shows that. Social media is one of those, is those, is one of the many apps that makes us feel bad about our lives. It doesn't make us feel better about our lives. So, you know, if you think, well, that's, that's what the evidence shows, then why do we spend so much time? Well, it's pretty obvious why we spend so much time, because it's flippin addictive. Um, but it's not good for us, and we're not, but often I think we don't, I think we, as you say, I think we think that social media makes our, makes us happier, but actually, it probably doesn't for most of us.

Shelley: 7:04

Um, and I'd love to delve into one of the campaigns you've got on the go right now, um, which is be more Colin. And as soon as I, as soon as I read up about this, I'm like, it totally makes sense because my last organization, um, when I was living in Cardiff, one of the policies was no phones at your desk. Um, and actually. That policy in itself, like getting to my desk, it felt like I had many more hours in my day. Wow. Does that, does that resonate with some of the work that you're doing on this Be More Colin? Tell us a bit more about it.

Mark: 7:40

No, absolutely. So the research shows the average worker spends two hours a day during working time. You're doing personal things on their mobile when they should be working. So let's think about what the implications of that well, first of all, that's 10 hours a week lost That's you know, nearly 500 hours a year lost to productivity, but worse than that um, if you're if you're using your phone all the time that it's kind of You're then meaning you're on screens more, which messes up your mental health more. It means then you don't get all the finished work time, so you have more, you know, the kind of things that you could have done at work, then build on your mind. So then you're thinking about work life outside of work, but then you're also thinking about personal life inside of work. So you know what it's like, you're at work and, you know, you were in the middle of something and suddenly a WhatsApp message comes up and it's from the family group. And it's, it's your son and he's on holiday in, uh, in Italy and you're thinking, Oh no, I don't, I don't want to be, I don't want to be here. I want to be in Italy with him. Oh, this is for, you know. And you end up then, this whole, this whole kind of demarcation of, of work and life becomes more and more blurred. The personal gets into your work life, which makes you feel unhappy, and then the work gets into your personal life, which makes you feel unhappy. And then, and then because of that, you know, that sort of element of being on your phones all the time, you know, you're seeing break times. In the old days, people used to kind of go to the, go to a meeting space, and you'd go and chat, and you'd have lunch together. Nowadays, sometimes people just go and sit in their cars, and they watch Netflix videos. Or they do shopping, or they're booking holidays, and people don't talk to each other anymore. So therefore then those feelings of satisfaction that often you get from work because you've got great relationships with your colleagues, that's not there either. So it's really interesting that whole element of how we bring phones into work, and our employers often kind of let us do it, probably a lot of it, because they're addicted themselves. So yeah, this Be More Colin is ultimately me going into workplaces and helping people to realize that if they actually spent less time on their personal mobiles during working times, actually that they'd enjoy life more. And the evidence is from people I've done Be More Colin with. So the pilot we did, 60 percent of people said their mental health and their job satisfaction had increased since putting into place the Be More Colin. Activities, which is great stats and very, very, very encouraging. And the other thing as well, the good thing about the whole, the whole thing about tackling our phone use at work, it rebounds and helps us at home. Because when you realize actually you don't want to be on your phone as much at work, then actually you're going to be more present in the moment when you're at home with your children, with your wife, with your husband, with your partner. So actually then you end up getting this kind of freedom away from your device. So the device becomes something that's valuable to you. Rather than something that actually you feel like you need to be looking at all the time. So I've got my phone use down to, on good days, and it's not always good, but on good days down to less than half an hour a day. So this weekend, both my times were under half an hour a day. And I tell you what, I got so much more done. I was, I was happier. It was, it was, it was a great weekend because I wasn't glued to my phone screen.

Shelley: 10:46

That's so encouraging. Thank you so much for sharing that. And, um, a few things are coming up for me. I guess one thing, the name, um, the name is very striking and very memorable. How did you come up with that?

Mark: 10:59

So when I was working at the BBC, there was a colleague of mine who was promoted to being the breakfast producer. Uh, so the breakfast producer is a person who the night before the radio show would get everything ready. So he'd work a later shift, like starting at one PM and then finishing about 9 PM. And, uh, and there's a guy who was put into this role, and, uh, and his name was Colin. And, uh, he said to me, um, um, I don't like the shift mark because I never get away on time. And I thought, okay, well, I'll watch him and just see what, what's going on. And I noticed that what would happen is he'd be typing away, writing a script, and then bing! It'd be MSN Messenger. We'll pop him on his computer. So he'd look at the MSN Messenger, and he'd type again, and then he'd go back to his work and carry on typing again, and bing! Another message. And it kind of went on. Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. It was just crazy. And I just said to him, that's the problem. If you stop looking at MSN Messenger, you'll get away on time. And he was a bit doubtful, but he agreed to try it. And the next morning he walked in, he said, Mark, it worked! I got away on time! So really, ultimately, what I say to people is, you need to be more Colin. Be inspired by Colin. He made a change, and so can you.

Shelley: 12:05

And something else that's coming up Mark, and I love that story by the way, um, it is just about us feeling the need, because we can, because we can message and update, feeling the need to, you know, if something great happens, rather than Setting an intention and creating a small event, whether that's physical or virtual if your people aren't necessarily around you and then like celebrating your win with your people in a way that you can actually feel the like celebration between you, we're much more inclined to just like send a quick message and then it's like, Oh, well done. It's like, physiologically, are we missing that? We're not celebrating ourselves, you know, and I guess the other side, the other side of that equation is also when, you know, bad things do and invariably happen in our lives. Again, are we, actually letting the important people know about it in a way that's going to serve us so they can actually support us or are they just sending a message maybe even during work time and then you're not even able to take that on board. So I guess us always having the availability to, to message and connect with people is maybe taking away from actually we could be talking about this over the dinner table because we haven't had those exchanges during work time.

Mark: 13:28

Yeah, no, I think that's a really good point. A few years ago, I remember I met up with some friends, and I'd not seen them for years. And I said, oh, this has happened. And they went, oh yeah, we know, we saw you, we saw on Facebook. Oh, I've got this bit of news. And we saw that on Facebook. And I thought, I've got nothing to tell them. Nothing to tell them. And I thought, and then from that moment on, I thought, I'm no longer posting on Facebook. So. What I only use Facebook for now is ultimately for memories. So I, when I do post, I post to a selected group of people, about three people, which is like my dad, uh, my son, uh, and my wife. And now I'm more like inevitably my wife and my son are probably going to be with me anyway, at least my wife is. So, but it's more, so then they only get seen by a very small number. Uh, but then I've got it on Facebook memories to go back to when I want to. So when I do meet people, when I do catch up with people, I have loads to tell them and they have loads to tell me because I don't read through my newsfeed on Facebook either. So I don't know what they're doing. And it is interesting, isn't it? Somebody will say, uh, you know, you'll meet somebody and they'll say, uh, Oh yeah, I've got a new job, but you must, you must have, you must have seen it on Facebook. No? Didn't see it? But they just presume, because they post it on social media, that everyone knows their news. And of course, one is they're under the misapprehension that suddenly everybody on, whenever you post on, on, on a social network, that everyone sees your post who's following you, which of course isn't true at all. Plus the fact that they expect everybody to be glued to social media in the way that maybe they are. So I find it, um, yeah, I found it much more liberating by posting less and enjoying those moments around the dinner table, as you say, uh, where you can just have really rich conversations and, and go into kind of more detail and more stories and get across that feeling and that excitement in a way that. You know, it's only limited how you can do that on social media.

Shelley: 15:10

Yeah, totally resonate. Something that's coming up for me is about the different generations. Um, because I remember when Facebook first launched and for me it was perfect timing. I had, uh, I just completed university up in Leeds. I'd done a student exchange to Australia as well. So I had a whole bunch of Australian friends, American friends, Canadian friends, friends from up North. That suddenly I was able to update and keep updated. And obviously family members kind of trickled in a bit slowly. Um, so in its heyday, when Facebook first launched, like it was very, very exciting for me personally. I don't know how your initial experience was. And I guess because there was only that one, like if you posted, most people did. see it. And there was much less advertising. And I guess the algorithm was less sophisticated. So actually it probably did show you to all of your people. Whereas now, obviously there's so many different platforms that you can choose to be on. So, you know, it's hit and miss if you're, if you're going to be able to get in front of the people that you want to see it. But have you seen bearing in mind, I know you're doing. some talks in schools and maybe we can delve into that a bit deeper. But have you seen a different generation? Because I'm also thinking about like my, my parents age, so say mid, mid 60s. Um, and actually they still seem fairly excited about Facebook and they still share a lot and they still get a lot of engagement from their friends and family. on Facebook. Have you, have you, do you want to talk through something on generations?

Mark: 16:49

Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? Because the, the fastest growing audience on Facebook for a long time has been all the older generation. And, uh, some will overshare, some will never post. Um, but it's interesting as well, because you can then look at the younger generation and actually for the younger generation. Sharing is not something they do as often as maybe, maybe, you know, the people who were around when Facebook first launched. They're more about messaging. Through Instagram or, you know, there's obviously a lot of, there's a lot of still people posting occasionally on TikTok or things like that. And there are some people who are very prolific, but actually the majority of people just watch. They just scroll. they don't do an awful lot of posting. Um, whether that's because Well, who knows what their reasons is, I suppose. Do they feel like they've got anything to contribute? I mean, you see that when I, when I work with businesses through, through the company status social that some businesses don't think they've got anything to say. They probably have, they just don't think they have, so I, so I suppose that would kind of make sense as to why maybe sometimes some older people post because When you get older in life, often you've, you're more opinionated, you feel like you've got more wisdom to share, you've got more of a right to say what's on your mind, you don't really care what others think about you, so therefore then you post more to maybe a younger person who's maybe a little bit more insecure.

Shelley: 18:05

And something else that's coming up is all about the personal versus professional, so I I launched a business, um, a while back and I created a new kind of business Facebook page, business Instagram page. So now I have like so many different spaces and that was quite intentional because I wanted to invite people from my personal networks to, if they wanted to engage with my professional side. They could then follow my professional Facebook book or Instagram. And then I've kind of kept my personal pages for personal posts, which again, they're very infrequent. I do occasionally send something out. Um, have you found something in terms of working with businesses and like staying professional and then You know, speaking to individuals and, you know, finding that neat boundary between your personal and professional posts.

Mark: 19:04

Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? Because you can, you mentioned there are quite a few different things you set up there. And my, one of the things, I'm a professional speaker, and one of the things I talk about in my keynote is, is you've got to be excellent. So it's therefore if you're going to, because if you're not excellent, then the algorithms won't show your posts to people. So to be excellent really probably involves doing a whole lot less social media, but doing it really well. So for instance, with me, my main platform is LinkedIn. So therefore all my efforts. Suspense on LinkedIn, I post very, very rarely on Instagram, very, very rarely on X and, and, uh, just one hardly at all on Facebook, but certainly in terms of from a business point of view the reason where I get most of my success is from my personal LinkedIn page, not the company page because people buy from people. So actually we can think, okay, we need to have business pages on all the networks, but really, do we need to have. Just maybe one business page and maybe it's more coming from a personal side on one network because that's when I'm gonna get my results from. It's about understanding the target audience, isn't it? Where's my target audience and how am I gonna reach out to them? And yes, we can and you might have elements of your target audience on Instagram, on TikTok, on whatever. But actually, is that really the best place to get them where you can be consistently excellent? All the time. So therefore a lot of people, I say to businesses, you need to stop dancing on TikTok. You need to stop trying to get to younger people on Instagram because you've not got the content. You've got nothing to say. You're not doing it properly. Your posts are rubbish. You know, your writing's awful. Just focus on one network and do it really well. And if you really focus on doing one network and get, and just, you know, do one post a week. So look, a great example of that is on my LinkedIn profile. So if I, if I look back on the last seven days analytics, I've only written two posts. Yeah, I have 60, 6 0 posts still being seen on newsfeeds of people, ranging back over more than a year old, because they're so good posts that they're still being seen on LinkedIn more than a year later. In fact, my longest serving one, there was one post I wrote 11 years ago that's still getting engagement.

Shelley: 21:10

Amazing. Yeah. So good. Less is more. Less is more. I'm really knowing where you're comfortable as well. And one of the things that I speak about, um, is social wealth. Um, and there's, there's three pillars of social wealth. One of them being personal expression. And then solidarity and relational interest. So maybe on LinkedIn, you feel really comfortable expressing yourself. Do you feel the solidarity from your LinkedIn community? Maybe, maybe you find solidarity more on Facebook because that's your personal. connections of family and friends. And it's just being aware of this so we can better understand kind of ourselves and what's serving us. Cause like you said, we're wasting a lot of time. Um, and social media doesn't have to be bad. But if we can kind of do our audit to understand where we're able to express ourselves, where we feel the solidarity and where we feel that people are actually genuinely interested in us. And we're kind of genuinely interested in the people that we're shown. And if we go, actually, I don't, I'm not interested in any of these posts. It's like, okay, then maybe you need to kind of clean up your channels. So you're seeing the type of people that you want to be seeing. You're influenced by the influences that you choose to be influenced by.

Mark: 22:39

It's interesting isn't it? I was thinking there as you were talking that, that I talk a lot about objectives, you know, when it comes to when we do our social media training workshops, I'll say, right, okay, what's your company objectives, your bigger company objectives, and then let's move them across to social media to see if they can be achieved. But I also wonder as well whether actually there are personal objectives. You know, what's my personal, why am I on social media? Am I on there to make friends? Am I on there to change lives? Am I on there to make a difference? Am I on there to try and persuade people to change their. political thoughts, and then using social media like that. So there's a real purpose behind it rather than just being on it just because it's there. And actually, if you then have objectives, and then you try and use social media to achieve your objectives, and actually the satisfaction you'll get if you can achieve your objectives is going to be so much bigger than if you just go on there and have no kind of real. You know, you're just on there for just for no real purpose and I know that almost sounds a bit like You know almost like you know a bit too. I don't know maybe cynical but actually why why are we you know? What if our objective is to get more friends then actually maybe it's not just being on social media if our objective is to change the political climate, then maybe we should also go and join a political party. You know, so then you, then you start looking actually, is, is social media just going to achieve my objectives, or can it even really achieve my objectives? Or can I do something better? Maybe I should be getting into politics. You know, so, so whatever it might be, but what's your objectives in life? What's your purpose in life? And then finding out whether social media can help you achieve the purpose. And it, and if it can, if it can, then great. Use it strategically. And if it can't Then go and do something else.

Shelley: 24:18

I really hope the current political climate does inspire some brave souls to want to get into politics. I feel like we need some really good politicians. Um, so I know there's a lot of different strands to what you're doing right now, Mark, and I'm so excited to, to like, learn a bit more about these and like where you really feel called. Appreciate that. right now. I know there's a lot of different movements going on in terms of protecting children. Are you feeling like, where are you feeling called to really serve and, and get your message out there?

Mark: 24:53

Yeah. So my, um, my motto in life is based around what Jesus said in John 10, 10. He said, I've come to give life and life in all its abundance. And I don't want to live a humdrum life. I want to enjoy life. And I don't want others to have a humdrum life. I don't want others to waste their lives. There's a great life out there to be had, but we need to make sure that we're not letting things get in the way. So when, why we created a charity called Positive Social, um, we started doing the pilot 10 years ago and then really launched it in anger in the last two years. We've got in front of more than 10, 000 children, ultimately helping them make better decisions about how they use social media. So firstly, are they Are they using it appropriately? Are they behaving, um, in a good way towards other children? Um, are they damaging their future? Um, we talk about the privacy settings and making sure they're being safe on there. Um, but then we also talk about the whole level of how the social networks were designed to be addictive and who do they want to be in control of their lives, them or the social network owners. And then finally we talk about Are you living your best days, or are you ruining your best days by spending your life behind a phone screen? And what's really interesting is, is that even though they're children and people think, Oh, children, they won't, they won't change, they're addicted, they want to be on their phones all the time. They don't. When we, when we give them permission to think in a different way, they make amazing commitments, such as I'm going to leave Instagram because it's, it's making me feel sad, or I'm leaving TikTok because it's washing my mind. Or I'm, I'm going to, I'm going to leave WhatsApp groups where I recognise I'm the one bullying other kids. Or I'm going to spend more time with my mum and recognise they're more important. Or I'm going to start doing more painting. Or I'm going to play football with my mates. Or I'm not going to take my phone to bed with me anymore. And, you know, these are commitments made by 11 and 12 year olds and younger as well. Because they recognise that actually life is more fun when you're not always tied to a mobile phone. So I, I think that's amazing, and I, and I, and I love, and I, then part of the reason why I did Be More Colin was because I remember one of the children saying to me, Yeah, but, sir, if I go home and do this, my mum and dad are still on their phone all the time. So Be More Colin gets into the workplace and helps parents make the better decisions. But really, I'd like to just like People, I'm not, whether it's going to change, whether the culture is going to change and people are going to realize that, that the mobile phones are becoming just, just too obsessive. I mean, when you go to the toilets and there's a man there weeing with, with his, with his phone in his hand, it's just not, it's not, this is not the way life should be made. It shouldn't be like this, should it really?

Shelley: 27:20

Oh my goodness, that is quite a vision. And in terms of ages, you spoke about some quite young children there, even in the context of taking their phones to the bedroom, and that's quite astonishing for me. I'm, I'm living on Vancouver Island and in Canada. Um, so some of my daughter's eight, um, some of her friends do have devices. Um, mainly if they've been handed down, you know, a parent gets an upgrade and then they naturally just get the. the old one. Um, I, we don't really want our daughter to have one until she's at least 12. I wonder what the current kind of recommended, are you hearing like the kind of age that children should be entrusted with a device?

Mark: 28:11

Well, I think it's about the difference between a dumb phone and a smartphone. So, uh, my, my 11 year old. Um, it's going to be going to, uh, secondary school, high school, uh, next, in September. And she, what we're going to do, so with an iPhone, you can turn an iPhone into a dumb phone, ultimately remove all the smart things, apart from what you want to have on it, and it just becomes, so it still looks like an iPhone, but actually it doesn't have all the things on it that actually is going to get in their way. So there'll be no Snapchat on there, there'll be no, there'll be no WhatsApp. She can text, she can call, she can listen to Spotify, but that's it. And, and I, I think that, for me, is a wise move. Um, I know even in, in the age she is now, I think she's the only one in her class not to have a mobile phone. Um, and she walks home from school. We have her an Apple AirTag, so we can see where she is if she gets lost, or not she's ever got lost, or we don't, or she's late back from the park, whatever it might be. But I don't think she needs anything more than that. And she recognizes she doesn't want anything more than that because she's seen the issues that's happened in her class with her classmates doing things that aren't right on social media or on their phones. So the more we can resist the temptation to let our children have smartphones, the better. I mean, there's some, I mean, one bit of a shocking research is that children who spend an excessive amount of time on their mobile phones it results in them having, affecting the pre cortal, uh, pre, uh, prefrontal, the, the, I've forgotten the name, the front part of the brain! Uh,

Shelley: 29:39

prefrontal cortex.

Mark: 29:41

Cortex! That's the one! Thank you Shelly. So it damages that part of the brain, which means then as they get older they're more likely to get stressed, depressed, anxious, sleep deprived, it affects their long term memory, um, children, girls who spend Teenage girls who spend two to three hours a day on their phones are more likely to take their own lives. Um, there was a study out that showed that, um, if you spend more than five hours a day on, on social media, you're going to be 50 percent worse at maths than, than other children. There's some, there's loads and loads of great information out there. And it just shows that children are not ready to spend a lot of time on their phones when, when, when they're young and, and actually as brains keep on developing into teenage years, surely it's just not a good idea to let any child to be on their phone. So little things that we do, because we do parent sessions as well. And, uh, and I'll say to them things like, have a, have a ban on, on devices upstairs. You know, having any child having a device on their own for long periods of time, it's just. Could be a recipe for disaster. And we have like a basket in our kitchen where all the phones go, so we're not carrying them around the house everywhere we go. We have no, no phones at the dinner table. We go, we go away. I say, right, no social media during our, during our holiday You know, there's just little things that you can do as parents. But I think the key thing I find is that parents think they need to be there, need to be friends with their children. Well, we're not, we're parents and we can't, you know, parents need to make good decisions, even if they are very unpopular with our children and, and we, and they, they will thank us in the future. My, my, my now 20 year old thanked me that we didn't allow him to have um, social media till he was 13, um, because he recognized what, what a mess it caused to his, to his friends.

Shelley: 31:26

Thank you so much, so much here. And I've just been recommended a book which I've just started listening to the audio of called How to Be the Grown Up.

Mark: 31:35

Oh, that sounds interesting.

Shelley: 31:37

Yeah, and it was a teacher's recommended it to me, a friend, a friend teacher, not like a teacher from my kid's school. Like, come on, be the grown up here. Um, I'm just wondering if there's anything that we haven't covered here today in terms of the different facets of what you're working in and also like the passions that you have. If there's anything that we haven't yet touched on today that you think, I can't leave this conversation without letting, letting these listeners know that I'm also into this.

Mark: 32:08

Wow what else I mean one of the things i'm very passionate about is um professional speaking So I joined the professional speaking association as an american equivalent as well and a canadian equivalent and uh Just, uh, giving you that confidence to stand up in front of other people has been really exciting. You know, I've been speaking for a long time, you know, I speak in church. I still do occasionally speak in church. I would, and then I would, when we started the business, I would do talks. But then, I think it's like, one of the things I'm not very good at is investing in myself. You know, I end up kind of taking shortcuts, thinking, I don't know, is it, you know, I haven't got the time, I don't want to spend the budget. But actually, this is one of the first things I've actually invested in myself. Going on to, you go on to these monthly meetings, you see great speakers, um, talk, you learn from how they do it. And you then, just putting it into practice has been just, and seeing, seeing how. We can develop the speakers, which gives us more confidence in the workplace if you've got to give a talk at work or if or if you're, uh, you know, you've got to try and win people over. So, you know, obviously, as a person with a charity, I'm going to be speaking at a few charity engagements coming up and I've got to be able to talk about the charity in a way that's dynamic and win people over. Um, that kind of level of, of increasing your confidence is really, really good. So I'd encourage anybody who's thinking, actually I need to speak more to find, uh, find an organization like that. Because I think they are so good. It's so good. I mean, they say, don't they? Is it professional? Public speaking is the thing that terrifies people more than anything else in life? Well, I'll tell you what, I love it. Love it.

Shelley: 33:46

Thank you for sharing. I know Toastmasters is also another one that's global. Um, I've attended a few of those and actually my father used to, um, have a, have a car dealership in New Zealand and he said the best sales guys. were the ones that went to Toastmasters and they got that experience of speaking in public and yeah, pushing your comfort zones.

Mark: 34:08

Yeah. I think it's because it's one of the things that I've goes across all the things I do is about winning people over. So there's a thing called strength finders that did years ago. And one of the things that kept it identified for me with my, as my top skill was, was called winning others over. And I find that when you, the way, the way you win others over is by understanding them first. So, you know, when I, when I go into schools, I win over the children whatever age range because I understand how children think, even though I'm well beyond school children age. When I'm in business, when I, when I train people in how to use social media, it's not about, I don't train people how to use social media, although I do, I train people how to use social media to win others over. And I think that whole thing of understanding people, others first, understanding where they're coming from, what their motivations are, it just works so well across all areas of life. You know, in your personal life, you listen more, you engage more, you, you, you get enriched more by other people's stories. There is, there's something there when you listen first, and then you can win people over. And I think that's a, again, one of those key things I think as a professional speaker, when you understand what the target audience want, or the audience wants rather, that actually you can just do amazing things.

Shelley: 35:21

Yeah. And I guess that's the idea of winning someone over. the pillars of social wealth, it's really speaking to relational interest and solidarity. So you want to be able to inspire their relational interest and in turn, they're going to then give you the solidarity that you're, that you're wanting.

Mark: 35:41

Yeah, absolutely. It's like me as a Christian, you know, I, I, I don't feel that, you know, I need to convert people, but I do, I do think it's important for people to make a choice. So therefore then actually being able to. Uh, explain things in a way which you know will resonate with others. That's, that's a really, really good way of doing it. And if you do it with love and you do it without actually, you know, without judging people, again, it can be really powerful. And I think, again, that goes for everything in life, doesn't it? If you can talk to somebody without judging them, and you're, you respect their decision, but actually you also understand why you're saying what you're saying, and you've thought about it properly. There's a power in that, in everything, in everything we do.

Shelley: 36:20

All about setting the intention, right? We set the intention from a place of love and a place of positivity, um, then we're onto something that's going to be a win win.

Mark: 36:34

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, although I haven't, I haven't actually, one of the things I have failed in, I've got to confess Shelley, I've never, I've never actually succeeded in my campaign to rid the world of the world's most evil foodstuff, quiche. Um, I've been running a campaign now, Christians Against Quiche, for the best part of 20 years. Although I got on international radio and TV, unfortunately it's never been banned by the Pope or the Archbishop of Canterbury. So, uh, I mean, there you

Shelley: 37:01

got against quiche? A good quiche Lorraine?

Mark: 37:04

Sorry. The what? A good Lorraine. A good, a good key. Lorraine. I'm afraid that's an oxymoron. uh, there is a thing of a good key. Sure. As we call in our flight, in our house, vomit in Alan Case um, it's the most evil food stuff known to man. It, it came because, um, what would happen is whenever there was concern, any kind of kind of church bring in share. Busy families would pop into their local corner shop on the way to church, grab a cheap quiche from the, from the nearby fridge shelves, and you'd get to church, and then you get to the bring and share lunch, and all you would have is quiche! And I just thought, right, this is it. I'm going to launch a campaign. So I launched Christians Against Quiche. My campaign one day is to, my plan is to, you know, travel through Europe, go through Lorraine, and find out why on earth they invented quiche. And then end up at the Vatican, and the Vatican, I'll kiss his ring, and he'll say, he'll say, I will add no more quiche, and that'll be it. That's my worst Pope impression ever, by the way. I have no idea whether that was his accent.

Shelley: 38:02

Mark, it's been an absolute pleasure. I wish you every success, mainly with your Be More Colin campaign. I'm not going to lie. I'm behind that one a little bit more. Um, no, it's been such a pleasure to learn a bit more about you, your work. I'll make sure we include all of your links. Is there kind of one place that you, you would prefer that people come find you? Is that LinkedIn?

Mark: 38:22

Yeah, LinkedIn's my, my favorite one, but, um, yeah, feel free to, to email me at Mark at, uh, statussocial. co. uk or, or through the Positive Social website, um, positivesocial. org. uk. Um, you can get me in lots of, lots of different places, but Mark's actually on, on, on a search on Google on, I come up pretty highly with my LinkedIn profile, so it's a good way to find me.