In a world that’s increasingly dominated by screens, how does reducing screen time impact our mental health and our connection to the world around us?
In this episode, I’m joined by Dr. Joan Savage, a multifaceted author and former professor, who transitioned from academia to pursue her passion for writing. She best known for her gripping murder mystery novel Red Fever, which she published after overcoming a challenging journey, supported by her community. With a background in business management and a deep commitment to mental wellness, Dr. Savage spent years researching the significant impact of virtual reality on mental health, particularly for vulnerable populations like young boys and military personnel.
Together, we explore the pervasive issue of screen time and its effects on our lives. Dr. Savage shares her insights on how social media and technology can lead to feelings of isolation, and the importance of community in overcoming these challenges. She also discusses the balance between seeking validation online and forming genuine connections in a digital world. This conversation is full of meaningful insights and tips for fostering authentic relationships while reducing screen time—so you won’t want to miss it!
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Navigating Life Beyond Screens with Dr. Joan Savage
Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. One of my initiatives here in 2025 and something I’m trying to showcase is helping people cut down on their screen time. We’ve been seeing a lot more people take notice on how much of the excess time that we’re spending in front of what’s often referred to as attention grabbing or addictive technology is really impacting the lives we live as well as the mindsets that we adapt, so I’m going to be bringing on some guests from time to time that have their own really unique stories about how cutting down on screen time has changed their lives. Today, I would like to introduce you to Dr. Joan Savage.
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Dr. Joan Savage, welcome to the program.
Thank you. Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here.
It’s wonderful. So, Dr Savage, like myself, has a lot of different initiatives in life. I think, traditionally, we’ve always thought of people as their job title, or at least for maybe about 100 years in the 20th century mostly where it’s like, okay, you are a broker, you are a data analyst, but we also know that, in life, people are way more than that so I want to start out by introducing you to my audience as all the different things that you’re a part of right now that you have done recently and are doing.
Great. Too many things, I think.
Well, as long as it make you happy, right?
And it does, yes, you’re right.
So, yeah, so you start by telling us about all the different things that you’re –- yeah, all your different things.
So my –- I’ll try to do things backwards chronologically. I feel like that makes a little more sense. So, right now, my full-time job, I guess, is I’m an author. So, a year ago, I released a murder mystery. It’s got a little bit of eroticism in it but mostly it’s a murder mystery. It’s called Red Fever and it’s my first attempt at fiction so that was a nightmare getting it published. I was really blessed to have just so many beautiful people in my life to speak into that and help me get that done and give me the courage to resign from my job as a professor. I was an adjunct teacher for about three years at Florida Tech and I was so, oh my gosh, that job came at such a time when everybody was looking for a remote position when COVID had hit so I have no complaints about that. Although I never wanted to be a teacher, that’s just –- it fell into my lap. I knew it was what the universe was guiding me and, in COVID, everyone wanted to be home so I loved it. I took it, again, it wasn’t anything that I’ve studied for, it was business tech and business management. I think they saw technology on my resume and they were like, “Oh, she can teach this,” but it’s nothing I ever wanted to do. And then from there, I was working, I spent about six years getting my dissertation. So my full-time job was a research assistant at that point, and I mixed, and I think this is where much of my experience will be able to benefit your podcast here, I spent about six years being –– I want to say maybe a life coach is the best terminology for it, because I wasn’t technically a certified therapist. I mean, I was in school, although I worked with psychologists, psychiatrists and therapists and counselors who worked with me to help me develop my dissertation and part of that was, and I call it –– it’s mental wellness and virtual reality. So the suicide rate that we’re struggling with is just so high in certain genders, certain age groups, certain jobs, so like our military, any civil servant, really, firefighters, cops, physicians, really high suicide rate. Young boys. Young boys are like one of the highest right now and it’s just awful. So the whole reason behind this becoming a research assistant and working on this particular field and dissertation was because the idea I had about virtual reality is you can come on there and you can look like a dog and talk like a cat and I cannot report you. So, as a physician, if you killed a patient, I mean, let’s say you got drunk and you did it, you killed a child or you killed a patient, how do you live with that? You can’t. That’s impossible. But yet, if you tell somebody, it can be used against you in the court of law. So what do you do? You live with it. We’re social creatures, we have that herd mentality, we’re meant to be together, we’re meant to share and lift each other up and hold each other’s burdens. And so with that, the idea behind this virtual environment which you can come in and you can share those things with me and I can’t report you so if you are thinking about suicide ideation, you can tell me, we can talk it through. You have a group of people who are your support system and none of us really know your first name. So it’s not like we can –– we don’t even know if you’re a real cop or real military or real physician, we have no clue, but we just let you be who you want to be. And, statistically, the more you talk about something, the less likely you are to commit that crime. Commit the issue, whatever you want to call that. So suicide, if you’re talking about suicide ideation, the more you’re talking about it, the less likely you are to actually go through with it. So that was the idea behind offering these incredible environments that I would build virtually and then just invite people to come in. So I made them fun. I would go off the latest movie like Harry Potter. I’d have Defense Against the Dark Arts. I mean, J. K. Rowling, she openly talks about the Dementors were based on depression so it was like Defense Against the Dark Arts, how do we overcome depression? How do we work through these things that nobody really talks about without attaching a mental illness to it and then just ruining your lives? Once that gets out there, your life is destroyed. So I wanted to avoid all that and that was the idea behind this research. And it was right before COVID. I mean, literally, the month before COVID is when I graduated, and I had so many people come against me, including my own mentor, tell me that therapy and anything like that would never go online.
Oh my gosh. It’s a weird time for anyone to say that.
Like I said, the month I graduated was December of 2019. COVID was right there in that time and everything went online. And the funny part was I had to bring in legal from my university to help me graduate because they were so adamant that therapy could never go online and would never go online. And I believed the opposite. I saw everything going online, and this is even before COVID. I just knew that’s where we were headed. And everything was being –– and, again, this is about your podcast, social media, everything is online now, everything we want, everything we need, every relationship now we can find online. So I saw that and I took advantage of what could be negative and to try to make it into a positive to give people the help that they need.
Well, it sounds like what you were trying to do is come up with like, okay, so someone’s trying to commit suicide and the suicide rate was increasing dramatically even before COVID hit. There’s actually a –– I map it to 2012 which was the year that smartphone penetration in this country reached 50 percent and if you look at the charts, the frequency of suicide, anxiety, depression, all those terrible mental health outcomes, start to skyrocket a bit around 2012. So we’re seeing the skyrocketing pattern of –– and suicide is obviously the worst manifestation of it, the worst of all because that someone actually decides to kill themselves and you found out that the more people talk about it, the less likely they are to do it. But, of course, people are not going to talk about it unless there is some level of anonymousness. Yeah, anonymity,. oh my gosh,
And once you start that pattern, it’s like anonymity, yeah, anonymous or anonymity.
So you created the service or was this just a research around the service?
Both. So I started with my masters, where I actually built a –– because, again, young boys were really struggling with suicide. I mean, not just ideation, they actually were successful. In fact, men are more successful than women are. Women are twice as likely to do it but men are more likely to be successful doing it. So, to me, that kind of evens it out right there. So I had this –– my professor, a friend of mine –– my mentor, myself, and a friend of mine, and this is for my masters when I was at Indiana University, Purdue University, and we decided –– so I can’t bring –– boys were, at this time, video game, this is like 2012, video games are just really, I mean, all about video games, right? We were just video game gung h/o, and so a lot of young boys were part of this. So, we couldn’t go after them and say, “Hey, video game, you might wanna monitor how much,” we just didn’t have that at that time.
Yeah, the screen, the parental controls, hadn’t been released ––
None of that ––
–- years before that stuff would pop up.
Right. So, we saw the problem at that point and so we thought, well, I can’t bring you out of the video game. Nothing I can say will convince you to come out and learn about suicide prevention. So my idea was we go in and we basically become a video game that you want to play because it’s fun and, I mean, if you’re playing Candy Crush, you’re going to play this game. And I did, I built this interactive video game that contained myths about suicide, like one of the myths is –– so we always think if I mentioned suicide to you, I’m putting it in your brain and you’re now going to think about it. No. In fact, it’s the opposite. If I’m able to get you to talk about it, like, “Yeah, you’re right, I have been thinking about those thoughts,” suddenly it loses its power. And I’m not saying you’re cured or healed. Sometimes you are. That’s all it takes is for it to lose its power, but for the most part, it starts you on this journey. So it was just making you aware of these myths and then, at the same time, you get to play a really fun game and it was very, very, very successful. People loved it. I even had some of the teachers who taught exceptionally talented young people who had very little social skills so they were really engaged in video games because they felt more connected than they could in real life and so they would come to me and they’re like, “We wanna buy this game. We wanna buy this game,” and it was all just research based at this point so we couldn’t launch anything. Are you going to comment on something?
Oh, so I was mostly going to ask how you found your target market for this? Because, obviously, you wanted to have an impact on certain segments of population and I’m assuming what you wanted to do is find a way to get this game in the hands of people who are more likely than most to be in the ideation phase of suicide so they can get that particular conversations they need. How did you go about that kind of strategy of bringing that to the right market?
I think we just –– so, for me, I was more interested in military. So I came with the idea of military, protecting our military soldiers and whether they’re active or a veteran, non-active, the suicide rate is incredibly ––
Oh yeah. Having witnessed all that war especially. I’ve heard so much about it.
It’s crazy. It’s so high, and they cannot –– there’s no one they can talk to, because literally the government owns your life. In fact, I was told that the day you sign on to the military, you are told if you get a sunburn, we can court martial you for destruction of government property. So you are basically told you are now government property. You have no rights to yourself, to your body. They can –– and even now, when you go to a VA facility to get treatment, you’re actually agreeing for your free healthcare, which you earned, which you deserve, which you earned, to get it, you are agreeing to be part of any experiment that they want to do on you. The only way that they need your approval is if you have to do something, like I have to take a pill or I have to wear a mask or I have to physically be engaged in your experiment. Other than that, you have no right to be a part of a research. They go through all your files and they’re allowed to pick and choose who they want, looking at your background, looking at your personal, private stuff that you shared, let’s say, in a counseling session, and they can pull that in and use that for their own purposes, and that’s how they get all the government grants is because they have access to millions of veterans without their permission.
All that data, yeah.
And that’s what we’re all after, right? Is data. So they get huge grants.
So they get these grants and they have all these veterans, but as a result, the veterans don’t feel like they have a safe place where they can talk about and –– the most common story I hear is that war puts your brain in a certain mode and that those triggers can show up in your now civilian life after you leave the war but you’re still in that preparation mode where you’re suddenly ready to fight and all sorts of other problematic things that come from having experienced some of these, really, really –– I mean, war is probably the worst spot, the worst piece of humanity you can witness, people basically trying to kill each other over whatever the war is over, and so you’re looking to create a place where they can, like a safe space where they can kind of talk over these things, talk about whatever terrible condition they feel in mentally without having to worry about that data being thrown somewhere and later on them being found out.
Yeah. Yeah, I think when you realize how it all comes down to safety, in fact, even when you’re thinking about how –– I’m not sure if the statistic is correct anymore, but at the time, I think it’s actually higher, to be quite honest, I think it’s up to 60 now but don’t quote me on that. I do know, at the time I was researching all this, we were at 48 percent of every homeless person was a veteran. And I could never put the two and two together of if you’re looking for safety, why would you be on the streets? But then I realized that’s the ultimate safe place. No one can take anything from you. They can’t hold a carrot, stick with a carrot over it and say, “You gotta to do this and do that because I own you.” No one owns you anymore. And there’s a sense of freedom, like the government can’t find you, they can’t see you. And then I realized, maybe that’s why, and, yes, mental illness is the top reason but let’s just say they’re getting treated and let’s say there’s some hope there, there’s some help there, what keeps them on the street? And I’m starting to realize it’s the safety factor. And I wrote –– my first book I ever published was called A Veterans Guide to Civilian Living, and it was intended to teach people how to how to deal with –– not deal with, how to be okay with, I don’t know exactly how to put this. Basically, the book is trying to show you what it feels like to be a veteran, in a sense, and where you get psychologically, I don’t want to say messed up but where you’re not thinking the way a civilian would think.
Yeah, yeah. It’s different responses to stimulus in your environment.
Right, and so part of the idea –– behind the idea of this book was I heard so many wives and mothers and just families tell me, “I can’t stand this person anymore. I don’t know who they are. I’m waiting for them to go back to who they were. I’m waiting for them to change and become the person that I married. I’m waiting,” and I’m thinking that’s never going to happen.
When you go through that kind of extreme trauma, you’re changed forever. You can’t go back to being that person ever. Share on XSo what you’re waiting for is something that’s quite honestly ridiculous. That person, you either got to let them go or you have to love them exactly who they are today. And if they change, great. But if they don’t, you have to be in love with that person they are today, because they have to compartmentalize things. I mean, when you’re training a man to kill a child, what does that do to your brain? What does it do to your sense of where you were raised in a culture that you’re supposed to protect and help women and children, but yet you go to a different country and you’re supposed to kill women and children? And you have to because your option is either this child and the toy that this child is holding is a bomb and is going to wipe out my entire unit or I kill this child and then I got to live with that. So what would you rather live with, this child killing everybody or killing this child? Either way, it’s a horrible choice, and yet you have to be trained to be able to do this. So what does that do to you as a human being?
Yeah, and it’s always going to have an effect. And I think this is definitely the most extreme example of it but we all have things that happen to us in life, experiences we go through, and those experiences are likely to change us in one way or another. And one of the hard truths about any of those things is that there is no real going backwards. There’s a way to process it and move forward into something potentially better down the road once you’ve gone to a new area or processed the experiences or developed new habits and patterns, but the idea of going backwards to some previous state is not really something that’s ever really possible. So one of the things I do want to make sure that we cover is that in case anyone out here listening is having any issues, is resonating with anything you’re saying, is this a service that is still available? And if it is, is there a good way to get yourself or your loved one help?
There is a lot out there now, I think, because, again, the government, the VA gets a lot of grants. I don’t agree with, I ended up leaving my job as a researcher for them because I didn’t feel good about what we were doing with the grants. Let me give you an example real quick. The final straw for me was we were given a million dollars to help veterans with no vision, low vision. So if you went overseas and you got your eyes blown out or laser, whatever, and you had very little vision or no vision, then you could come back and how do we help that? And so they put Braille signs up so people, they know where things are, whether this is counseling, whether this is orthopedics, whatever you’re looking for you can follow the Braille signs. How many veterans do you know who have their eyes blown out can read Braille?
I mean, I ––
Come on, be realistic. None, none. Zero.
Yeah, yeah. So they weren’t really listening to ––
A million dollars. And I had a simple way finding solution. It was a simple video game on your phone. As you passed up a certain part of a wall, it triggers your phone, vibrates and tells you five feet to the elevator to the right, follow the purple triangle so whether you’re no vision or low vision, it’s a simple little distance watch that triggers your phone, and it’s recycling technology, and they couldn’t –– there was no room for that.
Yeah, because they didn’t want the idea.
Well, I know you’re trying to get me back on this, but I just want –– like that’s when I left that because of that. And I’m like that, though. I’m that kind of person that I need to see value in things, to me, and I’m sure there’s value in everything, but, to me, I need to see it for who I am, where I’m going, what I’m doing, and I didn’t see value in that so I moved on and that’s why I left that job.
Do you think it makes sense, because there are, I think, a lot of places in life where people do things just to do things, just to check a box, just to say you finished a project the way it was designed, and the focus really does need to be shifted to what impact are you trying to have. Just because you delivered something doesn’t necessarily mean it impacted your customers, your clients, the people you’re trying to help the way you intended to.
Thank you, I love that.
Yeah, and so organizations will kind of maybe go back to the mission statement. And so, in this case, what I would think about is that the mission statement of this organization is they’re really trying to help veterans who have lost part of or all of their sight navigate the civilian world, similar to what your book was all about. And so you’re kind of, what I’m hearing is measuring everything you’re delivering through this project on the basis of that mission, on the basis of is it really helping veterans who’ve lost part or all of their sight.
I love that, and I love the way you reworded that, because that’s really how I feel. You wanted a quick –– I’m sorry, it wasn’t very quick, you wanted a quick view of everything I’ve done, and prior to that, I was acting. I became an actress, and it seems like worlds apart, right? But not in thinking and exactly what you just said to me, I wanted to be able to help people and I felt like becoming an actress, and at that time, influencers weren’t as widely known as they are now. There were some but it wasn’t like all over the place. And at that time, I’m sure I would have probably become an influencer had I understood that that was an option for me. So I was in my own way trying to become an influencer. So I went to Hollywood with a screenplay and it was like the craziest stuff happened in three months. I had an agent. I had a production company wanting my screenplay. I had this agent wanting me as an actress, even though I had like very little acting. Everything fell right into place. And I had great, really good friend who was a famous comedian and he hooked me up with his lawyer, his entertainment lawyer, like everything just flowed to me. And all I had to do is just say yes, but, at that time, exactly what you just brought up is I could not see the value in what I was doing. And so when I got hired for a specific role, it wasn’t terrible, but I was playing the role of a prostitute, it was a kind of a comedy thing, it sounds bad when I say it out loud but it really wasn’t, but it was, to me, because I didn’t want those roles. I didn’t want my life to be –– because of my body shape or the way I looked, I didn’t want to be, but I kept getting those very sexualized roles, and I thought how am I becoming an influencer here? What am I influencing? And that frightened me, and even though I was offered a great contract, it was like $500 to start a day with a reoccurring role guaranteed to have at least three episodes on ABC or CBS or one of those channels. I mean, who wouldn’t want that? That’s like the start of your career. I did, I said no. I filmed one piece of it and then I walked away because I saw the potential where it was going, and as an influencer, I did not want to be that kind of influencer, so I left. I left being an actress. But I still do it now every now and then for friends and I play like a Romulan commander for my friend’s Star Trek movies and stuff like that. So I still do it for fun but not like that.
So tagging on to the story a little bit, I think the common scenario that we’re talking about and something that I think a lot of people listening has probably experienced as well is this idea that you pursue something and maybe you pursue it for a little while and you get some traction, but then, all of a sudden, something pops into your head, whether you even understand it or not. Sometimes you understand it, sometimes you can put words into it, sometimes it’s hard to understand, but this thing pops into your head and it says something’s not right. This isn’t what I’m expecting and this doesn’t feel right. I think this is the most important, “This doesn’t feel right,” so if anyone listening is in that scenario where they’re, whatever you’re doing or whatever you’ve recently done, just really doesn’t feel right, but oftentimes people have a little bit of hesitation to just leave it, maybe you think about all the work you put in to get into this particular field, how much you’ve sacrificed or you’re thinking about if it’s a more standard job, people saying, “Oh, all these people are aspiring to this, you should love it. It’s what all these other people are dreaming of,” what advice do you have for anyone that has that situation in their head and is still kind of, I don’t want to say feeling stuck but feeling hesitancy around having the courage to leave something, a process that just doesn’t feel right?
It’s really good, because we are herd animals, and we need –– there’s this, I want to say it was Asch who did the experiment, don’t quote me on that, but there’s an experiment done where there were these incorrect size lines so you had A was small, B was large, and C was medium, and they were like the longest line is A and clearly it is not so they brought in all these actors and they had one person and all these actors were like the lines, and 75 percent of people stated the wrong answer, that group think crap. So you’re not wrong, you’re not bad, you’re not something’s wrong with you. It’s how you survive in this world. It’s who we are to stay connected. It’s like the way the deer are all eating and grazing and then the white tail comes up and everyone sees the white tail, we’re all like, “Aah!” We don’t have to see the danger, the white tail is there, man, we’re going. Well, I think that’s, in a way, how we respond to that. You have a nice job, you have an income, nice as in you have a set income, meaning it might make you miserable, it might be horrible for your relationship but everyone’s like, “No, this is what you’re supposed to do, who you’re supposed to be.” There’s nothing wrong with staying safe in the safety of your community and looking for the white tail and the only way you know that is by being a part of that.
We want praise or validation or a medal. There’s nothing in the world that’s wrong with that, to be an individual, and people who have made it and then who can break away from the herd to become what they want to become, I think that is the motive that I’m hearing, it’s that I’m ready to now become something different. I’m ready now to break away. I’m ready to find what I really like. I’m ready to find what I’m really afraid of. I just don’t want to follow your white tail. What am I really afraid of? What really is a danger to me? Because if I if I have a cigarette and you look at it, let’s say you’re not a smoker, you’re going to be like, “Ew, gross,” and that’s your trigger. But let’s say you are a smoker, you’re going to be like…
Exactly, yeah, you got a very different reaction.
Right. And you want to know what is really me and what is my best friend or my mom or my dad, and there’s nothing wrong with discovering that. I think, sometimes, and this is, I kind of bring circling it back to what your podcast is about which is being on social media is that’s almost kind of what we’re always looking for. We’re searching for what do I really like or what am I really afraid of or where do I really belong and where do I get validated? Where do I get loved? Where do I feel connected? I would rather be wrong with a group than be alone and be right.
Yeah, and that’s a lot of people feeling like that.
And that’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with –– and you always hear these people say, “No, you got to take a stand and be a man,” and, yes, there’s good in that, but there’s also danger in that too. So let’s talk about both. If you’re going to talk about the pro, then talk about the con too, because when you don’t have a network anymore and you don’t have a community and you’re isolated, there’s so many dangers, you cannot ––
it’s not physically possible for you to handle your entire life alone and all the drama and all the stimuli coming at you all day long. You need your peeps. You need your community. Share on XAnd if the price to pay is that you got to say line A is bigger than line B, my God, it’s okay. It’s okay.
Yeah. So we’re approaching this with some amount of compassion for people, understanding that like –– because even the scenario that I see way too often in the loneliness epidemic is people who are in that spot, that really tough spot that you’re talking about, anxiety, depression, even suicide ideation, and they don’t know who to talk to, you don’t have that one trusted friend that will just hear you out for a little while, you know they’re not going to say shit to anyone else, and have to be just supportive, but not having that can be a lot harder, so you have your own experience around cutting down your screen time and experiencing how you did it and how you changed your life. Could you tell us a little bit about your journey there?
Yeah. So, I think when I started to realize, I was waking up and nothing was feeling good anymore. So I think it’s not really about screen time, whether it’s too much, not enough. it’s more like where are you at mentally, your mental health, how you’re feeling physically, because your brain and your body is letting you know, wait, you’re overdosing on dopamine right now, and that’s all that that scrolling is, that screen time is you’re just collecting and adding to your dopamine until you basically max out and there’s nothing left. So then you have no dopamine left to enjoy little things in your life. Food. Food tastes bland. Sleep, when you wake up, you don’t have that energy in life anymore. So I think it’s identifying the fact that why –– and people will immediately label it as depression, “I’m depressed,” or, life sucks, and they’re telling themselves that story and it’s the story that gets you into trouble when maybe it really is just you have overdosed your dopamine and it’s time to cut back. And I think that’s the first step is I’m not enjoying life so let me start looking at the areas in which I can add some improvement. Did you want to add something there?
Yeah, so you’re saying that what you’re experiencing and what a lot of people listening, a lot of people in the world today might be experiencing, is this kind of overdose on dopamine and so if you’re always being stimulated with dopamine, it diminishes your capacity to be stimulated by even everyday things in life, like a nice sunset or seeing some pretty colors in a forest or something like that.
Yeah, and I’ll tell you what, one of my favorite things, and I rarely do sugar, but when I do, it’s a big treat for me so I will do like ice cream and I’ll never forget I bought my favorite ice cream, it had been like a month, and I was just like, “Oh, I’m gonna love this,” and I remember eating it and I felt nothing. Nothing. And that was so eye opening for me when I realized how overdosed I was on social media. And you have to understand though, I mean, you’re talking, I was coming from six to eight hours a day of being in virtual reality, which is a whole other dopamine fix, you’re talking up and down all over the place. So I knew, I knew that I needed to move away from that. And it’s not like I immediately changed and it’s like, oh, boom, I’m done. It’s more like first I had to identify it, then I had to identify the fact that, okay, well, why do I feel the need to do this? What is the underlying drive for me? And so at that time, obviously, it was part of my work. I had to get that done, but I didn’t need to be on Instagram after I’m in virtual reality for eight hours, you know what I mean, or four hours. So it was having this conversation of why do I feel the need to get on there? And then being honest with yourself, like, okay, I’m feeling lonely. And for women –– loneliness is just a killer for all, no matter what gender you are, but for women, for us to feel stress free, we have to create oxytocin. And oxytocin, that hormone only comes through bonding, pair bonding, or bonding with like a dog or just something very affectionate, something you –– and so I realized that’s what I was missing. And when I identified that loneliness and for me the oxytocin feeling, I just began to do things that were equally pleasurable. See, this is where we get into trouble is you can’t give up ice cream in favor of the carrot. I mean, come on, that’s just not going to happen. It’s going to last three days, if that. So it’s like there has to be something comparable to addressing what it is that you’re feeling at that moment. Is it loneliness? Is it boredom? Boredom is a fucking killer. God, it is horrible. And when you start down that path of boredom, man, it is brutal getting away from that. And so, for me, it was identifying my markers, my triggers, and then I did that, then I could find –– there’s a plethora of things out there to address, anything that you’re lacking. At that time, I was in Wyoming, and I was in the middle of nowhere because I just sort of randomly picked a spot after COVID, like I spun the globe and picked a spot, and I ended up in this little town called Rock Springs, Wyoming, which I couldn’t believe, coming from almost living in Orlando, I mean, I was just south of Orlando to this Podunk, three hours from any city, I mean, what was I going to replace that with? And Wyoming actually has a really high suicide rate because of this loneliness and there just isn’t a lot of connection. So I began to pursue connection. And, again, it had to be outside of social media because that’s where I was finding my fix. And so I found some local, like I began serving at a local food bank, and, yeah, it’s not immediately comparable to that but, at the same time, I started to make really good friends. In fact, one of my closest friends I made because I met her at the food bank, and she’s still a good friend right now, and I met her in that little, tiny town of Rock Spring, Wyoming.
Of all places.
Yeah. And then so then I would tell her, I would be honest with her, I’m like, “Hey, I’m struggling. Can we go for a walk?” Now, let me tell you, when she would agree to that, that was such a blessing for me because walking and talking and getting that oxytocin fix helped me. It filled me up so completely that when I was done after talking with her and walking with her, I felt full. I felt satisfied. It’s like have you eat a gallon of ice cream, you’re certainly grossed out by the thought of eating another gallon of ice cream. So, yeah, I was done. So this began my slow progression of alternating and changing and moving away from one thing and into other things. Now, I really have a full –– I’m doing literally meetups probably four or five times a week and I haven’t replaced one addiction for another because each meetup fills me with something new, like I’ll go to a networking and I feel like that’s for my vocation. I’ll go to a singles and that meets that social need, and then I’ll go to one where I’m learning about cryptocurrency or my financial, like investing, I love investing, I’m an investor, so I’m always looking. These are areas that I get filled up with that, I’m passionate about and get me excited. And, over time, that passion builds –– passion builds passion.
The minute you get a fire going, you don’t have to work as hard at that point, you just keep adding to that flame. Share on XSo that’s what I encourage people to start at the beginning and not be afraid to start at that beginning. And it’s hard and it’s noticing what you’re noticing, that’s the first step, and that’s when I noticed I wasn’t enjoying my life.
And it sounds like another part of that step is also recognizing what need you’re trying to fill when you pull up the phone. For most people, it could be a computer or TV. And are you trying to fill the fact that you’re bored? Are you trying to escape something? Or are you trying to, in your case, feel connected to something, combat loneliness?
Yeah. Yeah, that first step is you’ve got to notice that something is wrong in your life, that dopamine. You can tell it’s the dopamine. And you know what? You can even tell when you’re kissing your loved one and you’re just not as stimulated, that’s dopamine.
Yeah, so that means that your dopamine has been kind of used up. And it reminds me to take this into a little bit of a dark turn, but people who are addicted to stuff like cocaine and how they don’t have that capacity, and even some other less dangerous drugs but sometimes ––
Or like pornography. Pornography does the same to your brain.
Yeah, and you can’t –– and then the next day, when something that normally would pack enough punch to bring you excitement, joy, exuberance, whatever you want to call it, it just can’t do it. Now, when you replace those behaviors over time and now you’re doing all the meetups, how do you notice yourself feeling differently about your place in life or anything else that you experience?
So the way that I kind of measure it is, and I know this –– I noticed my dog. The way that I measure it, and it may sound a little silly, is I will try things like what I mentioned, like I’ll eat my favorite ice cream or I’m on a date and just having someone just touch you on your arm. Does that stimulate you? Do you feel something? And if you can, if you’re just not feeling the feelings that you know should work and have worked in the past, then I think that’s your huge indicator that you’re actually –– hey, buddy, stop. You’re at your limit. And that’s I think a way that I, at least for me, that’s how I know I’m at a stage where it’s time to do some fasting, it’s time to really address those. And fasting too, and I mean physical, from food, fasting also helps replenish your receptors, your dopamine receptors, so that’s very helpful too, doing a three-day fast.
And so now you’re in a spot where you’re noticing, ever since you made these changes to your life, you’ve cut down on your dopamine fixes through some of this like infinite scrolling that some of these things have come back to being more pleasurable again, more enjoyable, more noticeable.
Yeah, and I think that first moment, like I was on a date a couple weeks ago and just to have somebody kind of grab your hand, I could feel my oxytocin at that point, I could feel that physical change and I knew, okay, I’m in a good place. And then wanting to snuggle with my dog. When I’m not wanting him around me, like he’s irritating me or my cat’s snuggling and I’m like, “Aah, get away,” that, to me, is another clue, like okay, you’re at your limit here. And those are things I’ll start to work on then. And those are my triggers, though, and each –– or my cues, I should say.
And I don’t just mean some general problem, like, oh, there’s just something wrong, but you know what the problem you want to address is.
So there’s something specific.
Yep. And you know that dopamine is the issue, you know that you’re scrolling, you’re on social media too much, you’re watching too much TV, whatever that could be, and noticing that first step, I think, is key. And like you said, second step is identifying what you’re missing. Why are you compelled? Why did you form the habit in the first place? Because that’s just a habit. You’re just in a habit. That’s it. And habits, you can break habits and start new habits, but if you don’t know what you’re addressing, you can’t really fill that need that social media is filling.
And then do you feel like your overall mental state just overall is a lot better than it was before?
Oh, my God, fuck yes. That’s a full on fuck yes.
I mean, I love that. I feel like that phrase says it all. Just the fact that you’ve turned your life around through some of these behavior changes, to cutting down some of these dopamine fixes, is amazing and I love hearing that.
Yeah, yeah. It’s very life changing for me and I feel like, even now, just getting excited about things that, I mean, just were –– it’s like where fun went to die. Dealing with finances was like where fun went to die. But now, because I’m finding the joy in certain things, like cryptocurrency, like I just kind of jumped on that train and it’s scary, you have these ups and downs, but that’s part of the joy of feeling alive, and if it starts to become an addiction, well then that’s where I’m gonna move on to what am I needing at that moment? Am I needing more of an exciting life? So I’m going to go skydiving. Or if I don’t have any money to go skydiving, then I’m going to go for a trail walk up on one of these great mountains. I mean, that’s so exciting. You know what I mean? It just really pulls that competitive, I want to accomplish something out of you. So it depends, again, what do you need? Why are you –– and it’s okay to really, say I’m horny so I want to jump on, you know, it’s okay to acknowledge these things, but until you do, you can’t really go after that.
Yeah, so you need to acknowledge this stuff too. So I want to make sure that we talk about also about your screen time story. Now, you’ve had the courage to kind of shift gears a few times in your life and, recently, you have a story around what I think a lot of people are now starting to realize and try to do, which is we spend, I don’t even know how to say this, how many hours the average person spends in front of screens, but that depends very much on age and other demographics, but there are some younger demographics that are on social media six, nine hours a day and kind of messing up mental health. So where does your story with your screen time begin?
So just building off what you just said, there’s even more to that, like we watch screen time because we go to work and we’re working with data, we’re working on computers, and then we got to be educated on our job and so we have more screen time, and then we want to Zoom with our family or a loved one who’s now working, more screen time, and now we’re on social media. I think it’s habit. I think it’s become just a habit. It’s easy. I don’t have to pick up the phone or anything, I could just hit Play. I don’t have to research. And I think this is a danger of AI, love AI, I’ve always loved AI. I was working with chat boxes even way before ChatGPT, the whole ––
And everyone started getting really into it a couple years ago.
Yes, I was doing that like a long –– in fact, we were helping building it like in one of my classes in like 2010 so this is a long time. What I don’t like about where AI is and I’m going to circle around to what you just asked me is that there’s no resources. So, here’s my question, A, B and C, and I want it to equal Z, so put it together for me, ChatGPT, and then it’s like, boom, here it all is for you. There’s no resources. There’s no way for you to realize that that –– like we just talked about the pros and cons of being part of a herd. No one talks about that. It’s like, “No, it’s bad. It’s bad. Group think is awful.” It isn’t because if you think about it, most businesses are conditioning you to group think. Even though they want you to be individual, be that individual when there’s a problem, for the most part, they want you all together in a perfect group think. They want you all working together, thinking alike, building together. And that’s not really –– you see what I mean? You can’t have one and the other. It’s counterintuitive to do that. You can’t build a group think group and then, at the same time, ask for, “You know, you need to stand up if you see a problem,” It won’t work. And so I feel like when we’re asking these questions to AI, we’re not having to do our work to find out if how many researchers actually agree with that? How many reports, legit research, and I’m talking double blind experiment, not the fake things like ketchup puts out to try to convince you that ketchup is really a vegetable and healthy for you.
Yeah, it’s really good for you.
I mean, it’s like, come on, people. Just do the research. See, AI doesn’t do that for you. It picks out the top things and brings it together. So what I see is a Wikipedia page, like 10 Wikipedia pages it brought together, but at least Wikipedia, it has to list out the resources and you can double, triple check those things.
Yeah, you can go down to the bottom.
Yes. And it’s a little bit of work, but it’s worth it because then you can figure out who you are and what you want. So bringing it around now to like your screen time, we’ve just become –– it’s a habit. That’s all it is. It’s not even something we would do –– if you were in a room with your best friend at a slumber party, honestly, if you weren’t in a habit, would you honestly want to be on your phone or would you want to be talking to the guy that you like or the girl that you like or you’re at the slumber party and you’re playing truth or dare. You want to be on your phone, really?
Yeah ––
I doubt it. No, I doubt it. I seriously doubt you’re going to want to be on your phone texting when the girl you just did truth or dare with, the bottle lands on her and you can do truth or dare and, you know, you want to kiss her, I mean ––
Or, yeah. I mean, I think I’m personally of the belief that, in general, unless the person you end up talking to is one of the most boring people or you’re just on some like all hands meeting that’s just boring as shit, usually you’re building a better connection with the person that’s there. And one of my proudest moments, actually, is that I visited my family for Christmas a couple months ago, and my niece, who is seven, she turns eight pretty soon, probably by the time this episode’s out, she told me, I pulled out a phone to take a picture of Christmas lights, and she said, “I didn’t know you had a phone,” based on her past interactions with me and then I just explained to her, I was like, “Yeah, I do have a phone but when I’m around people, I would much rather interact with the people that are actually physically in front of me.”
Yeah. It’s beautiful. I love that story. And you’re also teaching her something too. You’re not just taking a stand for nothing, and I’m not saying nothing loosely because obviously it’s for you, but I’m saying but there’s ripples to that ––
Yeah, from her perspective.
Right, and that’s going to stick with her. It’s a seed. However that seed’s going to grow, it’s still a seed. No, I love that. And I’ve met friends who, they met online and then they’re online and they’re together online, they’re talking online, they’re at the table online together, because that’s their habit. So that’s what I’m saying, it’s just their habit. And I think that, in a habit, the thing about a habit is once you create a habit, it’s forever. It’s a groove in your brain that is permanent. It’ll never go away. So knowing that about yourself, once you start shifting, the neuroplasticity, as you start shifting, new neurons, new pathways start to grow, new decisions, you’re making a new habit, and it’s kind of like a tree, you see it growing, and your brain only produces so much of this glue that holds these pieces together so it’s got to start pulling from something you’re not using. And if you’re not using that habit anymore, that glue is going to go to the new habit you’re forming. However, don’t ever forget that that habit is always going to exist. So if you start getting lazy, you might start veering to what you feel is easiest. And that’s why these habits, we got to develop our habits around a screen time, and I love the idea of your app is because your app is basically forcing a habit. So one of the biggest problems people have with creating new habits is that, one, it’s like, well, out of sight, out of mind or I forgot or I didn’t have time, I mean, I don’t want to say stupid things but really things that should not matter but do.
Yeah, until it’s mapped over that 21 to 66 days, anything could take you out of the habit. You could just forget one day because your morning was slightly different or anything like that.
Like anything, you’re right. Any little tweak, it can change. So, at that point, we start habit stacking. So the thing that you enjoy most, like temptation stacking, or any of those, you can start stacking. And then one thing that I’ve always done, just because it’s been who I was since a child, is brush my teeth. I do that every morning. I don’t even think about it. It’s so non-essential to me, it’s just what I do. At night, I brush my teeth. There’s no thought in that whatsoever, I just do it. So I can have it stack on that. When I’m brushing my teeth, now I can declare my intentions tonight. “I am going to only do this much time on Instagram. I’m only going to…” and then how are you going to reinforce that? Well, that could be a temptation stack. So you have to notice, and a lot of people jump –– people forget this one step and that is why are you doing it in the first place? What’s your motive? And when we don’t address the motive, I don’t care what you do, you are not going to stop it. You’re not going to stop doing drugs. You’re not going to stop drinking. You’re not going to stop being addicted to sex or porn or whatever.
Because if you haven’t addressed the motive of why you’re doing it in the first place, you’re not going to meet that need. Share on XAnd your need isn’t bad. See, we make it horrible thing like, “Oh, you’re evil, you’re an addict,” blah, blah, blah. Everybody’s really an addict, if you think about it that way, because we’re all searching to meet what’s our motivation.
Yeah, there’s a motivation. Sometimes it’s escaping something. Sometimes it’s looking for that connection. And one of the things that saddens me a lot about how people, I guess, use some of these apps is that it’s giving them a false idea of connection. So you have your favorite influencer on Instagram, you feel like you’re connecting with that person when you’re not and so you’re deluding yourself into thinking that you’re satisfying that need with that particular behavior. But it takes that awareness to understand it.
And I think the most dangerous, we just don’t talk about it at all. And I think, to me, one of the most dangerous, dangerous things is hormones. So when male and female, and I’m not talking what you identify with, I’m only addressing the biology.
Like what your hormones are or what they aren’t. Yeah, only
Right. Only the biology, nothing else. So, male, female, masculine, feminine, biology. So a woman, this is always funny when I think about this. So if you have a male CEO and a woman CEO, and let’s say they go after their goal and they achieve it and they’re like, “Yes, I won. I got the contract,” and men are like, “Yeah, let’s go. I’m happy. Let’s party. I feel great,” he’s like, “Yes, let’s celebrate. Let’s go after part two,” and a woman CEO, you’ll hear her say, “I just need time for myself now. I just want to spend time with my family now. I just wanna…” Right? So you have these two opposing things and the reason why is because, again, a female, feminine, female biology, she creates oxytocin, estrogen, and she needs that to lower her stress, cortisol. And when a woman is in her testosterone, meaning she’s doing masculine things like being a CEO, running a business, being a leader, all that is masculine and, again, not talking about identifying, that’s a masculine energy, you’re creating, your body is physically producing testosterone. So as a woman, too much testosterone too long, I start to build too much cortisol, which makes me very stressful, which makes me full of anxiety, depression, it spirals, it gets worse and worse and worse and worse. Now, for a man, if he does masculine things, he’s creating more testosterone, he’s feeling more manlier, he’s feeling stronger, he’s like, “Yeah, aah!” and he feels great, because testosterone reduces stress, reduces cortisol for male. Well, woman, it doesn’t. So what does she need to do? She needs to socialize and connect. She needs to talk about her feelings. Not a problem. I’m not a problem to be solved, I’m a feeling that needs to be validated right now. So, when I’m having a conversation –– like right now, I’m having a very, I feel like it’s a pretty intimate conversation with you. If we were in person, I would be producing oxytocin, estrogen right now, because I’m bonding with you.
And you’re not because it’s on Zoom?
Right. Yeah, but I kind of feel that way because there’s, like you said, there’s that false sense of –– now I don’t know the full research behind it, like how much oxytocin am I creating right now being close to you, talking with you.
Versus if we are doing the same thing, if we were in person, like next to each other.
I’m smelling you. I’m smelling your release of your own hormones that actually affect my hormones.
I see, yeah.
You know what I mean? There’s an energy, there’s a presence, there’s chemistry that we hear about, and it’s impossible for me to pick that up right now. So, without those hormones, we have nothing established other than the lie of my convincing myself the podcast guy, like, “Oh, he’s my best friend because he speaks right to me.” See, that’s only a lie, that’s not real, there’s no hormones that go with that so I’m secretly unsatisfied. I’m over stressed, I’m alone, I’m anxious, I’m depressed because I have none of those real hormones. My body’s not creating those real hormones. Now, I’d be curious, I’d be curious to do, and this is actually what I proposed to my –– because when I finished my dissertation, you have a team that you have to present to so with this team, like I told you, I had to bring in legal because of the situation, everyone was so against therapy being online, I didn’t feel really heard during this time but what I wanted to know is, in virtual reality, if you hug me, how much do I actually release? Do I really? Because when I was in virtual reality, people would come up and they would put their arms around me. Visually, I could almost feel it, like a sensation. Now, was that oxytocin? I don’t know. And that was my proposed study to continue on was do we release the proper hormones for me to actually get what I need to grow as a woman and feel good as a woman or is it all false sense of security? And that was my proposal for where I wanted to go next with my research. Of course, then I left the whole thing because of the whole situation, COVID and became a professor, yeah.
Well, I mean, I think one thing that we do know, and I can say this like speaking to you over Zoom, it’s how I do my podcast, is that we do know for a fact that, right now, we have five senses. I know people have different opinions about whether or not a sixth sense really exists but let’s just say stick with the five that right now we’re only benefiting from two of the five senses, that I can see your face because we’re doing over Zoom and I can hear what you’re saying, but I can’t smell, there’s no touch and taste and anything that could be kind of around in the area, so we can kind of deduce that there is some amount of limitation in how much I’m experiencing from you, you’re experiencing from me based on this particular venue. And this venue is two of the five senses. Most online interactions, first of all, most online interactions are not synchronous if you’re like watching someone’s video so that automatically creates another limitation there, and then also, the vast majority of it, if you’re reading a forum or if you’re reading someone’s article, you’re really down to only one of the five senses and, oftentimes, you’re not even that focused so there’s even more limitations. But understanding that can make it kind of clear that you’re not getting anywhere near the full experience even though you’re trying to like think in your brain that you are.
Yeah, that’s so true. And I would love –– I would have loved to further do that because how much can you do with virtual reality? Can you add in, because we were moving also towards augmented reality so I could put on a pair of glasses, be talking to you, see my family in Indiana at the same time, and be present in my apartment here, right? Augmented reality can bring all those together. And then one of the things I also was looking at was could we introduce smell? Can we introduce –– and how do we introduce physical touch, the sensation?
Yeah, the actual ––
Yeah, I think there –– so I used to love going to this workout facility called BODY20 and they hook you up in this body suit and it stimulates your muscles, contracts your muscles so much, my weight –– he hands me this little like stress ball, he’s like, “Here’s your weights.” I’m like, “I think I can do more than this.” He’s like, “No, trust me,” and he was right. I mean, when he contracted all my muscles, I was like, “Aah.”, all right.
My gosh, yeah, yeah.
It was the best workout I’ve ever had in 15 minutes, seriously, but a suit like that, so when you look at player one, Ready Player One, this was before Ready Player One, we’re talking about these suits that we could wear that would help with physical touch and does it promote hormonal release? Does it affect you that way? Because it all comes down, to me, when I look at all the research, it comes down to hormones, your body’s reaction, all right? Now you can talk and convince your stuff, like if I’m thinking about being rejected, it’s hitting my pain centers, like literally, if a girl rejects you, you can take an aspirin and help that. Seriously. It affects your actual pain, the same pain centers if you stub your toe, you can take an aspirin and it will help with the feelings of rejection because it’s the story you’re telling yourself. So if I’m telling myself that story, then is it possible that I could tell myself that I’m really being hugged? I don’t know. See, if you can release those correct hormones, you’re going to get the relief and the release that you need to feel good every day about yourself, to wake up with those hormones being balanced. I don’t know. I mean, these are questions that –– I know.
Yeah, these are questions that, yeah, we will have to answer over time. Speaking of time, unfortunately, we’re running short on time but, Joan, thank you so much for coming on and telling us about, first of all, a story where you’re able to pivot and move on from situations where it really didn’t feel right, but also how we can think about a lot of these things in our lives in a way where we’re not shaming ourselves, because one of the worst emotions we have is –– guilt and shame, I think, are the worst emotions we have right now.
And regret.
Yeah. So prevalent everywhere. And then also talking a bit about how we can change or wrap our brains around some of these habits that are keeping us spending far too much time online, which is impacting our general mental health because of the type of content that we’re all generally consuming.
Right. I think the biggest question is you have to have an alternative. It doesn’t matter what you do. Like I said, we’re back to motivation, your motive, and what do you need? What do you really need? And most of us don’t. When I ask people even now, like these network events that we met at, what do you need? “I don’t know. I’m looking for maybe an investor. I’m looking for help. I’m looking for…” It’s like, okay, well, what do you need? “Well, I don’t know. Maybe I just need –– I need probably money.” See, we don’t know what we need and without knowing what we need, we can’t create the desire which creates the motivation, and desire is affected by dopamine and dopamine is what triggers us to want to keep getting online, want to keep calling that person we shouldn’t be calling, eating what we shouldn’t be eating, smoking what we shouldn’t be smoking, it’s all dopamine. Dopamine is the driving factor behind all this. So if you don’t address that, it doesn’t matter what the fuck, sorry, it doesn’t matter what the fuck you do, you’re going to replace one drug with another. So like suicide, people don’t understand that when you make the conscious decision that I want to die, you’ve actually created a groove that’s never going away. And when you created that groove, that means it’s always going to be an option, like taking drugs, always you’re go-to option.
Always going to be, even if you don’t do it for years.
Yeah, because dopamine isn’t just a reward, meaning I do A and then I get the reward. No. Dopamine is I’m anticipating A, I’m all spiked out on dopamine, and just the anticipation is enough to get me to keep doing the same thing. Even if I don’t get the reward, I’m still doing it just because I get that dopamine fix.
And there are so many examples I can think of around that. Too many to state right here. But, yeah, thank you so much. And I also just want to end by saying thank you to all my listeners out there, anyone that’s tuning in and just thank you for spending some time with us and wanting to better yourself.
Yes.
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About Dr. Joan M Savage
Dr. Joan M Savage graduated Phi Kappa Phi with her PhD from Florida Institute of Technology, College of Engineering and Science, Department of Computer Engineering and Sciences in Human-Centered Design. She also holds degrees in Media Arts & Science/Human-Computer Interaction, M.S.; Communication, B.S.; and Psychology, B.S. Her studies included researching proactive approaches to mental wellness and suicide intervention and prevention. She has several publications pertaining to innovative concepts for health and wellbeing using virtual reality, video games, and virtual social environments.
She is a writer, researcher, investor, teacher, actress, martial artist, Kilimanjaro survivor, pickleball novice, and a skyscraper enthusiast.
Currently, Dr. Savage is finishing the sequel to her first book titled, Red Fever. Red Fever is a heart-pounding, fast paced, murder-mystery that will keep your head spinning! It was published in 2023 and is available on Amazon. Book two will be released later this year.