We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Doreen Dodgen-Magee. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with doreen below.
Doreen, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?
When my children were in middle school, flip phones were just making their way onto the scene. As a psychologist, I watched, aghast, as they redirected the attention of groups of children away from eachother and down, toward their devices. Play began to change before my eyes and I watched early online bullying behaviors begin to take shape. Experiences that had normally been entered into with wild abandon became more subdued as phones with cameras came along to participants and dances and parties. The entire landscape of childhood was morphing and my research brain couldn’t look away.
At this time, few people were talking about or paying attention to the radical way that human interaction and intrapersonal development would be impacted by these ever evolving devices and I noted that the platforms were trending down to be used by younger and younger people.
When I went to purchase a major brand’s auto garage toy for my nephew, everything blew up for me.
As a child, my brother and I had the latest version of this toy and loved cranking the elevator up by hand, making car sounds, and manually pushing the little wheeled devices up the big ramp to the top floor parking garage. We spent hours playing pretend in this way.
Thirty years later, wanting to give this wildly creative opportunity to my nephew all I could find were similar products that had lights, push button electronic lifters, and computer generated sounds. As a psychologist, all I could think was that, if we didn’t start thinking about moderation, tech would be everywhere and the development of creativity and ability to function healthfully in a body with limits (our made up car sounds will never be as perfect as those made by a computer chip in a toy) would pay a price.
I wrote to the companies making these toys, asking for them to help me understand their rationale and offer me data about their process. I never heard back.
Fast forward a year or two and I was doing the research, gathering as much of it as I could find on how technology was impacting our sense of self, relationships, and bodies. I began speaking with ever growing audiences and was offered a book deal to write about it.
As a solo practitioner, it was a huge risk to speak out about how technology is impacting us. It was also a risk to take an approach that was neither fully in support of it moving at the pace it did nor fully against it as a part of our lives.
My focus on using technology with intention and moderation while also offering our bodies, hearts, and minds wild, embodied experiences has ended up helping thousands of people live in a world that moves faster than we can keep up.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
The world we live in is fast paced and expects us to be available 24/7. There is no longer ever a need to face boredom or to exist in quiet spaces where we can come back to ourselves.
As a psychologist, working with individuals and curious about how culture shapes its residents, I find myself wishing that I could gaze into the eyes of everyone I meet and help them find access to the wildest version of who they truly are.
Since that isn’t possible, I endeavor in my writing, social media presence, and in talks to large and small audiences, to provide opportunities for building skills that help people tolerate/engage boredom, gain greater emotional regulation and focus, and find more intense joy in their lives.
I do this by curating unplugged experiences, engaging in conversations about how to amplify people’s best uses of tech while dialing down their engagement with those that hurt them. By helping them find and lean into their fullest version of themselves, they find moderating their tech use easy and, actually, fun.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
During the COVID-19 lockdown, everything about what I do changed. Suddenly, engagement with technology wasn’t just a luxury or distraction. Instead, it was a life line for connection, education, entertainment, and more.
I’ve always been able to curate impactful and engaging in person experiences and began getting serious about how to do this in online spaces.
While moving my private practice online, I also began inviting groups into online experience that engaged their entire bodies. I’d send essential oils and specific tea bags ahead of time so that everyone in the Zoom room could be sharing sensory cues.
This offered me the opportunity to have a front row and immersive seat to witness how the lockdown was impacting people.
I ended up writing my second book, Restart: Designing a Healthy Post Pandemic Life about how we might take what we learned and use it in designing healthier embodied lives post pandemic.
Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?
Authenticity. While I am a doctor, I am also a creative and independent soul. I bring pipe cleaners when I am offering a serious lecture so that the audience can fidget and be more engaged as I speak. I bring crayons and paper when I present at Grand Rounds at major medical communities. I ask gymnasiums of 1,000 plus high school students to lay on the floor for a ten minute silent meditation at the end of talks on tech use.
These things get me odd looks when I first introduce them but they are part of who I am at the core and leaning in to them has helped me build a loyal and beloved community.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.doreendm.com
- Instagram: @drdoreendm
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/doreendm/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@drdoreendm
- Other: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Doreen-Dodgen-Magee/author/B07NQDC7T5?ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true&ccs_id=738ed309-1f10-4d72-bb21-c8544555875a
https://www.amazon.com/Audible-Finding-Balance-Digital-World/dp/B09FQG64SW?ref_=ast_author_dp
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