Deviced!: Balancing Life and Technology in a Digital World

(Hardback)

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With current statistics suggesting that the average American over the age of 14 engages with screens upwards of 10 hours a day, the topic of our growing dependence upon technology applies to nearly everyone. While the effects differ at each point of development, real changes to the brain, relationships, and personal lives are well documented. Deviced! explores these alterations and offers a realistic look at how we can better use technology and break away from the bad habits weve formed. Using personal stories, cutting edge research, and anecdotes from youth, parents, and professionals, Dodgen-Magee highlights the brain changes that result from excessive technology use and offers an approach to the digital world that enables more informed and lasting change and a healthier long-term perspective. Given that the reader is living within a culture of ever-changing and advancing technologies, Deviced! is written in such a way that its contents can weather the constantly changing digital landscape by focusing on the concepts of honest assessment and healthy boundary setting rather than on specific technologies or platforms. Deviced! offers a mindful approach to assessing current technology use, breaking bad habits, setting new norms, and re-engaging with life with renewed richness and awareness.

Reviews

Psychologist Dodgen-Magee makes a detail-rich, persuasive case for the need to embrace technology yet also make some conscious decisions about what place we want technology to hold in our lives. The dilemma, as she explains it, is that people feel gratitude for the ways that technology benefits society but many are experiencing niggling questions about how a near-constant engagement with devices affects everyday life. The concerns range from losing touch with the physical senses and having no sense of our larger environs to obesity and social isolation. Take Action sidebars throughout the book offer suggestions for modifying behavior, along with strong reasons for doing so. Peoples lives are changing irrevocably and unintentionally, Dodgen-Magee points out; increased interaction with ones device encourages a blinkered perspective as users merely reflect [their] own little worlds back to [themselves]. The overall message Dodgen-Magee strongly presents is the necessity of moving toward intention regarding ones use of devices and technology. A five-component assessment tool will help users understand their tech engagement and impact and then develop appropriate delay skills. Dodgen-Magee leaves readers with a Ten (RICH) Minutes a Day exercise, useful in its simplicity, grounded in meditation, and firmly directed toward emotional well-being. This educational, encouraging book leaves its audience with a plethora of helpful suggestions. * Publishers Weekly *
A spot-on analysis of screen dilemmas with a fascinatingpsychological spin and focus on solutions. An important read for everyone concerned about helping our screenagers, specifically, andour society in general. -- Delaney Ruston, MD, Pediatrician, Creator and Director of SCREENAGERS: Growing up in the Digital Age
For everyone feeling saturated, seduced, or assaulted by the constant stream of electronic content available at the touch of a button, or finding that they care a little too much how many likes, followers, and comments they garner online, Deviced! is a welcome antidote. Smart, thoughtful, well-researched and practical, Doreen Dodgen-Magee makes a compelling case for learning how to integrate technology wisely into our lives, rather than drown in it. So turn off notifications, shut down the computer and silence your smartphone long enough to read this book. -- Brigid Schulte, Author of the New York Times bestselling Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time, Director of The Better Life Lab at New America
If you want to take responsibility for your screen time, Deviced! is the roadmap! It shows you how to build an internal locus of controlthe most valuable asset you can have. -- Loretta G. Breuning, PhD, author, Habits of a Happy Brain: Retrain Your Brain to Boost Serotonin, Dopamine, Oxytocin, and Endorphin Levels
As technology advances at breakneck speed and we, with our fitness trackers and smart watches, measure and record every step of its progress, Doreen Dodgen-Magee is paying careful attention to the deeper ramifications. With the keen eye of a researcher and the warm heart of a friend, parent, and teacher, Doreen shares invaluable insight into life in the tech age. Doreen is no Luddite. Her goal in this book is not to call us back to calculators and rotary phones, but rather to remind us of the value of "fiery, embodied lives"lives that use technology for our benefit without stunting our own relational and developmental growth. This book is an invaluable tool as all of us wrestle for control over the most important spaces in our lives, the spaces we share with each other. -- Tracy Balzer, Author of Permission to Ponder: Contemplative Wisdom for the Spiritually Distracted
DoreenDodgen-Magee does what most who have written about the impact of technology on youth and adults haven't been able to dorecognize and help us sort out the complexity that technology has introduced into our lives. Rather than build a case for the "evils" or the "gifts," she acknowledges and explains that what we do with technology in our lives is complex and cannot be simply designated as good or bad. Using solid psychological theory and research, she skillfully helps us sort through the results and encourages and helps us understand what it all means to us. While many will talk about the importance of moderation in using technology (or anything really), Dodgen-Magee provides compelling and useful ways to think about how we mightmore consciously engage or not engage with technology. This, however, is not a simple self-help book. It goes much deeper than, "Try these few ideas and it will all be good." You will finish the book understanding yourself better because you have explored the intricacies of what you value and what makes you human. -- Candyce Reynolds, PhD, Chair, Educational Leadership and Policy; Professor, Postsecondary, Adult and Continuing Education, Portland State University
This is a much-needed book for our time. DoreenDodgen-Magee presents a balanced, nuanced, and compassionate view of the impact devices have on our development. The book is not only about our use of devices; it is about our shared humanity. Doreen calls all of us to engage technology thoughtfully and reflectively so we become more relationally connected and more human. You will come away challenged and enriched. -- Todd W. Hall, PhD, Chief Scientist, The Connection Culture Group
Dodgen-Magee extensively explores the impact of digital culture on individual lives in a compassionate and humble way. She approaches the subject with a genuine care for her reader while remaining honest to the real dangers of losing ones embodied self to digital spaces. I love this book because it focuses on mending, not condemning, the technology user to regain an authentic and relational experience in todays society. -- James Haendiges, PhD, Associate Professor, Dixie State College
Deviced! is an essential book for all of us navigatingthe world of technology. Doreen carefully guides the reader to look at the research, the wonders, the dangers, and the opportunities that exist in the digital world. Through storytelling, research findings, and personal experiences, the book unfolds the story of the digital age and gives us information on how technology has impacted all aspects of our lives including our personal relationships, our ways of entertaining and soothing ourselves, and the way our brains receive information. But this is not a doom-and-gloom book. Doreen celebrates the things that technology is bringing us, and she invites us to embrace technology with moderation. Each chapter has a section on taking action--things we can all do to be informed consumers of this wonderful tool. I will be recommending this book to my clients who are all struggling to find balance for themselves and their children in this digital age. -- Lynea Gillen, Co-Founder, Yoga Calm for Kids; Award-Winning Author of Yoga Calm for Kids and Good People Everywhere
Deviced! is a work of hope and compassion. In this rare book, Doreen Dodgen-Magee asks us to notice the altered aliveness devices offer and to consider wholesome alternatives, breaking ground for amiddle path many of us seek. Beginning with an exploration of the seeds of self, the emotional regulation of attachment and separation, and the nurturing role of boredom in the birth of agency, Doreen reminds us that were humans and articulates our innateyearning for play, wonder, love, longing, and a delight in the experience of being alive. This work is unique in not just cataloging tech disruptors but in offering a hand and guidance toward the healing needed to set and monitor attachment boundaries between tech and self. I recommend Deviced! to those working with families experiencing device-induced dysregulationand to anyone seeking compassionate alternatives to their own patterns of tech use. -- Jon Male, Founder, Mindfuls
Doreen Dodgen-Magee, a world authority on the topic of the rational and safe use of the Internet, gracefully reminds us that technology can serve rather than enslave us, that we need to be mindful not to let engagement with devices stealthe richness and joy oflifefrom usand our loved ones. Through her creative Take Action sections in the book, she teaches us that an act as simple as eye contact, safe touch, or respectful dialogue can ground us, open channels of communication, and build bridges of trust, so we can continue to remain human even when deviced. In other words, we dont have to turn into machines or check out when we log in! It is indeed a choice to be human. Deviced!serves as a much-needed and timely guide as to how to do just that in our increasingly digital world. -- Omar Reda, MD, Psychiatrist and Trauma Expert, Founder of the Untangled Model of Psycho-Social Care for Refugees and Trauma Survivors
In a world of conflicting reports telling us technology is either wonderful or wicked, healthy or harmful, Deviced! is a total game changer. Especially for parents. How do we help our kidsand ourselvesuse devices to harness all the advantages technology has to offer our modern lives, while also being savvy and wise about the pitfalls and long-term effects Using the latest research and her decades as both a practicing psychologist and captivating speaker, Doreen Dodgen-Magee banishes our media-related guilt in favor of teaching intentional and actionable practices that enhance our relationships with each other to carry us through this era and beyond. Highly recommend! -- Beth Woolsey, Writer and Popular Parening Blogger of Five Kids Is A Lot Of Kids
Oh, my goodness! Grab this book now! The introduction alone will inspire you to want to share Deviced! with everyone you care about. Although Ive studied medias influence on our lives for my entire career over nearly forty years, this is the first book to profoundly transform my understanding of Big Techs deep impact on a brain-changing

Author Bio

Doreen Dodgen-Magee, PsyD, is a psychologist with over twenty-five years of experience working with individuals and groups in Portland, Oregon. She also maintains a national and international speaking docket and is followed online where she posts challenges for living moderately with tech and wildly in embodied spaces. Doreens main passion is engaging people about how the new digital landscape is shaping humanity. She also is a nationally recognized gun violence prevention activist.