Cultivating intentional media use habits is the key to thriving in the digital age.

Hey there,
My name is Josanne Buchanan and I am a youth media and technology researcher, a developmental psychology doctoral student, and a lifelong media lover committed to creating a digital media landscape that helps all people to thrive.

I create accessible, practical, and research-informed content and resources that help you to use media and technology in ways that support your peace, productivity, and purpose in the digital age.

When you’re a student, being the only one of your friends without a social media account is challenging. But for six years, I made it work.

In middle school, I was concerned that using social media would eventually compromise my focus, study habits, and academic achievement. To prevent this from happening, I made an odd promise to myself: I would cut down on my use of entertainment media (films, TV, video games) and stay far away from social media until I started university. Despite being a lifelong media lover who fiercely believed in the transformative power of storytelling, I was hearing a lot of talk about the negative effects of social media and television. So, I joined the “let’s vilify media” team.

A few years later, once I settled into university and mellowed out a bit, I decided it was time to plug in. I created my first Instagram and Facebook accounts to connect with friends and university clubs. I joined LinkedIn to clarify my career plans and build a community with thought leaders and professionals who inspired me. Bit by bit, I opened up to entertainment-centered media habits like streaming music, series, and films.

Things were fun at first.

I found energizing, like-minded communities of inspiring professionals on LinkedIn (which is still my favourite social media platform)
I finally began to cultivate a sense of style by creating outfit mood boards on Pinterest (after years of wearing branded potato sacks)

But then 2020 came and, despite knowing better, I succumbed to the same poor media use habits I had avoided years before. My screen time skyrocketed during the lockdown and I experienced almost every marker of “poor media use” habits: intense FOMO and milestone anxiety from comparing myself to complete strangers on social media, displacing my hobbies with hours of screentime, getting close to burnout due to exposure to bad news and nighttime doom scrolling… my media appetite changed, and I began to crave media content and digital spaces that compromised my wellbeing. My views on beauty, success, love, health, and productivity became distorted as I chased dopamine highs through internet rabbit holes and lost sight of my own standards.

I was so frustrated and ashamed. How could I have allowed myself to land here? At rock bottom? After entering adulthood with such a strong grasp of media’s effects on mental health?

After spending way too many late nights zombified on my devices, I decided that something needed to change. In my mind, I had three options:

The easy, fear-driven option: completely disconnect from all forms of media, staying safe from media’s harmful effects but also leaving behind the fulfillment, purpose, and community I found online.
The complacent, “settling” option: maintain my current media habits, accepting both the pains and the pleasures of media use and continuing the cycle of emotional drainage and overstimulation as my social media feeds contort and shift their offerings to fit fickle algorithms.
The effortful, intentional option: put in the work, learn from digital wellness research, and optimize my relationship with media so that I can avoid the negative effects while not missing out on the best that media has to offer.

I chose the third option and started my digital wellness journey.

I dove deep and did tons of research:

I spent my downtime learning about digital wellness, digital minimalism, digital detoxing, and dopamine fasts, exploring different ways to divest from my compulsive, non-intentional, momentum-fueled media use habits.

As a children’s media and technology researcher and consultant, I ran workshops and wrote reports for children’s media and youth media research organizations across North America (Center for Scholars and Storytellers, Joan Ganz Cooney Center, Children’s Media Lab). Through working side by side with leading media and tech experts and creators, I deepened my understanding of the many ways in which social media, television, and films affect youth wellness.

Through my psychology courses and assignments, I learned about media’s myriad effects on our individual and social well-being, as well as the psychological basis behind the mental, social, and emotional experiences we have while engaging with all forms of media.

I gradually learned how to improve the ways in which I used media platforms and engaged with media content.

And I came away with 4 discoveries:

Most of us feel worried, uncertain, and small when facing life. Certain media engagement habits can exacerbate these feelings: Many of us teens and twenty-somethings have pounding concerns about feeling “behind in life,” being unlovable, and lacking solid plans for the future. For most of us, happiness, success, excellence, beauty, and productivity are moving targets that we’re constantly sprinting to hit. Social media and entertainment media are great spaces, but they often amplify these concerns through their designs and content. Social comparison is a beast that thrives in many online spaces, and it is linked to some of the most pervasive negative mental health effects of media use.

Digital wellness strategies are not accessible to youth: Most of us begin engaging with media platforms and content well before we understand how to make the most of our relationships with media. Most up-to-date digital wellness insights are hidden behind paywalls or coated in academic jargon. Some of the publicly available, youth-targeted guides that exist can come across as didactic, impersonal, or out of touch.

We need youth voices to inform media discussions, creation, and policies: When we have more diverse voices working in tech, media, and research spaces, our creation of media content and platforms becomes more holistically centered on wellness.

And my favourite discovery: When we approach media with love instead of fear, wildly amazing things happen in all aspects of our lives.
- We dive deeper into community-building and relationships, and activate the full power of networks.
- We engage in boundless learning and discovery that enhances our feeling of purpose
- We access vast resources that keep us motivated to run towards our goals

Why Screenspire?

I created Screenspire from a place of recovery and empowerment; to provide busy teens and young adults with high-quality, research-informed, accessible strategies for building healthy daily media use habits that support your mental health, goal-setting, healthy relationships, and coming of age. By doing so, I’ll unplug the anxieties that come from digital media use and inspire all of us to live fulfilling and purpose-driven lives online and offline.

None of us should have to navigate the journey of understanding media effects and establishing healthy digital media use habits alone. Nor should we have to hit mental health, physical health, or social health “rock bottoms” in order to rebound into digital wellness. We have the research and tools needed to engage with all forms of media in ways that support healthy, fulfilling, and purposeful lifestyles. Through Screenspire, I make this research accessible with down to earth videos, interactive cross-platform social media posts, and easy-to-read articles that promote research-informed digital wellness habits.

We’ll discuss the unique role of media in the challenges we all experience — loneliness, academic pressure, envy, and more — through a research lens, and effective strategies for navigating these challenges while coming of age in the digital age.

Additionally, to create a media landscape that prioritizes wellness for all, it is crucial to get a plethora of diverse youth voices into key technology, media, and wellness research spaces and careers. To support members of the Screenspire community in pursuing media and tech careers, every week on Instagram I will provide you with detailed information about an impact-making tech, media, or media research career.

Ready to get plugged into down-to-earth digital wellness strategies? You’re in the right place.

Let’s approach media with love. Not fear.