Dr. Thomas Joyner is a clinical psychologist, professor of psychology, and investigator with the Military Suicide Research Consortium. He is the author of Lonely at the Top: The High Cost of Men's Success, a book that explores the problem of male loneliness, and how it can begin in a man s 30s and get worse as he advances through middle age.
00:08:32.720And when you're 20 or 30, that's not maybe such a big deal.
00:08:39.860You know, maybe relationships are sort of provided to you by college or school or work or what have you.
00:08:45.140But in the 30s and 40s and 50s and beyond, cultivation and nurturance of these relationships is key.
00:08:54.000And men, by and large, aren't great at that.
00:08:58.820And it's very much to their detriment.
00:09:00.460Well, that's probably, you know, that idea that as you get older, you know, I mean, people have seen those articles that there's been this uptick in the number of men in America who are dying by suicide.
00:09:10.620And you're like, well, you know, they're probably in their 20s or 30s.
00:09:13.060But no, it's like they're in their 50s or 60s.
00:09:34.640And also, it's on the increase in those age groups.
00:09:38.480But nevertheless, the trend still holds that the older you are, the more vulnerable you are.
00:09:43.760Obviously, that's true of a lot of things having to do with health.
00:09:47.400It's definitely true with regard to suicide, too.
00:09:49.840Well, so let's, this idea, you know, your idea, the interpersonal theory of suicide, the desire to want to die by suicide is a sense of alienation, social alienation, or loneliness.
00:10:02.060And so this kind of segue nicely to what we're going to talk about today, about male loneliness.
00:10:06.680What, how do you define, like, in your work, how do you, what is loneliness?
00:10:12.460I mean, I think there are at least two facets that can be useful to draw out, although they're very related to one another.
00:10:20.080And it has to do with the difference between an interior experience, you know, what somebody feels like inside, versus, you know, what you might call an exterior experience, or what things are, you know, what things are like objectively.
00:10:33.000In other words, there could be a person, for instance, who objectively, in terms of their exterior experience, they have a lot of connections, or they have family members around, they have friends, etc.
00:10:45.760But on the inside, on the interior, they feel desperately alienated and lonely nonetheless.
00:10:52.980The idea, I guess I'd put it, is that having people around is no guarantee to prevent loneliness.
00:10:59.680It helps, certainly, but it's no guarantee.
00:11:03.680So I think that distinction between subjective and objective experiences of how peopled one's experiences are, I think that's a useful distinction.
00:11:14.060And it solves some mysteries, because you can talk to families of bereaved people who are bereaved by suicide, and they'll often say things like, but we were there for him on that very day.
00:11:50.480Yeah, and I think it's a phenomenon that most people immediately recognize.
00:11:58.200It's happened to most, if not all of us, that there can be people around.
00:12:03.440There can be people who really seem together in something.
00:12:07.140Maybe it's their belief in a religion or in a political idea, and you don't feel it, and it can be very lonely, even though you're objectively, obviously not lonely in a literal sense, because there's a crowd around you.
00:12:23.260You can still be quite lonely despite that.
00:12:37.620I mean, I don't know the answer to that, if anyone really does, to the depths of the question.
00:12:43.740I mean, the main thing that occurs to me is that that interior world, it's certainly influenced by the exterior world, but it's got many other internal influences.
00:12:54.800You know, when things go awry internally, like if somebody's in the midst of a major depressive episode, that illness can be so powerful that it just unpeoples the interior world, even if the exterior world is full of love and care.
00:13:12.140It's a very puzzling paradox, but the illnesses, like major depressive disorder, can be so powerful that they unpeoples the interior world, even of a very peopled person's experience.
00:13:28.480So that's one type of loneliness where, objectively, you're not lonely because there's people around you, but you feel lonely subjectively, the interior.
00:13:38.600But you also talk there's another type of loneliness, and you call this alone but oblivious.
00:13:43.180So these are, and this happens oftentimes with men, men who, they don't have a lot of people around them, no friends, hardly any other social contacts outside maybe their wife and their kids.
00:13:52.920And they don't feel, and they don't feel, so objectively, they look lonely, but they don't feel lonely.
00:13:58.380That's right, and that can be dangerous because it can surprise usually men, anyone, a person, but usually men.
00:14:07.380It can surprise them because their obliviousness can lift in their late 50s, 60s, or 70s.
00:14:15.260But by then, a lot of the architecture or the machinery that's needed to initiate and cultivate and sustain relationships, a lot of that is just atrophied.
00:14:29.900And so people are left at a pretty tragic dilemma of now recognizing how alone one feels and being unable or feeling unable to do much about it.
00:14:46.600That can especially be the case if someone has invested most of their adulthood, not in relationships, but into work.
00:14:55.500I would be the last to counsel against investment and work.
00:15:01.020I think it's crucial and key, but it can be overdone, and if it's overdone to the exclusion of relationships, once that work starts to end or recede, people can be left in a very painful dilemma, stuck in a very painful dilemma.
00:15:18.880A lot of men are stuck that way, and then what's left is their spouse, and then if something happens to her or if there's a separation, divorce, that's a very precarious situation.
00:15:32.660And it pertains to both sexes, but a little bit more so than men overall.
00:15:37.200So it sounds like this alone but oblivious.
00:15:39.400So subjectively, you don't feel lonely, but objectively, you are.
00:15:44.360You might not have any problems, but whenever they become a problem, they become a problem really fast.
00:15:49.120You kind of delay the problem, and then it just hits you really hard.
00:15:52.520You suddenly realize, oh boy, I am really lonely, and this is a problem.
00:15:57.460Yeah, it's a brittle state because the reality is that the person's relationships are atrophying around them,
00:16:04.400as is the ability to initiate those relationships in the first place.
00:16:08.500And then it's sustainable for a while, even decades, via connection to work or to a main relationship like that with a spouse.
00:16:19.920But I guess the point that I was trying to drive at in that book, at least one of them,
00:16:24.780is that to have one connection or even two, to say work and to a spouse, it's like being in space.
00:16:33.900And if you've just got one connection and a brittle one at that to the spaceship, if you're on a space walk, that's precarious.
00:16:50.960They work on building up that redundancy in their connections to life via relationships with family and friends and work, too, and their spouse, too.
00:17:01.100That multiple connection just builds in safeguards and redundancies that can be lifesaving when one of the initial connection frays.
00:17:11.860Well, short of contributing to the desire to want to die by suicide, this isolation, this alienation, this feeling of loneliness, what other bad effects does loneliness have on men?
00:17:24.520It has some of the most profound health effects of anything on men and women, too.
00:17:32.520There are studies documenting that the effects of loneliness on physical health and on mortality, those effects for loneliness are even stronger than what they are for things like smoking or obesity
00:17:47.100or other plainly medical or biologically relevant threats.
00:17:53.840The idea that I take away from that is that loneliness is a biological threat, too, and at least as powerful as something like smoking in terms of rendering people at risk for physical health problems and psychological problems, too, for sure.
00:18:08.380So, I mean, I think one of the arguments that I made in that book and that many others have made, too, is that the toxic effects, that the physical, biological toxic effects of loneliness are underestimated.
00:18:22.480They're at least as strong as something like smoking daily, regular, you know, pack a day smoking.
00:18:28.560We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.
00:18:34.300So, I think we've all read articles, you know, in the past, I would say, decade where you'd see things like increasing loneliness in America.
00:18:42.600Do you know when they do these studies on loneliness, are they talking about that subjective feeling of loneliness or are they talking about that objective loneliness?
00:18:51.200I think they're probably talking about both.
00:18:53.660And I think the point does apply pretty well to both.
00:18:57.300And that stands to reason, I think, because these two things are correlated with one another.
00:19:02.640I mean, one of my points is that they're not perfectly correlated with one another.
00:19:06.300And so, people can feel alone in a crowd or alone but oblivious.
00:19:11.220But mostly people who are lonely know it and feel it and are by themselves.
00:19:18.580And so, I think those studies are probably with regard to both.
00:19:21.400Many of the measures in the loneliness area, especially the brief ones that can be easily administered to hundreds of thousands of people, they tend to focus a little more on subjective loneliness.
00:19:36.320You know, how felt and experienced aloneness than they do on objective.
00:19:42.240But I think they're probably targeting both.
00:19:55.140I mean, I'm not really one to castigate something like social media use.
00:20:00.700I have colleagues who do and others who don't.
00:20:05.200That's actually an interesting subject of controversy.
00:20:09.400But I just see it as a two-edged kind of thing.
00:20:12.820Social media, that is, where I think it can be alienating.
00:20:16.480And I think it can pull people into screens and away from actual relationships, including relationships, by the way, with the world around,
00:20:26.540like nature and exercise and sunlight and things like that.
00:20:31.700But on the other hand, I think it can be good.
00:20:33.580I think it can bring people together, social media.
00:20:35.840I think it really does connect people socially.
00:20:39.160So I just think it's a little bit of a draw in terms of its negative and positive consequences.
00:20:47.880That may be a small contributor to increases in loneliness.
00:20:51.900You can make kind of the same argument about technology in general.
00:20:55.580It's that it's got a lot to it that's positive and even connecting, but it can be alienating.
00:21:58.300But in the book, you highlight a few theories or ideas of what you think is contributing to male loneliness.
00:22:04.100Particularly that loneliness that happens to men when they get to their 50s or 60s, where we see that increase in death by suicide because they get so lonely.
00:22:13.940And the first idea you have is that male loneliness is caused by men being spoiled when it comes to relationships.
00:22:23.460I think the way that society is structured, and rightly so, actually, is that young people, in general, tend to be spoiled about relationships.
00:22:34.740In the sense that you can be passive as a young child, an infant, certainly.
00:22:42.600But as a very young child and then into adolescence, you can be pretty passive, and yet opportunities for relationships happen anyway.
00:22:54.660They're just kind of provided for you via family reaching out and being very active, via school and related groups of people.
00:23:07.220Obviously, there are some kids who are exceptions, but generally speaking, that's true.
00:23:12.440And then in adolescence, whether it's a workforce or something like a university setting or college setting or community college setting, same processes.
00:23:25.340And then that sort of serving up of relationships starts to go away, on average, into the 20s and 30s.
00:23:33.020And it's at that point that an active stance towards really reaching out for new relationships and reaching back to sustain old relationships, that becomes crucial.
00:23:46.680And I just think men more than women are spoiled out of doing that.
00:23:50.940And they can cruise on it and coast on it for a while, but often it catches up with them in time.
00:23:57.500And in time, it ends up often being in the 60s and 70s.
00:24:07.200If you look at kids, young kids, like they're seven or eight or nine, boys and girls, they have the same number of friends, basically.
00:24:13.660Both of them are great because they're in school, they've got their friends at school, they've got sports.
00:24:18.920But if you ask those same boys and girls when they're 60 or 70, how many friends you have, there's a disparity.
00:24:25.240The women are going to have more friends, but the men aren't going to have as many friends because they stopped taking – well, they took relationships for granted.
00:24:34.440Like they just thought they just happened, but they reached a certain point in their life where you had to actually be active about your friendships.
00:25:32.060And it's been very rewarding because intellectually, you occasionally pick up a new idea, but socially, you're just introduced to a whole new group of people,
00:25:42.680people who are really a delight, whom you'd never have met if you just stayed on autopilot and did the passive thing.
00:25:50.000So that's one aspect of being open to friendships is openness to new relationships.
00:25:57.020But arguably more important is the reaching back to rekindle or to maintain relationships that were really important back in the day.
00:26:08.540I think there's a special power to the friendships that are forged in the age, between the ages of, say, 10 and 20.
00:26:20.460And a lot of people can think of people who were really important to them back then.
00:26:25.540I mean, crucially important to them back then, whom they haven't reached out to in decades, years at least, sometimes decades.
00:26:34.720And it's not that hard to just pick up a phone, especially these days with the Internet, and reconnect with those people.
00:26:42.620And the other thing I can say from personal experience is when you do that, I guess some people fear that it'll be awkward.
00:26:55.300My experience has been completely contrary, where sometimes over the course of 30 years, with no contact over 30 years, immediately one just clicks back into that same rhythm, that same familiarity, that same comfort.
00:27:12.400I think there's a special power to friendships like that.
00:27:14.920So that's the other form of relationship maintenance, I guess, would be the word that I think is arguably even more important than being open to new relationships.
00:27:26.300I actually had that experience of reconnecting with an old friend a few weeks ago.
00:27:30.280Out of the blue, my old college roommate texted me, and he's like, is this Brett's phone number still?
00:27:36.200And I said, oh, hey, it's great to hear from you.
00:28:00.060This is not for everybody, of course, but I've just made a real point of showing up to high school and college reunions.
00:28:07.160And that's where you really see it is, you know, there are people there who you haven't seen in 20 years, 25 years, 20 and 30 years.
00:28:17.440I've just been amazed at how it doesn't matter.
00:28:20.180You just pick up that same easy rhythm and rapport, just like when you were 15.
00:28:26.440It's just, it's very pleasant and fun.
00:28:30.460And it does make, it does improve your mood.
00:28:34.740And then if you do that serially and maintain that across the different relationships, I think it maintains mood.
00:28:43.400You said it maintained your mood for that one example for days.
00:28:46.800But I think if you do this serially, you start to multiply that and it becomes, you know, it maintains mood for weeks and months and years.
00:28:58.240I can't think of one example where I've reached out and it backfired.
00:29:02.840I mean, I guess these days things are fraught with politics and such, but I would counsel putting all that aside and just focusing on the friendship and the comfort and the easy rhythm and familiarity of the friendship back in the day and trusting that at least some of that will revive if you just take the effort to reach out.
00:29:24.540Well, one of the reasons you hypothesize that women tend to be better than men at maintaining relationships in adulthood is that men, if you're speaking in generalities, tend to take a more instrumental approach to the relationships.
00:29:38.040And it's also fair to continually emphasize that they're, you know, that generalizations are, you know, always subject to criticism.
00:29:48.400I mean, that, that, that, that's fair, but the data also, what's also fair is to face the objective data.
00:29:54.620And they're very clear that, yeah, these are, these are true trends where men tend to be more like that than, than women to their benefit sometimes.
00:30:06.800I mean, being instrumental pays off, can pay off, uh, and I actually encourage it.
00:30:14.600I just don't think it's a good thing in extreme excess to the, to the degree that you neglect other things like the relational aspect of humans.
00:30:24.900You know, that, that's, that's dangerous and that, that's going to catch up with, with, with you sooner or later in my view.
00:30:31.260Yeah, that instrumental approach to life, you know, that's what allows men to, you know, get a good job, you know, buy a home, you know, establish themselves, right?
00:30:40.580You have to like, you're just thinking about what you got to do to, to get those things.
00:30:45.400But I think the case you made is that you have to temper that.
00:30:48.440You can't just make your whole pursuit in life, money and status and work.
00:30:52.740Because if you do, you're going to end up, you know, alone in the, you know, have that alone in the crowd or the alone, but oblivious thing going on.
00:31:00.740And, you know, moreover, if you, if you do overdo it with the instrumental kind of approach in the best case, you'll be, you know, financially successful or professionally successful and lonely, but that's the, that's the best case.
00:31:35.220That that's, that's disastrous for, for health in the last half of life.
00:31:40.340Men are just making that bet more than women and it's, it's, it's a risky bet and there's no need for it, especially when our natures are such that it's just natural to relate to one another.
00:31:51.880It's, it's an unsafe, risky, unnecessary bet in my view.
00:31:58.720And, and men make it more, more frequently than women.
00:32:01.400Women make it too, but men, men definitely make it more frequently.
00:32:04.380Yeah, I was thinking about that idea of instrumentality coming at the expense of relations, you know, we're coming up on Christmas, made me think of Scrooge, Ebenezer Scrooge.
00:32:12.980And he's like the epitome of that, right?
00:32:14.420Like he just focused on money, money, money.
00:32:17.760And then, you know, he sees the, his future self and like, no one comes to his funeral and people are just stealing the bed curtains from his bed.
00:32:43.680The other thing that I might add here is that it can seem a little bit Pollyannish or, or cliched or naive maybe to say, don't worry about work or, you know, achievement or money.
00:32:56.360Don't worry about that relationships or everything.
00:32:58.920That's not really what I'm saying though.
00:33:00.540What I'm saying is go ahead and work 10 hours a day and, and keep that up.
00:33:05.940But as you do that, you can weave in relationships.
00:33:09.960I mean, you can work a 10 hour day and then go home and text your best friend from college or high school.
00:33:30.760And that's kind of what I'm going for is, is I think things get out of balance for some people who end up in crisis or even in the disastrous situation of suicide death.
00:33:49.880Well, another type of loneliness or cause of loneliness that can happen to some men is men who they make their focus, you know, money and status, climb the corporate ladder, and they find themselves at the top of the ladder of the pile, the pyramid.
00:34:04.200And you think, oh man, you look at these people, man, that guy's got it all.
00:34:18.720I mean, have you counseled people like, you know, CEOs or anything like that where they've, they're at the pinnacle of success, but they just feel completely miserable because they're incredibly lonely?
00:34:29.500And, you know, I think one of the things that feeds into that is, is that when you get to those levels of achievement, you know, in terms of, you know, whatever it may be, creative endeavors or professional achievement or wealth or whatever, you start to elevate yourself out of social circles.
00:34:50.600And there, there are people who, who just don't think they can relate to you because of, you know, you're, you're, you're just elevated beyond that.
00:34:58.520That's a danger, I think, of a very high achievement, but that there's a remedy for that.
00:35:04.200You know, one is, is signaling to people that, you know, despite the fact of the achievement or the fact of the wealth, it's just not true.
00:35:10.820It's just not true of, of who you are.
00:35:13.200I think you can signal that in your demeanor and comportment.
00:35:16.820But, but I also think that that's yet another reason to reach back to the friends in college, because they knew you back then when you weren't, whatever, a CEO or a great artist or any of that.
00:35:29.180They knew you when you were just some guy.
00:35:31.380And I think that there's great value in that, underestimated value.
00:35:35.800I haven't studied it rigorously, but in talking with my own social circles,
00:35:39.580I've been impressed by how, how few of the people that I know remain in contact with their best friend from when they were 15, for example.
00:35:51.380Pretty common not to be in contact with that person.
00:35:54.920The idea, I guess, being that you've grown apart or grown out of that, I suppose that can happen.
00:36:00.800But I've seen it too many times where, despite differences, despite growing in different directions, there's still that easy, familiar, knowing, understanding, rapport that just kicks right back in.
00:36:15.440And it's, I think it can be vital to, to thriving and flourishing.
00:36:20.100So we've talked some, some reasons why, what causes male loneliness.
00:36:29.500They don't learn how to actively foster or maintain relationships until it's too late.
00:36:36.000Or they, they get distracted with, you know, good things like work and, and money and, and status.
00:36:43.260Like those things are, can, can be good, but like, they just, they focus on that only at the detriment of the relationships.
00:36:48.500So when men, when, once they, they start experiencing that emotional loneliness, subjective feeling of loneliness, in your research, how do men typically cope with loneliness?
00:37:00.480I mean, imagine, you know, women probably reach out to people.
00:37:05.680It depends on, I mean, there's a, a healthy reaction and the unhealthy reaction.
00:37:11.260And unfortunately, men tend towards the unhealthy reactions of turning to alternative sources of seeming support or seeming connection.
00:37:21.860Things like alcohol, alcohol and drug abuse.
00:37:26.660Things like sexual contact, absent real relationships or sexual contact that damage existing relationships.
00:37:37.320And any number of other kind of distractions, that's kind of how I view all those things is, as, as distractions from what really is our lifeblood.
00:37:47.800And that's true relationships with, with people who are part of us, family, friends, friends from back in the day.
00:37:56.540And so that's an unhealthy move in response to this growing awareness of, of loneliness.
00:38:03.500A good way to use loneliness is just like you use physical pain.
00:39:01.920I think you mentioned this in the book, oftentimes a response to male loneliness, we think about, well, you just need to get these guys into therapy and they'll start talking about their emotions and opening up and that will solve it.
00:39:13.400And you, you're kind of dubious about that solution.
00:39:46.760And men, I think can be, you know, on average, a pretty bad fit for traditional forms of psychotherapy.
00:39:54.060And so, I think we need to be creative to engage and, you know, just, just kind of small behavioral fixes along the lines of what we, what we've been discussing, I think, are at least as powerful as traditional, as trying to convince men to stick with traditional psychotherapy.
00:40:15.400And I, unlike most psychologists, I think, think that's completely obvious as to why that's not for everybody.
00:40:21.760And, and I guess, unlike most psychologists, I'm not just willing to throw my hands up and say, well, we'll just focus on the ones who are interested in what we do.
00:40:31.760I don't think that's good enough because it leaves out a whole segment of the population who, who do need help and who we can help with our research and with our work and our clinical techniques.
00:40:44.340We've just got to be thoughtful about adapting them culturally, so to speak, to the culture or to the mindset of different subgroups, in this case, men.
00:40:54.460So, what are some things, and we've talked about a few, like things that people who are feeling lonely, they can do, like just reach out, connect to an old friend.
00:41:01.440But what are some other things that men can do to start reducing loneliness and investing in relationships more that don't involve having to go to therapy if that's not something they want to do or feel comfortable with?
00:41:12.960I mean, the easiest place to start is just, and we do this within the clinic that I direct here in, in Tallahassee, Florida, we, we bargain, we, we make simple bargains with patients that they'll just show up to a gathering of some sort, a gathering that they had not planned to show up to, but they, they bargain that they now will.
00:41:38.760That's all they have to start with is all they got to do is show up.
00:41:42.320It could be anything, any gathering, it can be at a, whatever, a classroom or museum or something else on campus or some sort of sporting event or, or a community organizing event, religious event, political, it doesn't matter.
00:41:54.440Just as long as there are, just as long as there are people that are together.
00:41:57.380The idea being that there is a natural human tendency to reach out and socialize.
00:42:04.800And if you put a particular human with other humans in a group, sooner or later, that natural tendency is going to spark.
00:42:13.340However, if you isolate that human from other ones, it won't spark.
00:42:18.620So a simple idea is to at least get exposure to other people, you know, so that the chance that that natural tendency will spark, you know, is enhanced.
00:42:28.900If people will agree just to do those kinds of things on a regular basis, that alone goes a long way.
00:42:35.780It doesn't immediately cure something like a major depressive disorder or suicidal crisis.
00:42:41.780But what it does start to do is turn the tide over the course of time and repetition to where, you know, a bad major depressive episode, for example, has become less bad, less severe.
00:42:54.200A suicidal crisis has gone from potentially lethal down to, you know, still quite distressed, but now non-lethal.
00:43:24.340Yeah, I mean, the fix there is the same fix that we most all of us have seen with regard to work and meetings and things like that.
00:43:32.060And it's got to be at a distance or remote or virtual.
00:43:37.080You know, in my own view, that's just not the same, quite the same dose as in-person gatherings.
00:43:45.020But that's where we are for the foreseeable, you know, X number of months.
00:43:49.920Until then, you take what is available and it would be, you know, virtual kinds of analogs of the showing up.
00:43:58.500But I've shown up myself to colloquia, seminars and the like around the campus on FSU.
00:44:05.680But it's been from my home via Zoom and similar kinds of technologies.
00:44:10.940You know, it's a peopled experience, but it's not quite the same, but it's better than nothing.
00:44:16.400And, you know, I've also done some distanced sort of socializing, you know, small groups outside, sitting, you know, six or seven feet apart, that kind of thing.
00:44:28.820You know, we're coping, you know, temporarily.
00:44:32.040But the same principles apply of showing up and reaching out a little bit.
00:44:37.220Again, it doesn't have to be that big of an effort, but just the start of showing up and getting those natural kind of processes of connections sparked.
00:44:47.340I think that's, it's a starting point.
00:44:51.640At any rate, at least an initial step.
00:44:54.120Yeah, we got this membership program called The Strenuous Life, and members can get together in their geographic areas for meetups.
00:45:02.160And it's been interesting to see what people do during the pandemic.
00:45:05.020They've done some virtual stuff, but like an activity, like just doing stuff outside in nature, where you, you know, it's relatively COVID safe.
00:45:13.240You can social distance, you're outside.
00:45:14.940Like, so rucking, so, you know, basically hiking with a backpack.
00:45:19.540Or just doing stuff, and I think you even write this in your book, nature can be sort of a part of the process of alleviating or combating loneliness in men.
00:45:30.480I'm very, very drawn to ancestral evolutionary explanations of why our nature is what it is.
00:45:39.200Human nature has these features because of our evolutionary ancestral past.
00:45:43.760And one was small group, deep dependence for survival itself, dependence on each other.
00:45:53.040Another was our close, you know, intuitive, regular, daily relationship with nature.
00:46:00.020You know, with plants, with trees, with animals, with all elements of nature, with water, swimming in water, fishing in it, boating in it, all of these things.
00:46:09.880And in a modern technological world, those things can recede, and I don't think that's in our natures.
00:46:17.300Technology, I'm not an anti-technology kind of person, on the contrary, if anything.
00:46:22.560But, again, it's a similar theme of everything in moderation.
00:46:27.680And technology in moderation, the neglect of nature needs to be moderated, too.
00:46:32.440It's essential to who we were, and therefore, I think, essential to who we are.
00:46:38.020Well, Tom, this has been a great conversation.
00:46:40.660Where can people go to learn more about your work?
00:46:44.160Probably the main site would be via the Department of Psychology at Florida State University.
00:46:50.880If you just Google my name and FSU, I think that'll get you immediately there.
00:46:58.400The books I've written on topics like loneliness, explaining why people died by suicide, things like that, are available, too, at all the usual places, Amazon, etc.