Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age

by Sherry Turkle

Virtual space is a place to explore the self.

offer the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship and then, as the programs got really good, the illusion of friendship without the demands of intimacy.

Just as alone we prepare to talk together, together we learn how to engage in a more productive solitude.

The problem comes if these “reminders” of intimacy lead us away from intimacy itself.

We have built machines that speak, and, in speaking to them, we cannot help but attribute human nature to objects that have none.

I call it the Goldilocks effect: We can’t get enough of each other if we can have each other at a digital distance—not too close, not too far, just right.

we are living moments of more and lives of less

If we are unable to be alone, we will be more lonely.

I worry that I’m giving up the responsibility for who I am to how other people see me.

Research tells us that being comfortable with our vulnerabilities is central to our happiness, our creativity, and even our productivity.

Many sips of connection don’t add up to a gulp of conversation.

Multitasking degrades our performance at everything we do, all the while giving us the feeling that we are doing better at everything.

We can design technology that demands that we use it with greater intention. And in our families, we can create sacred spaces—the living room, the dining room, the kitchen, the car—that are device-free. We can do the same thing at work—for certain meeting spaces and classes.

I have said that technology gives us the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship. Now I worry that it can also give us the illusion of progress without the demands of action.

our fourth-chair conversations are ones that Thoreau could not have envisaged: We are tempted to talk not only through machines but to them, with them.

Just because technology can help us solve a “problem” doesn’t mean it was a problem in the first place.

We have wanted to believe that we are our most creative during “brainstorming” and “groupthink” sessions. But this turns out not to be the case. New ideas are more likely to emerge from people thinking on their own.

self-reflection can help us make our way past this cacophony of internalized voices to a place that feels more authentically “ours.”

I have found that when people use the aspirational self as an object for self-reflection, it can make them feel curiously envious—of themselves.

as computation gained ground as the dominant metaphor for describing the mind, there was a shift from thinking about the self as constituted by human language and history to seeing it as something that could be modeled in machine code.

pay special attention to how the legacy of past relationships persist in the present.

The psychoanalytic tradition suggests that action before self-understanding is rarely a good way to improve one’s situation.

Our quantitative selves leave data trails that are the beginning of our stories, not the results, not the conclusions.

Relationships deepen not because we necessarily say anything in particular but because we are invested enough to show up for another conversation.

Our phones give the false sense of demanding little and giving a lot.

Right now, the apps on our phones are designed to keep us at our phones. Their designers profit from our attention, not from how well the technology supports us in the lives we want to lead.

Since fighting by text puts the emphasis on your getting the “right” message out, it sets up the expectation that you require the “right” message back. This implies that you think there is a way for people to talk to each other in which each party will say the right thing. Relations within families are messy and untidy. If we clean them up with technology, we don’t necessarily do them justice.

We are vulnerable: Going to technology starts to feel easier, if not better, than going to each other. Simply keeping this in mind may help us make more deliberate choices for our families.

When you have your phone, maybe it’s not just the people in front of you who lose priority. Does the world in front of you lose priority? Does the place you are in lose priority? Your phone reminds you, all the time, that you could be in so many different places.

other-directed life, where you measure your worth by what friends and neighbors think of you and by whether you have what they have. He contrasted other-directedness with an inner-directed point of view, where your choices are measured against a personal standard.

There is another way to think about conversation, one that is less about information and more about creating a space to be explored. You are interested in hearing about how another person approaches things—his or her opinions and associations. In this kind of conversation—I think of it as “whole person conversation”—if things go quiet for a while you look deeper, you don’t look away or text another friend.

This is our paradox. When we are apart: hypervigilance. When we are together: inattention.

Research tells us that social media decrease self-control just as they cause a momentary spike in self-confidence.

to take what begins as a supplement and turn it into a way of life.

Empathy means staying long enough for someone to believe that you want to know how they feel, not that you want to tell them what you would do in their circumstance. Empathy requires time and emotional discipline.

paradox of choice.” While we think we would be happiest if we had more choices, constrained choice often leads to a more satisfied life.

It’s a paradox of the medium: Online exchanges exist forever, but you imagine the ones that didn’t work out as not having happened at all.

Online, we do not become different selves. Our online identities are facets of ourselves that usually are harder for us to express in the physical realm. This is why the online world can be a place for personal growth. People work on desired qualities in the virtual and gradually bring them into their lives “off the screen.”

When they are not tempted by their phones, they feel more in control of their attention. An irony emerges. For of course, on one level, we all see our phones as instruments for giving us greater control, not less.

laptops and smartphones are not things to remove. They are facts of life and part of our creative lives. The goal is to use them with greater intention.

What is most enriching is having fluency in both deep and hyper attention. This is attentional pluralism and it should be our educational goal.

The web is their “information prosthetic” and they see no cost to having one.

evocative objects—objects to think with that provoke thinking about other things.

It may be easier to contribute anonymously, but it is better for all of us to learn how to take responsibility for what we believe.

you really don’t know when you are going to have an important conversation. You have to show up for many conversations that feel inefficient or boring to be there for the conversation that changes your mind.

Studies of mentoring show that what makes a difference, what can change the life of a student, is the presence of one strong figure who shows an interest, who, the student would say, “gets me.” You need a conversation for that.

To sum up a large number of studies, face-to-face conversation leads to higher productivity and is also associated with reduced stress.

Begin by admitting vulnerability and then design new behaviors around it.

Multitasking will not bring greater value. You will feel you are achieving more and more as you accomplish less and less.

The more you talk to your colleagues, the greater your productivity.