Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age

by Sherry Turkle

Real people, with their unpredictable ways, can seem difficult to contend with after one has spent a stretch in simulation.

Time in simulation gets children ready for more time in simulation. Time with people teaches children how to be in a relationship, beginning with the ability to have a conversation.

We have not assessed the full human consequences of digital media. We want to focus on its pleasures. Its problems have to do with unintended consequences.

At a first, we speak through machines and forget how essential face-to-face conversation is to our relationships, our creativity, and our capacity for empathy.

second, we take a further step and speak not just through machines but to machines.

When college students go to dinner, they want the company of their friends in the dining hall and they also want the freedom to go to their phones. To have both at the same time, they observe what some call the “rule of three”: When you are with a group at dinner you have to check that at least three people have their heads up from their phones before you give yourself permission to look down at your phone. So conversation proceeds—but with different people having their “heads up” at different times.

The effect of the rule of three is what you might expect. As Eleanor says, conversation is fragmented. And everyone tries to keep it light.

a conversation at dinner turns serious and someone looks at a phone, that is her signal to “lighten things up.”

“There are fewer conversations—not with the people you’re texting, but with the people around you!”

“Our texts are fine. It’s what texting does to our conversations when we are together, that’s the problem.”

If we think we might be interrupted, we keep conversations light, on topics of little controversy or consequence.

If we text rather than talk, we can have each other in amounts we can control.

And texting and email and posting let us present the self we want to be. We can edit and retouch.

Studies show that when children hear less adult talk, they talk less.

It won’t be only about how much they talk. It will be about how much they understand the people they’re talking with.

as digital connection becomes an ever larger part of their day, they risk ending up with lives of less.

They shy away from open-ended conversation.

“What’s wrong with conversation? I’ll tell you what’s wrong with conversation! It takes place in real time and you can’t control what you’re going to say.”

Handling things online feels like the beginnings of a solution: At least we can answer questions at our convenience and edit our responses to get them “right.”

certain conversations tend to fall away. Most endangered: the kind in which you listen intently to another person and expect that he or she is listening to you; where a discussion can go off on a tangent and circle back; where something unexpected can be discovered about a person or an idea.

Online, we settle for simpler fare: We get our efficiency and our chance to edit, but we learn to ask questions that a return email can answer.

In-person conversation led to the most emotional connection and online messaging led to the least.

It is when we see each other’s faces and hear each other’s voices that we become most human to each other.

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

Torn between our desire to express an authentic self and the pressure to show our best selves online, it is not surprising that frequent use of social media leads to feelings of depression and social anxiety.

Research shows that those who use social media the most have difficulty reading human emotions, including their own.

you don’t have to give up your phone. But if you understand its profound effects on you, you can approach your phone with greater intention and choose to live differently with

We miss out on necessary conversations when we divide our attention between the people we’re with and the world on our phones. Or when we go to our phones instead of claiming a quiet moment for ourselves.

The real emergency may be parents and children not having conversations or sharing a silence between them that gives each the time to bring up a funny story or a troubling thought.

Our mobile devices seem to grant three wishes, as though gifts from a benevolent genie: first, that we will always be heard; second, that we can put our attention wherever we want it to be; and third, that we will never have to be alone.

we will never have to be bored.

But in creative conversations, in conversations in which people get to really know each other, you usually ha...

before we had our phones, we might have found these silences “full” rather than boring.

What people say to each other when they are together is shaped by what their phones have taught them, and indeed by the simple fact that they have their phones with them.

When we move from conversation to mere connection, we get a lot of unintended consequences.

Are we unintentionally depriving our children of tools they need at the very moment they need them? Are we depriving them of skills that are crucial to friendship, creativity, love, and work?

“Someday, someday soon, but certainly not now, I’d like to learn to have a conversation.” His tone is serious. He knows what he does not know.

Young associates lay out their suite of technologies: laptop, tablet, and multiple phones. And then they put their earphones on. “Big ones. Like pilots. They turn their desks into cockpits.”

life in the cockpit leaves the junior associates isolated from ongoing, informal conversations in the firm.

young recruits are forthright about wanting to avoid even the “real-time” commitment of a telephone call.

we use technology to isolate ourselves at home as well as at work.

electronic talk “keeps the peace” because with this regime, there are no out-of-control confrontations. Tempers never flare. One mother argues that when family members don’t fear outbursts, they are more likely to express their feelings.

Fighting by text offers the possibility of documentation. “If we fight by text, I have a record of what was said.”

For anyone who grew up with texting, “continuous partial attention” is the new normal, but many are aware of the price they pay for its routines.

what counts as a special moment is when you are with a friend who gets a text but chooses to ignore it, silencing his or her phone instead.

“If someone gets a text and apologizes and silences it [their phone], that sends a signal that they are there, they are listening to you.”

“It’s hard to ask someone to give you their undivided attention.” She elaborates: “Imagine me saying, ‘I’m so happy to see you, would you mind putting your phone away so that we can have a nice breakfast conversation?’ And they would think, ‘Well, that’s really weird.’”

Asking for full attention at a meal, she says, “would be age inappropriate.”

Young people recognize that full attention is important, yet they are unwilling to give it to each other.

“addicted to texting” because it “always feels safer than talking.”