Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age

by Sherry Turkle

We have to find a way to make our lives better with our phones.

“What if we designed a smartphone interface that made it easy for us to do a specific task (such as messaging a friend or family member) and then, instead of encouraging us to stay connected as long as possible, would encourage us to disengage?

To converse, you don’t just have to perform turn taking, you have to listen to someone else, to read their body, their voice, their tone, and their silences.

“Anything having to do with the voice feels like an interruption.”

These days, there are college courses on conversation. The curriculum includes how to pay attention to someone on a date. How to disagree with someone politically.

Employers have come to appreciate the vulnerability of the new generations. Some businesses explicitly screen for an ability to converse.

The capacity for solitude makes relationships with others more authentic. Because you know who you are, you can see others for who they are, not for who you need them to be.

these days, being alone feels like a problem that needs to be solved, and people try to solve it with technology.

in our rush to connect, we flee solitude.

If we don’t know who we are when we are alone, we turn to other people to support our sense of self.

A love of solitude and self-reflection enables sociability.

Thoreau’s two-chair conversations are with friends, family, and romantic partners.

We know that for children the best predictor of success later in life is the number of meals shared with their families.

We once taught our children to ignore a ringing phone at dinner. We became annoyed if telemarketers interrupted us. Now, Facebook suggests that it may be a good thing to interrupt dinner ourselves.

three-chair conversations, conversations in the social world.

the Internet gives us the possibility of sharing our views with anyone in the world, but it also can support information silos where we don’t talk to anyone who doesn’t agree with us.

Second, when politics goes online, people begin to talk about political action in terms of things they can do online.

technology gives us the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship.

it can also give us the illusion of progress without the demands of action.

digital communication makes surveil...

The boundaries have blurred between private communication and routine surveillance,

when conversation got expansive, Thoreau took his guests into nature. I think of this as his fourth chair, his most philosophical one.

We are tempted to talk not only through machines but to them, with them.

Is talking to machines companionship or abandonment?

I talk of our having arrived at a “robotic moment,” not because we have built robots that can be our companions but because we are willing to consider becoming theirs.

People tell me that if a machine could give them the “feeling” of being intimately understood, that might be understanding enough.

who said that a life without conflict, without being reminded of past mistakes, past pain, or one where you can avoid rubbing shoulders with troublesome people, is good?

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

sometimes the idea of “emergencies” on their phones is a strategy to step away from each other and their differences, to defer them for another day, another meeting.

sometimes, I am told, they actively want to avoid the spontaneity of conversation.

The desire for the edited life crosses generations, but the young conside...

Ever since ninth grade, when his preparations to go to an Ivy League college began in earnest, he and his parents have worked on his getting everything “right.”

“When you talk in person,” he says, “you are likely to make a slip.”

it is time to rediscover an interest in the spontaneous.

points of view of those with whom we disagree.

Steve Jobs did not encourage his own children’s use of iPads or iPhones.

“Every evening Steve made a point of having dinner at the big long table in their kitchen, discussing books and history and a variety of things. No one ever pulled out an iPad or computer.”

In our use of media, there are the haves and have-nots. And then there are those who have-so-much-that-they-know-when-to-put-it-away.

Apps for sociability may increase sociability on apps; what children are missing, however, is an ease with each other face-to-face, the context in which empathy is born.

when we allow ourselves to be vulnerable and less in control, our relationships, creativity, and productivity thrive.

we have to cultivate the self as a resource. Beginning with the capacity for solitude.

You need to build an ability to just be yourself and not be doing something. That’s what the phones are taking away. The ability to just sit there. That’s just being a person.

kids are mean. And it’s because they’re trying it out. They look at a kid and they go, “You’re fat.” And then they see the kid’s face scrunch up and they go, “Ooh, that doesn’t feel good to make a person do that.”

But when they write “You’re fat,” then they just go, “Mmm, that was fun. I like that.”

when you let yourself have sad feelings your body has like antibodies that come rushing in to meet the sad feelings.

Solitude doesn’t necessarily mean a lack of activity. You know you are experiencing solitude when what you are doing brings you back to yourself.

Solitude is important for everyone, including the most extroverted people. It’s the time you become familiar and comfortable with yourself.

Without empathy, the comedian points out, we don’t understand the impact we have when we bully others because we don’t see them as people like ourselves.

we may mistake time on the net for solitude. It isn’t. In fact, solitude is challenged by our habit of turning to our screens rather than inward.

People who grew up with social media will often say that they don’t feel like themselves; indeed, they sometimes can’t feel themselves, unless they are posting, messaging, or texting.