In the age of social media, we’ve learned how to connect, but it seems we’ve forgotten how to talk to each other. Social psychologist Sherry Turkle.
For the past 30 years, Sherry Turkle has taught social psychology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and studies the impact of digital technologies on human behavior. In my books1 she writes about the temptations of «friendship with the machine», the development of social networks and virtual realities, their impact on our culture and life. She calls to resist the harmful effects of people never straying far from e-mail or mobile phone with messages, from Twitter or Facebook (an extremist organization banned in Russia). In her opinion, this affects family life, education, romantic relationships and creates a real threat of loneliness. Sherri Turkle talks about the fascination with life on the screen at the expense of life in the real world, demonstrating that we do not fully belong to any of these worlds today. And he offers an antidote — to talk more with each other. Author’s explanation.
“I have been writing about these issues for a long time. Now even less. At first it seemed to me that people did not want to hear what I was talking about. There are more people who do not like what is happening, in my opinion, but they do not know what to do. Here are the statistics: 89% of American adults admit to answering calls/messages during their last meeting with friends, and 82% of them felt that the quality of the conversation deteriorated after answering the call. I was struck by the story of a girl who exclaimed, “Daddy! Stop googling! I want to talk with you!» I am generally surprised by children who say: “I want to raise my children differently from how they raise me. I want everyone in my house to talk to everyone.” Given that kids don’t have much experience with dinner table conversations and talking to friends without an iPhone, I think they have an innate resilience. After five days spent at the camp where there was no Internet, the children began to empathize more with each other (empathy levels began to increase). It seems to me that the ability to talk is inherent in us by nature. Of course, we also have a desire for novelty and the ability to be distracted. But today we have created an environment that draws us into distractions.
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Of course, I’m not going to give up the phone, it’s very useful. But you don’t have to use it all the time. If I send an email or a mobile message, the interlocutor does not feel me. Typing and speaking are different activities. Students increasingly report that they do not need personal meetings with me, correspondence is enough. When I ask why, they usually answer that they want to phrase the question as best as possible so that I can answer as accurately as possible. They want the perfect me to meet the perfect them. But it’s not us. This is an algorithmic way of looking at life. Who loves to learn because they can ask a teacher the perfect question and get the perfect answer? No one remembers verbatim what their favorite teachers said to them, but everyone remembers the tone and situation in which it was said.
I would like to draw the attention of anthropologists to this problem. We are talking about the beginning of social robotization, the creation of machines that would pretend that they care about us, love us. The next step was the creation of devices that can constantly distract us. Now «devices» are always with us, and I wanted to explore how this changes the world. There are probably commercial interests behind these changes. And despite the fact that many understand this, most believe that it is worth it. I also want to participate in these changes. I meet engineers, people in the industry who say there’s money to be made from taking a break from your phone. Will we see people forget how to talk to each other?
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I have to fight the urge to look at my phone as often as I look at my watch. I can’t just pick up and leave it in the next room. If I don’t part with him, then I will definitely wake up at two in the morning and think that I need to read the messages. Or count the number of my books on Amazon. Starting at two o’clock in the morning, I can suddenly find that it is already four and in two hours it is time for me to get up … The fact is that we do not know the measure. For example, a father bathes his two-year-old daughter and checks e-mail along the way, and earlier at this time he played with the child. This is what worries me.
The consequences of not talking are incalculable. In interviews, working people admitted that they do not know how to carry on a conversation when they come to work. First you put the child in the playpen and give him an iPad instead of talking to him or reading to him, then the children go to a school where learning is mostly through the screen, is it any wonder then that sixth graders look at the floor when trying to talk to them and don’t know what to say? I have seen many children who have to do their homework on a tablet, but they cannot concentrate on the text until it is printed out. I understand it. I know how to read something complex on the monitor of a device that gives me access to all other areas of my life. We want children to do their homework using a gadget from which they have access to the social network. Can you imagine this internal struggle?
My daughter and I had special zones while she was growing up. Computers and phones were not allowed in the kitchen, at the dinner table, or in the car. I think that in these zones the space of the family is created. It does not seem to me effective to allocate certain hours in the daily routine for conversations. Of course, it is important that parents follow the rule of special zones. The problem isn’t that our kids love to write on the screen, it’s that they shouldn’t be doing it when they’re talking to us. And my daughter and I have never been (and never will be) friends on Facebook (an extremist organization banned in Russia). We already have a place to talk.”
1 Life on the Screen (Simon & Schuster, 1997), The Second Self (MIT Press, 2005), Alone Together (Basic Books, 2012).
See more at The Guardian.