66 pages • 2 hours read
Sherry TurkleReclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2015A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Technology Meant to Connect Us Make Us Lonelier
Turkle quotes Paul Tillich: “Language […] has created the word ‘loneliness’ to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the world ‘solitude’ to express the glory of being alone” (65). Turkle expands on Tillich’s point, writing that “[l]oneliness is painful emotionally and even physically, born from a ‘want of intimacy’ when we need it most, in early childhood” (65).
The need for intimacy is not restricted to childhood or to the home. Social media, Skype, smartphones, Tinder, Zoom, and other apps and devices promise to keep us connected with those we care about, and to find new friends who can enrich our lives. However, Turkle grounds her definitions of work, romance, education, family, and friendship in face-to-face interaction. She consistently maintains that all this online connection delivers the opposite of what it promises, that it sabotages our tolerance for solitude and consequently our capacity for empathy.
In the workspace, managers and administrators have to balance their employees’ productivity and solitude. Younger hires seem less and less tolerant of being alone, and the experience frightens them. Frantic, isolated employees will not work efficiently.
Tinder is supposed to help people find romance, but leads to feelings of dissatisfaction with the current relationship. It can present the illusion of infinite options, meaning that it makes it hard to stop looking for new, potentially better partners: She calls this maximizer psychology, the fixation on maximizing all of our choices.
Smartphones and text messaging make it easier to stay in contact with friends, family, and acquaintances, but the lack of face-to-face interaction robs the exchanges of their emotional bonding power. These technologies mimic conversation, convincing many people that they are constantly engaged in meaningful discussions with people they care about.
Social media promises the expansion of friend groups, and another way to stay in touch. But it also creates a false sense of self, leading to curated, digital versions of ourselves. Social media shows versions of friends that are all living exciting, enriching lives. People are less likely to share negative experiences, creating the illusion that everyone is having more fun. This can lead to isolating feelings of inadequacy, which brings the pain of loneliness—not Tillich’s “glory” of loneliness.
The Importance of Solitude for Growth
Thoreau went to Walden Pond in order to be alone with his thoughts, even though he entertained while there. The growing discomfort with solitude is a symptom of over-reliance on technology. One cannot know one’s own mind well without observing it in action, and solitude is the ideal environment for self-reflection: “In solitude we find ourselves; we prepare ourselves to come to conversation with something to say that is authentic, ours” (9).
When Turkle frames solitude as a gateway to authenticity and self-knowledge, it also puts boredom in another perspective. Boredom, or even the lack of options, can create opportunities for growth. Provocative or complicated ideas require focus to untangle and expand. Technology allows people to avoid being alone—and also being alone with their own thoughts. Technology is, in some ways, anti-solitude. When someone reaches for their phones every minute, it doesn’t matter if they are in a room alone. They are not experiencing solitude, which “doesn’t necessarily mean a lack of activity. You know you are experiencing solitude when what you are doing brings you back to yourself” (60).
It may seem counterintuitive, but Turkle draws a connection between solitude and a better society, because
[i]t’s the capacity for solitude that allows you to reach out to others and see them as separate and independent. You don’t need them to be anything other than who they are. This means you can listen to them and hear what they have to say. This makes the capacity for solitude essential to the development of empathy (61).
A society where people make time for solitude is a society where those people have a better chance at empathizing with one another.
Without adult help, children likely won’t develop a fondness for solitude, resulting in diminished empathy: “Remember that we teach the capacity for solitude by being quiet alongside children who have our attention” (320). Solitude requires choice and prioritization to be effective. It is different than feeling abandoned and alone. People can build solitude into their lives through practices like mindfulness, meditation, or even exercise done without the interruptions of devices. Near the end of the book, making time for solitude is one of Turkle’s highest recommendations for a return to real, useful conversation.
Children Learn Empathy From Conversation
Turkle quotes the dean of the Holbrooke Middle School at the beginning of the section, “The Empathy Diaries,” where she tells Turkle that even the older children seem to lack imagination and empathy as though they are several years younger. The dean is not alone in her assessment. Several teachers throughout the book remark that their students are less empathetic with each year. Conversation offers multiple facets of feedback. Children learn body language. They come to understand that someone’s face, and how they hold their posture, are clues to how they are feeling. If a group of friends are together but text each other, they can still remain unaware of how the others might be feeling, regardless of the words they text.
One teacher remarks that when schoolchildren are together, their conversation revolves around what is on their phones. Turkle asks, “Is this the new conversation? If so, it is not doing the work of the old conversation. As these teachers see it, the old conversation taught empathy” (6).
The situation is not limited to middle school age children:
It is not surprising that in the past twenty years we’ve seen a 40 percent decline in the markers for empathy among college students, most of it within the past ten years. It is a trend that researchers link to the new presence of digital communications (21).
In the troubled relationship between Adam and Tessa, Tessa wanted Adam to be more empathetic. He communicated more empathetically with her as a result, but only on his phone. Adam, college-age, was raised with a phone. It allowed him to express himself in the way that Tessa wanted him to, but because conversations—as opposed to phone communications—were not a critical piece of his childhood, he fails to demonstrate in person the empathy that he can show in texts.
If children lose empathy, they will become adults without empathy. They will not understand when others need comfort, and others won’t know how to help them. The responsibility for cultivating empathy is not on the children or even on their teachers. Parents must teach empathy through conversation, and they must model behavior. If parents are never without screens, children will rebel at being held to a different standard.
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