How Smartphones Are Killing
Conversation
A Q&A with MIT professor Sherry Turkle about
her new book,Reclaiming Conversation.
What happens when we become too dependent on
our mobile phones? According to MIT sociologist Sherry Turkle, author of the
new book Reclaiming
Conversation, we lose our ability to have deeper, more
spontaneous conversations with others, changing the nature of our social
interactions in alarming ways.
Turkle has spent the last 20 years studying
the impacts of technology on how we behave alone and in groups. Though
initially excited by technology’s potential to transform society for the
better, she has become increasingly worried about how new technologies, cell
phones in particular, are eroding the social fabric of our communities.
In her previous book, the bestselling Alone Together, she articulated her fears that technology was making us
feel more and more isolated, even as it promised to make us more connected.
Since that book came out in 2012, technology has become even more ubiquitous
and entwined with our modern existence. Reclaiming Conversation is
Turkle’s call to take a closer look at the social effects of cell phones and to
re-sanctify the role of conversation in our everyday lives in order to preserve
our capacity for empathy, introspection, creativity, and intimacy.
I interviewed Turkle by phone to talk about
her book and some of the questions it raises. Here is an edited version of our
conversation.
Jill Suttie: Your new book warns that cell
phones and other portable communication technology are killing the art of
conversation. Why did you want to focus on conversation, specifically?
Sherry Turkle: Because conversation is the most human and
humanizing thing that we do. It’s where empathy is born, where intimacy is
born—because of eye contact, because we can hear the tones of another person’s
voice, sense their body movements, sense their presence. It’s where we learn
about other people. But, without meaning to, without having made a plan, we’ve
actually moved away from conversation in a way that my research was showing is
hurting us.
JS: How are cell phones and other
technologies hurting us?
ST: Eighty-nine
percent of Americans say that during their last social interaction, they took
out a phone, and 82 percent said that it deteriorated the conversation they
were in. Basically, we’re doing something that we know is hurting our interactions.
I’ll point to a study. If you put a cell
phone into a social interaction, it does two things: First, it decreases the
quality of what you talk about, because you talk about things where you
wouldn’t mind being interrupted, which makes sense, and, secondly, it decreases
the empathic connection that people feel toward each other.
So, even something as simple as going to
lunch and putting a cell phone on the table decreases the emotional importance
of what people are willing to talk about, and it decreases the connection that
the two people feel toward one another. If you multiply that by all of the
times you have a cell phone on the table when you have coffee with someone or
are at breakfast with your child or are talking with your partner about how
you’re feeling, we’re doing this to each other 10, 20, 30 times a day.
JS: So, why are humans so vulnerable to the
allure of the cell phone, if it’s actually hurting our interactions?
ST: Cell
phones make us promises that are like gifts from a benevolent genie—that we
will never have to be alone, that we will never be bored, that we can put our
attention wherever we want it to be, and that we can multitask, which is
perhaps the most seductive of all. That ability to put your attention wherever
you want it to be has become the thing people want most in their social
interactions—that feeling that you don’t have to commit yourself 100 percent
and you can avoid the terror that there will be a moment in an interaction when
you’ll be bored.
Actually allowing yourself a moment of
boredom is crucial to human interaction and it’s crucial to your brain as well.
When you’re bored, your brain isn’t bored at all—it’s replenishing itself, and
it needs that down time.
We’re very susceptible to cell phones, and we
even get a neurochemical high from the constant stimulation that our phones
give us.
I’ve spent the last 20 years studying how
compelling technology is, but you know what? We can still change. We can use
our phones in ways that are better for our kids, our families, our work, and
ourselves. It’s the wrong analogy to say we’re addicted to our technology. It’s
not heroin.
JS: One thing that struck me in your book was
that many people who you interviewed talked about the benefits of handling
conflict or difficult emotional issues online. They said they could be more
careful with their responses and help decrease interpersonal tensions. That
seems like a good thing. What’s the problem with that idea?
ST: It
was a big surprise when I did the research for my book to learn how many people
want to dial down fighting or dealing with difficult emotional issues with a
partner or with their children by doing it online.
But let’s take the child example. If you do
that with your child, if you only deal with them in this controlled way, you
are basically playing into your child’s worst fear—that their truth, their
rage, their unedited feelings, are something that you can’t handle. And that’s
exactly what a parent shouldn’t be saying to a child. Your
child doesn’t need to hear that you can’t take and accept and honor the
intensity of their feelings.
People need to share their emotions—I feel
very strongly about this. I understand why people avoid conflict, but people
who use this method end up with children who think that the things they feel
aren’t OK. There’s a variant of this, which is interesting, where parents give
their children robots to talk to or want their children to talk to Siri,
because somehow that will be a safer place to get out their feelings. Again,
that’s exactly what your child doesn’t need.
JS: Some studies seem to show that increased
social media use actually increases social interaction offline. I wonder how
this squares with your thesis?
ST: How
I interpret that data is that if you’re a social person, a socially active
person, your use of social media becomes part of your social profile. And I
think that’s great. My book is not anti-technology; it’s pro-conversation. So,
if you find that your use of social media increases your number of face-to-face
conversations, then I’m 100 percent for it.
Another person who might be helped by social
media is someone who uses it for taking baby steps toward meeting people for
face-to-face conversations. If you’re that kind of person, I’m totally
supportive.
I’m more concerned about people for whom
social media becomes a kind of substitute, who literally post something on
Facebook and just sit there and watch whether they get 100 likes on their
picture, whose self-worth and focus becomes dictated by how they are accepted,
wanted, and desired by social media.
And I’m concerned about the many other
situations in which you and I are talking at a dinner party with six other
people, and everyone is texting at the meal and applying the “three-person
rule”—that three people have to have their heads up before anyone feels it’s
safe to put their head down to text. In this situation, where everyone is both
paying attention and not paying attention, you end up with nobody talking about
what’s really on their minds in any serious, significant way, and we end up
with trivial conversations, not feeling connected to one another.
JS: You also write about how conversation
affects the workplace environment. Aren’t conversations just distractions to
getting work done? Why support conversation at work?
ST: In
the workplace, you need to create sacred spaces for conversation because,
number one, conversation actually increases the bottom line. All the studies
show that when people are allowed to talk to each other, they do better—they’re
more collaborative, they’re more creative, they get more done.
It’s very important for companies to make
space for conversation in the workplace. But if a manager doesn’t model to
employees that it’s OK to be off of their email in order to have conversation,
nothing is going to get accomplished. I went to one workplace that had
cappuccino machines every 10 feet and tables the right size for conversation,
where everything was built for conversation. But people were feeling that the
most important way to show devotion to the company was answering their email
immediately. You can’t have conversation if you have to be constantly on your
email. Some of the people I interviewed were terrified to be away from their
phones. That translates into bringing your cell phone to breakfast and not
having breakfast with your kids.
JS: If technology is so ubiquitous yet
problematic, what recommendations do you make for keeping it at a manageable
level without getting so hooked?
ST: The
path ahead is not a path where we do without technology, but of living in
greater harmony with it. Among the first steps I see is to create sacred
spaces—the kitchen, the dining room, the car—that are device-free and set aside
for conversation. When you have lunch with a friend or colleague or family
member, don’t put a phone on the table between you. Make meals a time when you
are there to listen and be heard.
When we move in and out of conversations with
our friends in the room and all the people we can reach on our phones, we miss
out on the kinds of conversations where empathy is born and intimacy thrives. I
met a wise college junior who spoke about the “seven-minute rule”: It takes
seven minutes to know if a conversation is going to be interesting. And she
admitted that she rarely was willing to put in her seven minutes. At the first
“lull,” she went to her phone. But it’s when we stumble, hesitate, and have
those “lulls” that we reveal ourselves most to each other.
So allow for those human moments, accept that
life is not a steady “feed,” and learn to savor the pace of conversation—for
empathy, for community, for creativity.
By Jill Suttie |
http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_smartphones_are_killing_conversation?utm_source=GG+Newsletter+Dec+16+2015&utm_campaign=GG+Newsletter+Dec+16+2015&utm_medium=email
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