COLLEGE students tell me they know how to look someone in the eye and type on their phones at the same time, their split attention undetected. They say it’s a skill they mastered in middle school when they wanted to text in class without getting caught. Now they use it when they want to be both with their friends and, as some put it, “elsewhere.”Sherry Turkle has been studying the psychology of online connectivity for more than 30 years. For the past five, She had a special focus: What has happened to face-to-face conversation in a world where so many people say they would rather text than talk? She goes on:
First of all, there is the magic of the always available elsewhere. You can put your attention wherever you want it to be. You can always be heard. You never have to be bored. When you sense that a lull in the conversation is coming, you can shift your attention from the people in the room to the world you can find on your phone. But the students also described a sense of loss.For example, Turkle spoke to one college junior who tried to capture what is wrong about life in his generation. “Our texts are fine,” he said. “It’s what texting does to our conversations when we are together that’s the problem.”
Read the article by Turkle based on her book, “Reclaiming Conversation” (also linked above). Here she makes a case for face-to-face talk, and that direct engagement is crucial for the development of empathy, the ability to put ourselves in the place of others. After you read this article, there is a link to her next article, as she reacts to the comments she received. I found this related article, "Talk to Each Other, Not Your Phone" to be even more powerful. We text because regular conversation is so "pedestrian" and boring. In her book, Turkle asks Randall, 24, a real estate broker,
What happens when there is a lull in the conversation. He looked at me, seeming not to understand. Later he explained that, in his mind, he had just made it clear that there is never a lull in the conversation. Anything like that would be filled by turning to your phone. But I hadn’t understood this yet so I tried again. I said, “Like, if things got quiet among your friends?” Randall said, “Oh, if the conversation was not providing information, I’d check out some YouTube stuff I’m behind on … or take a picture of us and post it.”After you read the articles (very short - not longer than 15 minutes) - with excellent links, what do you think? What has been your experience? Are you comfortable with silence in conversation? Or do you view conversation as transactional; that it has to accomplish something or provide new information?
