We all know we’re paying a price for the popularity of smart phones.
We’ve lost privacy.
We’ve lost the ability to be unconnected.
We’ve lost time, hours of it, due to Candy Crush.
But maybe the price is even higher than we realized. At least, that feeling stuck with me after reading Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age. It’s a well-researched passionate diatribe against the effects phones have on our conversational skills, especially those of teens and millennials.
Author Sherry Turkle isn’t just anybody: she’s a professor at MIT in Social Studies of Science and Technology and she’s been studying the relationships between people and tech for over thirty years. The argument she’s making is based on years of research, albeit mostly sociological research and less statistics and cold hard facts.
In the book, she paints a picture of teens and twenty-something who will do anything to avoid a personal conversation, because they lack the skills to pull this off. College students who much rather email professors than speak to them. Job applicants who send in strong letters, but fail miserably at personal interviews. Couples who have decided to ‘fight’ via chat rather than in talks.
Ouch.
But there’s more. What struck me most is that it’s more than conversational abilities teens are losing, They’re also not developing skills and traits we acquire through conversations, like empathy. It’s in face-to-face conversations that we experience how our actions and words affect others, way more than in texts for instance—despite the use of emoticons. Research shows teens’ empathy levels are declining and that they go up after spending just a few days in a device-free summer camp. That’s plain shocking.
The cause is not just teens spending way too much time on their phones. It’s also the world around them that has lost interest in personal connection, like their parents who rather spend time on their phones than talking to their kids. It’s their friends who can’t be pulled away from their phones, not even when they’re doing something together. And Turkle describes many more causes and incidents—all slowly opening our eyes to see just how damaging our phone habits are.
I’m still processing the content of this book, to be fair, since I’ve just finished it. But I would love to have a conversation about this. Do we recognize this lack of conversational skills in ourselves, in teens, in others? Have we ourselves started to avoid personal conversations, instead resorting to text or chat? How is our level of empathy?
I really recommend reading Reclaiming Conversation. It’s not the easiest read, as Turkle has a bit of a philosophical tendency and is a bit on the long-winded side. But man, this book will challenge your perspective and give you something to think about.
When you’re ready, let’s talk. In the comments 🙂
Eric Dye says
A world with less empathy?
That’s a scary thought…
Rachel Blom says
I know, right? I have to tell you: this book was a real wake up call for me!
Bart Wiegant says
I haven’t read the book, so I don’t know exactly what to say about that, but I don’t see a huge problem in the digital world. I’m born in 1988 and therefor I was one of the first generations who seriously got internet connection. When I was a teenager I spend hours on MSN messenger and hyves (a Dutch social media website). In that time, some articles like this showed up as well to warn us about the danger of ‘todays online behaviour to real life social life’. As far as I can speak for myself and my friends, it all turned out to be okay. We’ve grown older and by getting into our twenties, we more realise the value of face-to-face contact and friendship. We’ve grown tired (call it ‘old’) of being online all the time and absorb the non-stop stream of useless information we liked to consume when we were 16 years old. Therefor I would say: Don’t worry to much about it. teenagers now need it, but at some point they will realise it’s not necessary to stay online so they will grow over it, so to say.
I’m a scout leader of teenagers in the age of 15-18. I see they use their phones a lot. So did we when I was that ages. Sometimes me and the other leaders in the team have problems controlling their behaviour when it comes to the use and rules of using their cell phone. So did my scout leaders when I was that age. Cell phones where quit new (I’m from the Nokia 3310 generation) and there were no rules about how to uses them in social context. Being teenagers, me and my friends just tried and did what felt good (that’s what teenagers do). And I’m sure we all had that when we were young, wild and free ;-).
In the scout group I’m leading, I don’t see any problems with real life conversations. Yes, sometimes it’s easier to say things online because they feel uncomfortable with eye-contact, but we all had it. I used to send SMS or MSN messages, my parents used the telephone back in their days to avoid real life contact. All generations had their methods to avoid this in hard conversations. However, when minor problems in the group are mention in the what’s app group chat, they also say at some point ‘maybe it’s better to talk about this in the next scout meeting’. They do realise that not everything can, and should be discussed at an online platform. They know that face-to-face contact and all the group members present is an important matter if they discus major issues.
We also have to keep in mind that society is changing. Everything goes faster and responses should be given within hours. That’s what people expect from us and we started to expect that from people. Sending messages can be much easier and efficient than waiting till both persons are available at the same time and place. Sending e-mails (to professors) can be much more efficient. For me it works sometimes better to receive an e-mail instead of personal contact. I can decide when I read the e-mail and when I act. Working like that is much more efficient instead of people knocking at your door all day at work.
I’m not really concern about this. The scouts I see have perfect social skills or still developing them as we all did when we were young adults. We all had that time in our life where we developed our own personality and disliked everything our society told us to do. I have grown over the ‘avoiding face-to-face contact’ period in my life and all my friends have as well. My friends and I are all well-educated, so maybe there might be some differences in social class and education, but in general, I’m absolutely not worried. And if you are, just confront them. Teenagers and most people are reasonable enough to change thoughts about this topic.
Rachel Blom says
I love hearing your perspective! Thanks so much for sharing this. Like I said, I’m still processing this book. My main issue with it was that the scientific link between cell phones and the alleged ‘result’ (less empathy and a decline in communicative skills) wasn’t strong enough. I see evidence of the issues teens have with communicating, especially here in the US, and I do see less empathy. I’m just not sure of what I see are incidents and anecdotes or a systemic problem and if the latter, what is causing it. But I always love to read facts and opinions, even if I don’t agree with the conclusions! 🙂