Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age

Sherry Turkle is a psychologist and MIT Professor and had been studying our relationship to technology since people first started using networked computers.

Her career has seen the whole evolution of interacting with computers, from email to role-playing games to social media.

This is an area where I think almost all of us should devote a bit more thought and attention to. Technology is definitely a good thing and has improved our lives and connected us in amazing ways, but to pretend there are no associated pitfalls to be wary of is naive.

This book gives you a good idea of exactly what the major pitfalls are in a digital age and how we can avoid them.

As the title indicates, the primary thing that we need to do is to commit to practicing face-to-face conversation where we can build our empathy and build real relationships. There are other implications, such as unplugging from the constant stream of input that has us stuck in “react” mode so that we can reclaim solitude, but she feels that conversation is the most critical piece.

If you have a smart phone, you owe it to yourself to read this book.

There are enormous implications for your own emotional well being, the quality of your relationships, your effectiveness as a parent, your productivity, and your creativity. In short, there’s a lot at stake.

Here are the notes that I took:

• She mentions that one teacher has observed that 12 year-olds today are playing like eight year-olds used to. They leave other kids out when they play, but it’s not due to cruelty, it’s due to a lack of empathy.
• These days we hide from each other more than ever before despite the fact that we are constantly connected. The internet has allowed us to put out a carefully edited and curated image.
• The very sight of a phone makes us feel less connected to each other.
• Virtual worlds are appealing because they offer a “friction-free” environment where you don’t have to deal with the unpredictability of people.
• “From the early days, I saw that computers offered the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship, and them –as the programs got really good– the illusion of friendship without the demands of intimacy.”
• Conversations with real teachers teach you that the right answer isn’t all that’s important, it’s figuring out what the answer means.
• Henry David Thorough was though of as a hermit, but at Walden he had three chairs: “one for solitude, two for friendship, and three for society.”
• “In solitude we find ourselves. We prepare ourselves to come to conversation with something that is authentic– ours.”
• When you are secure with yourself, you are better able to listen to others.
• Conversation with others provides rich material for self-reflection for the time spent in solitude. Thus conversation and solitude can form a virtuous circle.
• “We are so accustomed to being always connected that being alone seems like a problem technology should solve.”
• The good news: our capacity for empathy can return quickly. She says that in a device-free summer camp, children demonstrate improved empathy in a mere 5 days as measured by their ability to discern the emotion on the faces of other children in pictures.
• One of the reasons that social media is so valuable is because it provides so many reminders of intimacy. We need to make sure we don’t substitute the reminders for the real thing.
• “Speaking and listening with attention are skills. They can be taught.”
• “It’s important not to confuse the difficult for the impossible.”
• Today what people value is control over where they put their attention. They prefer that you text them rather than call so that they have the power over when and how to respond.
• The rule of three: something that has emerged especially among college kids where when you are out to dinner with friends, you have to make sure at least three people have their heads up and are ready for conversation before you look at your phone. Even with the rule of three, conversations are still fragmented.
• If we think we might be interrupted (such as when a phone is visible), we keep conversation light.
• When children hear adults talk less, they talk less.
• Meaningful conversations where there is discovery and breakthroughs usually have long silences. Today people have become uncomfortable with these silences and have looked to fill them.
• Thanks to technology, a generation is growing up with their parents only half-present. Their parents are on devices at meal times, at the park, during bath time, etc.
• We teach children to look at us when they (or we) speak not simply to teach them obedience or respect, but to work backward from the behaviors of empathy to the feelings of empathy and attachment.
• College students tell her the most commonly used phrase in group conversations is “wait, what?” as everyone’s attention runs a bit slow thanks to their devices.
• College students who use any form of media are likely to use four simultaneously.
• “Multi-tasking” makes you less productive while feeling better about your time management skills.
• Multi-tasking trains your brain to expect more multi-tasking. People who multi-task often don’t get better at it, they just want more of it.
• Solitude is a conscious retreat, a gathering of the self.
• The new way of feeling whole: “I share, therefore I am.”
• For children, the best predictor of success later on in life is the number of meals shared with their families.
• “Developing the capacity for solitude is one of the most important tasks of childhood.”
• When you go online, your mind is not wandering, but rather your attention is simultaneously captured and divided.
• “Our brains are most productive when there is no demand that they be reactive.”
• In every culture, children want the objects of grown up desire. So if you are hooked on your phone, your kids will want a phone that they can be hooked on as well.
• Children thrive when given time and stillness.
• You initially introduce your child to solitude by accompanied solitude –e.g. going on a long walk with them where there will be frequent extended pauses in the conversation. The attachment lends security to solitude.
• “Language has created the word ‘loneliness’ to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word ‘solitude’ to express the glory of being alone.” -Paul Tillich
• “Boredom can be recognized as your imagination calling you.”
• “Without great solitude, no serious work is possible.” -Pablo Picasso
• Disconnection Anxiety: What happens when we are away from our phones for too long.
• Reading literature boosts empathy as measured by the ability to discern emotion from pictures of faces. In reading literature we learn to empathize with the characters.
• Many kids today are kept too busty for solitude, constantly going from one activity to the next.
• “Your phone is training you to be bored by everything but your phone.”
• Flow: a task that is not so easy as to be mindless, but not out of your grasp. Flow results in growth and learning, and a stronger sense of self.
• -Often when you work at a hard task, nothing significant is accomplished. So you walk away and come back, and again, don’t accomplish much. So you walk away again and then suddenly a light bulb goes off and you have a “eureka” moment.
• The mind is inherently restless and looking to attend to the most interesting thing in the environment.
• When people are alone today, they are really in the presence of a “managed crowd.”
• Today children at the earliest ages complain about needing to compete for their parent’s attention.
• Relationships deepen not because we say anything interesting in particular, but because we indicate that we are ready to show up for another conversation.
• When parents turn to their phones they may be signaling the “stillface” paradigm that is known to be harmful to infants.
• Children learn empathy in part through observing the efforts made by others to be empathetic towards them.
• Fear of Missing Out (FOMO): Wherever kids are they strategize about where they could be instead, e.g. they might be at one party checking their phone to evaluate if there is a better party somewhere else that they could be at. Sometimes all they talk about is what is on their phones.
• When people say that conversation is “boring” usually what they mean is that silence makes them anxious and they struglle to read people’s faces.
• She tells the story of a teacher who polled a class about what they look for in a friend. Out of 60 responses, only three mentioned things like trust, caring, compassion, kindness, etc. The rest said things like “makes me laugh” or “makes me happy,” etc.
• Teachers everywhere know that students are texting under their desks and taking bathroom breaks just to respond to messages, but more and more course material is being put online, keeping students attached to the devices that are distracting them.
• True empathy is an offer of accompaniment that changes you. It’s an admission that you don’t know how they feel, but you want to find out.
• Happiness is more likely to arise from limited choice than unlimited choice.
• Saticficers vs. Maximizers: maximizers need to explore every option to make sure they are making the best possible decision. Satisficers say “good enough.”
• Many young people today will go on dates, and even on the date they are checking tinder.
• A lot of guys today like to keep relationships online because it minimizes the sting of rejection. If you ask a girl “what are you up to tonight?” and she ignores you, it hurts less than if you ask her out and she says no.
• Note taking is part of how we learn to listen and think. Taking notes by hand means you will be too slow to transcribe everything and so you have to actively listen and discern what is important.
• Right now there are more people on Facebook than were on the planet 200 years ago (wow!)
• Everything seems more urgent with social media, so you might respond to 100 things but never go deep into conversation.
• The seven minute rule: it takes at least seven minutes to see how a conversation is going to unfold. Push past the awkward parts and try to have undistracted conversations that at least get to the seven minute mark.
• “If a tool gets in the way of us looking at each other, we should only use it when necessary. It shouldn’t be the first thing we turn to.”
• Talking about online privacy (or lack thereof): “It seems that by becoming a consumer, you gave up rights you might have wanted to hod onto as a citizen (i.e. when you sign up for Google and Facebook and give them the right to use all your data).
• She compares the issue of privacy in the digital economy to issues of noise control in the industrial economy. Like those who made noise a political issue, we should focus on making privacy a political issue. Not everything they did worked, but they inspired a generation of urban planners to take noise into consideration when developing a city.
• “The most important job of childhood and adolescence is to learn attachment to and trust in other people. That happens through human attention, presence, and conversation.”
• Solitude is selfless. The time spent in self-reflection helps you understand how you can be of more help to others.

Again, I think this book should be required reading in the digital age. The implications of the book are simply too enormous to ignore.

Get it here: