What Would Sherry Turkle Say About Mobile Device Use?

-
The author of Reclaiming Conversation, Sherry Turkle does not condemn the use of modern technology. In fact, the author is quite adamant that mobile devices have done much to improve the learning and connecting that we do now as a society.
Currently with the pandemic, we all have had to adjust to communicating virtually more than we probably used to. Meetings with colleagues at work, celebrations with families, and many other occasions have required conversing using mobile devices. However, the heart of this book focuses on the real need to have face to face conversations. If we don't, we stand to lose the ability to empathize with each other. 
Studies show that as a society, we are becoming addicted to our mobile devices.

So, while we need to use our mobile devices, it is wise to keep our use in check and whenever possible, 
have those important conversations when you can look your friends in the eyes and say what you need to say.

https://www.psychalive.org/cell-phone-addiction/


Dr. Susan Weinschenk explains this process clearly:

“With the internet, twitter, and texting you now have almost instant gratification of your desire to seek. Want to talk to someone right away? Send a text and they respond in a few seconds. Want to look up some information? Just type your request into google… It’s easy to get in a dopamine induced loop. Dopamine starts you seeking, then you get rewarded for the seeking which makes you seek more. It becomes harder and harder to stop looking at email, stop texting, or stop checking your cell phone to see if you have a message or a new text.”




Comments

  1. Riana DolenzJuly 13, 2020 at 2:16 PM

    I read Sherry Turkle's other book, "Alone Together". I agree that Turkle does not disapprove of technology. She sees the importance of technology to connect people. She also thinks that people need to focus on having conversations without technology.

    I appreciate your connection to the current pandemic. It is extremely difficult to have face to face conversations when you're at home, in virtual meetings, and social distancing. However, we can choose to take time to speak with each other via FaceTime or Zoom. That's probably not what Turkle meant, but in the time of a global pandemic, that's the best we've got.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Michaela IbrahimAugust 2, 2020 at 11:37 AM

    I thought the same when reading Turkle's book; she doesn't condemn but calls for us to reflect on our use of technology. I saw that Riana brought up the pandemic, and my current question would be how to move past the idea that technology can't foster empathy and think of how can we teach empathy using technology? We'll have to start doing that this upcoming year...

    ReplyDelete
  3. RachelAugust 22, 2020 at 8:20 AM

    I always thought that digital communications were completely fine, until the pandemic. I noticed that my kids were in terrible moods, even with access to phones and extra screen time. What really made a difference was their ability to play board games on zoom with their grandparents. They could see their faces and have more meaningful interactions.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Final Thoughts- Our General Lack of Empathy and Cell Phone Use

-
"Reclaiming Conversation" by Sherry Turkle could possibly hold one answer to the question, "How can we become more empathetic and how can we teach others to be more empathetic?" Is it really as simple as putting down our mobile devices and having face to face conversations. How does this teach us empathy? In an interview with the author in 2015 from The Atlantic magazine, she says,  " The empathy that I’m talking about is a psychological capacity to put yourself in the place of another person and imagine what they are going through. It has neurological underpinnings—we know that we’re “wired” to do it, because when you put young people in a summer camp where there are no devices, within five days their capacity to watch a scene, and then successfully identify what the people in the scene might be feeling, begins to go back up again from being depressed when they first arrived, armed with their devices. We suppress this capacity by putting ourselves in environme...
Read more

Mobile Devices - Are they replacing humans?

-
Mobile devices- we just can't live without them anymore. In a TIME Mobility Poll, 84% of the people surveyed said they could not go a single day without their mobile device. One in four people check their mobile device every 10 minutes.   What does this mean for humanity and the loss of empathy among us when we all start turning to our mobile devices for companionship? How many people turn to their phones when they are lonely? How many people talk to Siri, or Alexa, or Cortana?    Sherry Turkle, in her book "Reclaiming Conversation" explains that Artificial Intelligence could turn us into believing that robots have feelings and can really understand us and therefore, will be our friends. Movies such as "The Electric Grandma", and "Her" portray this exact scenario. In the movie 'Her", a recently divorced writer decides to open an operating system on his computer that will 'attend to his every need.' As the writer develops a virtual rela...
Read more

Review- Reclaiming Conversation

-
     There is hope to getting back the art of conversation, but it will require thoughtful and intended purpose. Many young people do appreciate being gathered together with their friends in person, but they also tend to reach for their phones when they are bored or feel they are not required to add to the conversations at hand.      This book discusses studies that have shown that the ability to empathize is being lost when people do not  experience the repercussions of their texts in person and this is leading to a culture of people who do not appreciate the value of face to face conversations. Too often, texted conversations are those that have been thought out meticulously and maybe even often proof-read by a friend. How is this honest communication between two people?       The author interviews people between the ages of 18- 35, ( those who have grown up with cell phones), and discovers that mobile devices are definitely a too...
Read more