MALE SPEAKER: And good morning.
Welcome to Talks at Google
in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Today it's my great
privilege and pleasure
to introduce Sherry Turkle.
Dr. Turkle is Professor of
the Social Studies of Science
and Technology at MIT.
She's a sociologist and
clinical psychologist,
a leading media scholar
who spent the last three
decades studying
our relationship
with the digital
culture we've created.
Her classic studies in the
field are "The Second Self,"
"Life on the Screen,"
and "Alone Together."
She joins us today
to discuss her latest
book, "Reclaiming
Conversation-- The Power of Talk
in a Digital Age."
Emphasis here on the power.
I found this book an eloquent,
profound, and often moving
examination of the
consequences of our addiction
to our devices for
ourselves and our families,
and how conversation,
which we may dimly
recall as an
interaction between two
or more humans, in which no
devices are involved, can help.
Please join me in
welcoming Sherry Turkle.
[APPLAUSE]
SHERRY TURKLE: Well, that
was a lovely introduction.
And what was
loveliest about it is
that I think it
touches on the fact
that this really is
a book of my heart.
The other books I've
written-- and I'm
dedicated to all of them-- all
books are like your children--
basically came out of
my doing-- sponsored
by the NSF or other
funders-- 10, 15 years
of work-- 5, 10,
15 years of work,
and then reporting out
on what I had found.
And this book began in a
somewhat different way.
At the end of "Alone
Together," which
was a book about a kind
of new social situation
that people found themselves
in-- we'd all be here,
so we were together in a
social situation of some sort.
But we often found
ourselves feeling
that we could find
a sort of place
alone in our heads
in a new kind of way
because we could
go to our phones
and be in a different
kind of space.
Or flip it.
We would be alone
in our apartment
or in a park or wherever,
but we would feel ourselves
more together with the
world, with our communities--
a new kind of
global together that
was absolutely unprecedented.
So the topic of
that book really was
what was the
psychology, what were
the new political
dynamics, what was
the feeling of that new state.
At the end of that book, as
I listened to the transcripts
and gone over the hundreds
and hundreds of transcripts,
particularly from young people
but not just from young people,
one phrase kept
coming up-- something
that I really hadn't
had a chance to explore
in that book, which was,
I'd rather text than talk.
As part of the situation of
people who now have the devices
that enable this alone-together
state, these new, always-on,
always-on-you technologies that
enable this new thing I was
studying--
And I'm a psychologist, and
I'm psychodynamically trained,
which means that I'm interested
in interpersonal dynamics,
the importance of
early childhood,
the importance of
communication and connection
in early childhood, the
importance of empathy
and its development
in early childhood.
And I thought to myself,
OK, let's take seriously--
instead of taking this as
a litany or a catchphrase,
let's really take
seriously-- if people tell me
they'd rather text than talk--
if they're really doing that,
let me explore this
like an ethnographer.
Let me follow this story
in business, in romance,
in the raising of children, and
how people are getting along
in their communities and
with their colleagues,
with their lovers,
with their families,
with their friends--
let me follow this story
and what will that mean in
all of these areas of life.
And so that's how I'm trained.
I'm trained to be
an ethnographer.
And essentially, that's what
"Reclaiming Conversation" is.
It's a look at, for me, a
much broader sweep of data,
because I did go into law
firms and doctors' offices--
the kinds of doctors'
offices where, literally,
doctors are looking at screens
instead of talking to patients
because they're forced to, to
law firms where people felt it
was more important to stay at
their screens than go to lunch
with their colleagues.
Big mistake if you're a lawyer
and want to get promoted.
Big mistake in terms of
the culture of those firms,
but yet, that's how
they felt about it.
Software companies,
where people had
the right kind of cafeterias
and micro-kitchens
to sit down and
have a conversation,
except the highest
value of the company
was that they'd be always
on the messaging system
in order to show their devotion.
So I went to all
kinds of places,
as I say, a much broader
sweep of the world,
and I studied this
issue of conversation.
So what did I find?
Well, maybe it
makes sense to say
what I found by starting
with a story, which is not
a feel-good story for me.
At the end of-- the
book was published
and I was just waiting
for it to come out.
Before it comes out, a "New
York Times" reporter calls me.
My publisher hadn't
wanted me talking
much before the book comes out.
It's such an event.
And "The New York Times"
reporter calls me,
and he wants me
to-- now I'm finally
allowed to talk
about the book-- he
wants me to comment
on a story he's
writing about Hello Barbie.
So Hello Barbie is a robot
doll that comes out of the box
and says, "Hello, I'm Barbie.
I think I love you.
I have a sister.
I don't like her so much.
I think I'm jealous of her.
I hear you have a sister.
Are you jealous of your sister?
Let's talk?"
In other words, it
comes out of the box
with a pretend-empathy
narrative and starts
to try to engage
you in conversation
about this
pretend-empathy narrative,
with the idea that
that will be--
this just pretend
best-friend thing that
will be conversation.
So my position on
this-- everything
I know about kids growing
up and from studying
sociable robotics and
how kids respond to it--
is that you can get a kid
to talk to a robot that
offers pretend empathy.
But you can't get a child to
learn and experience empathy
from a robot that
has none to give,
because this robot
hasn't known a life,
it doesn't have a sister, it
doesn't know what jealousy is.
In other words,
this conversation
is not going to do the job
that conversation needs to do.
So it turns out-- after studying
law offices and business
offices and families--
now there is
another part of the story,
in fact, too, which, in fact,
I do end the book on
the issue of robotics.
But Hello Barbie
wasn't on the market.
I would have ended the book with
Hello Barbie if it had been.
It turns out that
sociable robotics is also
part of this story of a crisis
of conversation, because we're
offering ourselves and
our children objects that
are a faux conversation.
So just to give you some
sense of all the ways
we can't learn empathy
now in our culture,
and yet, there's
an empathy crisis.
And I'm going to argue-- just
to give the argument that
I'm going to make today and
that I make in "Reclaiming
Conversation"-- that
to this empathy crisis,
conversation is the remedy.
And, to make a bad pun, I
call it the talking cure.
And that, in fact,
is where the book
began-- with a 40% drop
in all markers for empathy
among college students.
It was a meta-analysis that
looked at many surveys--
many studies-- over
the past 20 years.
There's this 40% drop
among college students
in many markers for
empathy-- most of it
in the past 10 years.
And in our conversation--
because I'm
going to talk about
half my time--
it's telling that the
very brilliant woman who
was the head of this
study, after learning this,
decided to write empathy
apps for the iPhone.
So the whole
question of-- let us
grant that part of the way we
got ourselves into some trouble
with empathy, which is born from
looking at someone in the eye,
not breaking that contact,
hearing what they have to say,
they're hearing back
what you have to say,
taking some time-- let us
grant that interrupting that,
by going like this, is
part of the problem.
To what degree do we want to
solve it with this technology
that we have always on hand?
How much are we going
to look to technology
to solve the problem
that, perhaps, technology
got us into?
It obviously is very
seductive to do that.
But is that a good idea?
So I found out that I
began to get more evidence
about the empathy crisis
when I was called in
to consult in middle
schools for much younger
students than college students.
And in one school in
particular-- in the book,
I call it the Holbrook School--
the teachers were saying
that the students, about
12-year-old students,
were behaving like
eight-year-old students.
They were showing
a kind of cruelty
to their fellow students--
not on the Internet,
not in cyberbullying situations.
But really, the
teachers were saying
they didn't seem to understand
how other students were feeling
when other students
were talking to them.
They essentially were
describing a crisis of empathy.
And they didn't
seem to get it when
their teachers spoke to them.
They said 12-year-old
students behaved
like eight-year-old students.
So it was a very
dramatic study for me--
all these places where I was
finding teachers and educators
of-- did a large
study of teachers
and all kinds of
educators in that age
range, who were all talking
about kind of the same thing.
But then there were
a group of studies
that were truly optimistic and
that I want to share with you.
In only five days without
phones in a summer camp that's
device-free, young
people get those empathy
markers to come right back up.
In other words, we are built
to have an empathic response
to each other.
Now how do they get
those empathy markers
to come back up?
They talk to each other.
They talk to each other without
turning away from each other
to look for a device.
So getting back to the Barbie,
and getting back to the fact
that most kids have phones when
they're five or six or seven,
why would we give
kids-- just at the time
when they're developing
that empathic response,
why would we want
to give children
an object that will block
the development of empathy?
And phones do block the
development of empathy,
not because we meant them to.
It's not because
we said, oh, we're
going to just invent
something that's really going
to get in the way of empathy.
It's just because, when you
go like that to a person,
you're putting them
on pause and you're
saying that you
can't attend to what
they're thinking or feeling.
Now the more developed
and older the person is,
the less-- let's say--
damage it's going to do.
But a series of studies
show that if you are sitting
at a table and you put
a phone, a silent phone,
on the table between
you, first of all,
the conversation will
go to trivial matters.
The topic of the
conversation will change.
It will not be about
important things.
And secondly, you will feel
less empathic connection
with the person
you're talking to.
And then they re-did this
study in a natural setting,
where they put the phone,
not between two people having
lunch, but in the periphery
of the landscape-- like if you
put the phone almost
where I couldn't see it
at the edge of the
stage, and had me talking
to somebody at lunch,
but the phone's
almost like at the next table.
And they got the same
results-- conversation
on things less important,
and less sense of commitment
and connection, less empathic
sense with the person
you're talking with.
Essentially, it makes
every kind of sense
that if people think they're
going to be interrupted,
their attitude toward
a conversation changes.
It's really as simple as that.
And college students know that.
They know that they don't
pay attention to each other
when they have their phones.
And they talked to
me about something
they called the rule of threes,
as a lot of my own research
took place on college campuses.
So one young man says to me,
introducing the Rule of Three--
because at the
beginning, I had been
thinking of doing a study
on the nature of texting,
on the diction of
texting, really
getting deeply into the
linguistics of texting.
And he said, don't do that.
It's not our texting, he says,
that's getting us into trouble.
It's what our texting is doing
to our in-person conversations.
And that really was my
lodestar for this study.
It's not our texting that's
getting us into trouble,
he said, it's what
our texting is doing
to our in-person conversations.
And I said, well, tell me more.
And to illustrate
this, I get the story
about the Rule of Three.
And here's the Rule of Three.
When you're at
dinner-- let's say
it's six-- three people
have to have their heads up
before you give
yourself permission
to put your head down to
text, because everybody
has their phone and everybody's
going to be texting at dinner.
So the Rule of Three is
a kind of new politeness
about when you can let
your attention go down.
So what is the result
of the Rule of Three?
It's exactly the result
of all those studies
that took place with the
silent phone on the table,
that that changed the
nature of discussion
and gave people less
than empathic connection
with each other.
Things are kept
light and on subjects
where you don't mind
being interrupted,
and people feel less of
an empathic connection
with each other.
And it's not just
among college students.
I should mention a recent Pew
study showed that 89% of adults
say that, in their last
social interaction,
they took out a phone.
And 82% say that it
diminished the conversation.
Now that study goes on to
be very realistic and very
positive and very upbeat about
all the great things people did
when they took out their phone.
They looked up a movie, they
looked up a cinematographer,
they checked a thing
in their neighborhood.
The phone is completely
integrated in their life.
But, bottom line,
89% interrupted
a social interaction; 82% say
it lessened the conversation.
Rule of Three.
And then there's
the Rule of Seven.
The Rule of Seven is
what a college junior
described as this.
It takes seven minutes to know
where a conversation is going
to go, just like it
probably takes seven minutes
to know whether you're going
to pay close attention to this.
You have to get used to
somebody's body in the room,
the way somebody speaks,
the kind of cadence,
how they express themselves.
But certainly in a
conversation, where
you're adjusting to each
other, there are fits
and there are starts
and there are lulls,
it takes seven minutes
to see whether this
is going to be worth her
time, she explains to me.
And then she says, I often
don't put in my seven minutes,
because I just would
rather go to the phone
and get the reliability
of that steady feed.
It's easier to just send a text
during those seven minutes.
It's easier to get
something sure and certain,
and it's more efficient.
And a lot of people
I interviewed
said that-- they don't
put in that kind of time
or wait for that kind of
lull, or allow themselves
a moment of boredom in
conversations today.
Before that happens,
they go to a phone.
So you can see a kind of
perfect storm building up here.
All roads led me to a crisis in
a certain kind of conversation.
It's not like we're not talking.
I'm talking about the kind
of conversation that's
spontaneous, open ended,
where there are tangents,
where you allow
yourself lulls, where
you don't interrupt each
other, where there's eye
contact-- the kind of thing
where empathy is born,
where creativity is
most likely to happen.
And a crisis in
empathy is happening,
and I'm arguing that
conversation is the talking
cure.
Conversation-- that
kind of conversation--
is the most human and humanizing
thing that we know how to do,
that doesn't take
away in the slightest
from the fun and the
intellectual qualities
and the sexiness
and the eroticism
and the joy of texting,
and e-mail, and messaging,
and everything, just everything.
It just means that conversation
has some particularities,
even in our
neurophysiology, that
makes it the ideal thing
for teaching empathy
and for getting certain
kinds of results
in creativity, collaboration,
and developing the human.
It's the training
ground for empathy.
And I'm not saying to
put away your phones
for a certain amount of
time because it's polite,
or because I want you to
learn some kind of art
of conversation, to be
kind of fancy talkers.
I'm really saying that this
flight from conversation,
the fact that we don't
want to sit around
the boring bits-- as
one woman said to me,
I don't like the boring
bits-- is actually
interfering with
something we need to do
for each other as human beings.
There are great
ironies, as I said.
Even though the
psychologists are
agreeing on this
crisis in empathy,
there's this big movement to
create these empathy apps--
getting ourselves into
trouble and wanting technology
to cure it, just as people
are intolerant of being alone
and want technology
to cure that.
Many of you may have
heard of a study that's
become widely cited, in
which a group of college
students-- this was part
of a group of 21 studies--
but one study at the
University of Virginia,
a group of college students were
told that they would be asked
to sit alone from
six to 15 minutes
and were they OK with that.
Sure.
No devices, no books.
Sure.
Did they think they might
want to give themselves
electroshocks
during that period.
No, not really.
No.
They were asked to
test the shocking out.
They tested it.
No, really not.
And then they were just asked
to sit alone without a device.
After six minutes, the students
were shocking themselves.
[CHUCKLING]
So being alone
was so intolerable
that they would rather give
themselves electroshocks
than sit quietly with
their own thoughts.
Being alone is a problem that
we want technology to solve.
And I bring this up
because there is actually
an important connection that
I want to leave you with.
If you leave with
one thing, it's
like-- this is
the thing to leave
with-- this important
connection between conversation
and solitude, because
I think this is where
my work is often misunderstood.
They'll say, well,
sure, Sherry Turkle
says the problem is we're
looking at our devices
when we're together.
OK, grant her that.
That's not so cool.
But what about if I look at
my device when I'm alone?
Who's that bothering?
That's not a
problem for anybody.
You need to have a
capacity for solitude
in order to have a
capacity for sociality.
The link between conversation
and solitude is tremendous.
We cannot solve our
flight from conversation,
our crisis of empathy, without
dealing with our incapacity
for solitude, with our
flight from solitude.
That it's only when you can
gather yourself, be content
with yourself, and, because of
that, talk to another person
and really see who
they are as a person,
and hear them for who
they are because you're
OK with yourself, can you
begin to have a conversation.
The way psychologists
have put this
so beautifully is that, if you
don't teach your children to be
alone, they'll only know how
to be lonely-- that solitude
and sociality go together.
And that's why you can't
just say, oh, well,
the devices-- I'll
worry about the devices
when I'm with other people.
But whatever I do by myself, my
intolerance for having a moment
alone, that's nothing.
We have to be more intentional
in our use of devices
for ourselves, not just because
we're breaking up conversations
with other people.
So what I'm basically
saying is that we're
at a kind of Rachel
Carson moment--
distracted at our dinner
tables and living rooms,
at business meetings
and in classrooms.
I see traces of the
new Silent Spring--
that's the term
that Carson coined--
when we were ready to see
that with technological change
had come an assault
on our environment.
And now we've arrived at
another moment of recognition.
When I wrote "Alone
Together," people
thought it was a good book, but
people wanted to fight with me.
It was like, OK, this
is a really good book.
Let's fight about this.
And now I really feel
that we've arrived
at a moment of
recognition when people
feel that something is amiss.
Something is amiss.
We have a great technology,
but something is amiss.
We need to get it more
aligned with the lives
we want to leave.
This time, technology
is implicated
in an assault on empathy.
Rachel Carson's moment was
a moment of recognition
that we were at a point
where we had to do something
and we could do something.
And now, too, we
can do something.
We can do many somethings,
many somethings, both
in how we design
technology-- I'm
delighted to be speaking
here, delighted to be here--
and how we use technology.
There are many somethings.
I'm just going to quickly
rush through a couple
of these little
somethings, so as not
to take too much more than
seven minutes on all the things
to do.
And then I hope that
in the questions
we can open up to
more somethings.
These somethings sound
like little somethings,
but when you add them together,
it's a change in culture.
We're not looking for solutions.
We're looking for first steps.
So what are some first steps?
First of all, act
with intention.
A father is giving his
two-year-old daughter a bath,
and he's doing his
mail on the iPhone.
And he says to me, I remember
giving my 11-year-old daughter
a bath when she was two.
And he used to just sit
with her, and talk to her,
and sing to her, and play
with the little toys she
had in her bathtub.
I kind of miss that
with my two-year-old.
I play-- I don't do that.
I just do my mail on my iPhone.
Technology makes us forget
what we know about life.
That's author's choice.
That's my favorite line
in my book-- technology
makes us forget what
we know about life.
He knows that he is doing
something that's amiss.
That little girl needs some
conversation from her dad.
And he enjoyed, and
was nurtured himself,
by talking to his older child.
At a moment like this,
pull up your socks
pull yourself together,
and put down the phone.
So act with intention.
Participate, however you
can, in a revitalization
of public conversation, because
public conversations teach us.
They model how
conversation can unfold.
Too many of my students
say they don't know how
to have a public conversation.
They don't know how to
have a conversation.
They say their families
didn't talk at dinner.
I lay a lot of this on parents.
It was my generation
that thought
we would only get a Dick
Tracy two-way wrist radio.
That was the best
we would ever get.
And then, all of a sudden,
I have a smartphone,
and this is amazing.
And we didn't talk to our kids.
It's parents who didn't talk
at breakfast and dinner.
It's kids who are telling
me that they never
took a walk with their
father to the corner store
when the father didn't
have his phone with him.
So it's very important that
we have public conversations,
including classrooms,
where there's
a lot of talk, which is part
of my problem with putting
everything on screens
and distance learning.
Not that it, itself,
isn't good, but you
have to worry every time
you take conversation away
from the classroom.
Remember that the
presence of a device
already signals that your
attention is divided, even
if you do not intend it to be.
So remember those studies
of phones on the table.
Remember that when you put
that phone on the table,
you were signaling that you
could be elsewhere, even if you
don't mean to go elsewhere.
So do the simplest thing.
Just don't put it on the table.
Accept what research
has made clear.
And you've heard
this so many times.
It's so boring.
Anyway, just listen to me.
Uni-tasking is the
next big thing.
There is no such
thing as multitasking.
Do one thing at a time.
Really, be in the vanguard.
Everybody knows this.
Nobody wants to hear it.
So I've said it.
You know it's true.
Conversation is the human
way to practice uni-tasking.
It's part of the reason
why it's so hard.
Don't try to be perfect.
My students come to me
and they say they do not
want to go to office hours.
They want to write me an
email instead of office hours.
Why do they want to
write me an email?
Because they will
write the email
that best expresses
their question,
and I will write
them an email back
that perfectly answers-- that's
perfectly pitched and gives
them the most information back.
It's a transaction,
and it's perfect.
Who developed a love of
knowledge, a love of learning?
Am I here today
because I really asked
a perfect question and somebody
gave me a perfect answer?
No.
There is no one who
developed a love
of learning for that reason.
It's because somebody
sat down with me,
believed in me, because I looked
at somebody in a conversation
and said, I could
be like that person.
I could be-- what would it take
for me to be like that person,
and that person is talking
to me and interested in me.
That's how it happens.
Cultivate solitude.
The capacity to be alone with
your thoughts is crucial.
Some of the most
crucial conversations
you're going to have are
conversations with yourself.
To have them, you have to learn
to listen with your own voice,
set aside your laptops
and your tablets,
and put away your phone.
And finally, obey the
Seven Minute Rule.
That's the rule suggested to
me by a college junior, that
says that it takes at
least seven minutes to see
how a conversation
is going to unfold.
You have to let it unfold,
and not go to your phone
before those minutes pass.
If there is a lull in the
conversation, let it be.
Every technology challenges
our human values,
which is a good thing because
it causes us to reflect
on what these values are.
If we've invented
a technology that
causes us to look at each other
less, to make less eye contact,
that needs to be a signal to us.
And the message of my book
is that we're all in this
together.
Let's just look up,
look at each other,
and start the conversation.
Thank you very much.
[APPLAUSE]
So questions.
Yes.
AUDIENCE: Previous generations
have-- the last generation,
anyway, tended to
use television when
they didn't want to be
alone-- that sense of breaking
the loneliness.
And from what I understand
from recent studies,
the use of television that way
is decreasing to some degree,
as people are spending more time
either online, or potentially
online, with some sort of chat.
Do you think that this decrease
in empathy-- that people
actually saw modeled
conversation, modeled empathy
in TV, and that
the decrease in TV
is potentially a bad thing,
as weird as that sounds?
I mean, how do you compare
TV as a form of using that--
SHERRY TURKLE:
Well, I think TV--
AUDIENCE: --avoiding
loneliness--
SHERRY TURKLE: Let me
just say a word about TV.
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
SHERRY TURKLE: In
"Reclaiming Conversation"
I talk a lot about TV, because
we've all experienced TV.
And it's very important
not to get into, well,
we're talking about
the latest technology,
and then we're just
upset about this one
because it's the one we have
now, and we were upset about TV
when that was the thing.
The reason I'm
on-- I was a big--
I don't want to
say computer diva,
because that would
be a little much,
but I was on the cover
of, believe it or not,
"Wired" magazine for being a
kind of booster of this tech--
it seems like very early
days, but in fact, it was true
that I was an enthusiast.
And the difference between--
So before I answer
your question,
what this device has that other
devices don't-- TV, anything--
the uniqueness of this
device is the always-on,
always-on-you property,
where every interaction
you're in, like your baby--
being with your baby.
There are potty trainers that
have a slot for the iPad.
There are baby bouncers
with a slot for the iPad.
And to me, those
signify our willingness
to interrupt every
time that, normally, we
would be thinking of the
human gaze and the human talk
to a baby, which is built into
us as what the baby needs, as
potentially broken by a screen.
So the fact of those
objects in the culture
are symptoms of the
fact that we have
gotten so used to this
always-on, always-on-you
situation.
I grew up with a television.
My family sat around it and we
all talked to the television.
There was this program,
"I Remember Mama,"
on the television about
an immigrant family.
And we all fought
with the television
about what that family did,
and how our family would
have done it
differently, and how
they are making big
mistakes, and what
they're doing with their money.
Television didn't
have to be isolating.
It could be isolating.
We have to find a way to make
our current technologies less
isolating.
So television is a
perfect example for me
of how it's not the object.
It's the designing
for vulnerability
around the object.
We are vulnerable to certain
kinds of uses of our phones
that are not really nurturing
of us as individuals
and a collective.
And we have to design
around that vulnerability
to make that
relationship better.
That's how I see it.
But I don't know about
television modeling
empathy and now our
troubles with empathy.
I have to think about that.
[CHUCKLING]
I'll get back to you.
We'll talk more about that.
The idea that not enough
television is the root of this
is something--
[CHUCKLING]
I have to admit,
that's a toughie.
AUDIENCE: Your work is on the
level of peer interaction,
and it's very fascinating
and frightening to me, both.
I wanted to ask you about
two areas that are related
but are on a kind of
a different scale.
Twenty years ago Robert
Putnam wrote "Bowling Alone"
about the decline of civic
participation in society.
He wrote that between
1995 and 2000.
He was looking back to 1950.
He's talking about
the decline of voting,
of civic organizations, even
things like bowling leagues--
hence the title of the book.
And clearly there
are a lot of things
that play into this,
including residential mobility
and all kinds of stuff.
But he did, in fact, link
it to technology-- notably,
TV, the rise of TV,
and later the Internet,
over that whole period.
I'm just wondering-- I know you
didn't directly study things
like wider organizations.
But I'm wondering if you have
any thoughts about whether--
SHERRY TURKLE: Yes.
AUDIENCE: --this might
be related to that.
That's number one.
And number two, a slightly
different sort of thing.
I wonder if you
have any thoughts
about whether this kind
of trend is, in any way,
related to the recent huge
increase in diagnosis of autism
and autistic disorders.
SHERRY TURKLE: Well, let
me take the second first.
I'm not an autism expert,
so I say this bracketed
with that disclaimer.
But I know for a fact that in
the schools that I was studying
that were specifically not
schools for children who
had developmental disorders
or autism or on the spectrum,
children were not looking
at each other in the eye,
were having conversations
with their heads down,
did not show empathy
towards the other children.
In one case I
report in the book,
again, in a school that is not
for children on the spectrum,
one child's father
had committed suicide,
and another girl
says to him, I hope
you go the way of
your dad, when she
wanted to talk to his sister
more in the lunch room,
and-- honestly, a
13-year-old fight.
And when the headmaster tries
to talk to her about this,
he said to me, his goal
was to make that girl cry.
[CHUCKLING] And then he
had to call her mother
to explain why she
came home in tears.
To try to get her head into
the head of this other kid,
he said it was
almost impossible.
In other words, you have
children acting as though they
were on the spectrum.
And in the camps where
children go and have a summer
without phones,
one of the things
the counsellors note
is that children
come in kind of
heads-down, not talking,
having a very hard time
relating to other kids.
And by the end of the
summer-- it's often
as long as a 10-week or 12-week
session, they're better.
So I fear that
we're misdiagnosing
kids who really have a different
kind of disorder, which
is that they're out of
a kind of practice--
and I mean this quite
literally-- they're out
of a kind of practice
of needing to deal
with the complexities
of a conversation.
And we're diagnosing
them, perhaps,
as on the spectrum, when
really they need the talking
cure, because--
I'll tell you just
one piece of this.
Children don't apologize.
They type, "I'm sorry,"
and they hit Send.
And the elements of
an apology, which
is looking you in the eye,
seeing that you were hurt,
your seeing that I'm upset
that I see that you're hurt,
you feeling compassionate
because you see that I'm upset,
my saying, oh, my god,
he looks compassionate,
maybe there's a chance
for me, and you're
seeing that I want to
take that chance-- this
is a very, very
complicated dance.
And this is how empathy is born.
We're doing all of
this-- putting each other
in the turn of the other.
"I'm sorry" and hitting
Send does none of this work.
So I'm saying that I have a lot
of optimism in just giving kids
more of an opportunity-- and
this is where I'm going to get
back to Robert Putnam-- when
you're not sending a kid out
on the street, when he's not
part of that Boy Scout troop,
or that after-school thing, or
that Little League, or that--
I recently had a reunion.
One lovely thing about
getting your book
reviewed in the "New York
Times" is all of a sudden
you're meeting people you
went to kindergarten with.
It's like, oh, my god, Sherry.
I can go to your book signing.
I went to kindergarten with you.
So I'm having all these
wonderful reunions,
and we're all talking
about how much time we
spent on the street.
It was in Brooklyn.
This is pre-"Bowling Alone."
We bowled together--
we didn't bowl--
we played other games,
hopscotch or tag,
but we were on the street
and all of those interactions
were part of communities
where people were constantly
negotiating, where
kids were constantly
learning these skills.
So I see my work as the
human side, the micro side,
the personal side, the
opening up the door
of the home side of what
Robert Putnam is talking about.
So I feel very close
to the work of Putnam
and other people like him, who
were talking about the macro,
whereas my work focuses
more on the micro.
Yeah.
AUDIENCE: Good morning.
I love what technology is
doing in schools right now,
for the most part, in terms
of enabling collaboration
between students and
things like that.
But it's the same.
It's the same.
A lot of the same opportunities
for avoidance and being
alone are created
with the screens.
So talk a little
bit about what you
think schools might need to do,
or could do, to help mitigate
against pushing us faster down
the path you're talking about,
number one.
And number two, have you heard
from, maybe, corporations
at all around the
training implications
for this for
communications, particularly
in a selling environment?
You go to a-- I'm a
sales leader here.
Everyone has a device
or two or three
at every meeting you go to.
So from what you've
described, that
means that automatically empathy
has gone from the meeting,
and empathy is a key
part in salesmanship.
So if you could talk about
that for a minute, too.
SHERRY TURKLE: Well,
let me start with that.
AUDIENCE: And how do you
feel about corporations?
SHERRY TURKLE: There's a great
chapter in my book on business.
And [CHUCKLING] my favorite
story is a guy who says,
I cannot close the deal
unless I have a conversation.
And I cannot tell you how
many times, he tells me,
that I will send out an email
and they'll want to send me
an email back.
And I know that I need
to see this person.
I need to have his device away,
for me to close this deal.
And I have to work so hard to
get him at least on the phone,
or hopefully face to face, to
really make the money I need.
Or people talk at
length about people
who just want to send emails
back and forth instead
of really dealing
with a problem,
or the struggle to
get the highest levels
to put their devices away
during very important meetings.
And I'm seeing a big
shift in willingness
to start to force people
to put their devices away,
because, really, to get things
done you need full attention.
So I think we're
just at the cusp.
I want this project to be
part of-- no one book changes
people's-- I don't expect you
guys to read this book and say,
ah, now my mind is
changed completely.
But I think I've
assembled a lot of data
that should start a good
conversation about phones
and business.
I know in my work setting,
five years ago professors were,
I am not anybody's nanny.
I don't want to be
anybody's nanny.
You come to class.
You do whatever you want.
I'm nobody's nanny.
And now, with all
the new data that
is in about how one open
laptop not only destroys
the attention of the person
with the open laptop,
but a kind of circle around
that person, we have baskets.
And we say, put the phone and
put the laptop in the basket
and then come into class.
Professors now have a totally
different attitude about this.
There's a story in the
book about Carol Steiker
at the Harvard Business
School who, five years ago,
six years ago, had everybody
taking notes on laptops.
She thought that was the way.
OK, sure, that's
how people write.
And then, she says
that she found
that when they had
their laptops open,
people were
transcribing the class.
They weren't integrating what
was happening in the class.
They were doing like they were
court stenographers in her law
school class at Harvard.
So then one day, one of
the students was sick.
She was in the hospital, and
different members of the class
had offered to take
notes for this sick girl.
And a student comes
up to her and says,
Professor Steiker, I need
to have your notes today
because my power was lost.
I didn't have a power cord.
And she said, well, why
didn't you take notes by hand?
And she said, well,
I couldn't do that.
I couldn't get it all down
if I took notes by hand.
So the whole thing that she
wants her students to do,
which is to integrate, which
is to integrate what you hear
and make sense of it for you,
which you can do by hand--
this student was not
even on the program
that she would even
think of doing that.
All she knows how to do is take
everything down on a laptop.
And that's the day
that Steiker said,
no more computers in class.
So to your point about
schools, I go into classrooms
and students are just
using these devices
in ways that are
fantastic, mind-blowing.
And there's a lot of use
of these computers in ways
that are mind-deadening.
And now it's our job
to sort this through.
And it's a big job, because
there-- some of the most
hysterical stories
in my book, I think--
are students who print
out their reading
assignments, because it's
too distracting to read them
on the computer that
their school gave them,
because they're too tempted
to look at other things
and let their minds wander.
So that's what you don't want.
So it's not enough to just
put the computers in class.
Now it's the second generation.
We all have to get very
vigilant about the culture
of the classroom
that we use them in.
And I really think
schools should not
close their libraries.
Very, very bad choice.
Very bad choice.
Putting everything on the
machine and thinking libraries
are gone-- very bad choice.
Is that my phone?
[LAUGHTER] My
daughter, who works
for LinkedIn-- God telling
me something-- she's 24,
she works for LinkedIn, says
that only someone over 40
ever forgets to turn
off their phone.
That's very funny.
Yes.
AUDIENCE: Hi.
How do you deal with the idea
that more and more time being
spent on devices is being
used to be more productive?
Be it emails or
reading articles,
or-- because the Internet
has so much information.
So all the additional
time that is
being used to spend
on devices is being
used to be more productive.
And any time that
is spent in solitude
is sort of wasted
time, or so to speak.
SHERRY TURKLE: Well,
I honor your question.
[CHUCKLING]
And how can I say it in
the nicest possible way?
The premise is wrong.
The premise that time in
solitude reading email
is, without any
further qualifier,
the most productive way you
could be spending your time,
is part of what we have to
examine, because it turns out
not to be true.
And the premise that time
and solitude, getting
more information online,
is the most productive way
to be spending your time
instead of, for example--
and it just may
sound crazy to you,
but it's by hearing
something that sounds crazy
that you say oh, let me
think about this crazy thing
and let me entertain this
idea-- mind wandering,
letting your
imagination wander--
we're terrified of that idea.
People are like, I want
to stay with my computer.
I want to stay on my machine.
We now have a device that lets
us do that and lets us feel
that we're always productive.
That's why we want to be at it.
I mean, we wouldn't
be having this problem
if this thing didn't
seduce us with the promise
that we're more productive
when we're at it.
So that's why I'm so
sympathetic with your premise,
because that's how we
feel when we're with it.
I sometimes say it makes us
three promises, like gifts
of a benevolent fairy.
You will always be productive.
You can let your imagination
go wherever it wants to go.
You will always be heard.
You will never be bored.
And now you'll
always be productive.
You'll never be wasting time.
You'll never--
It just turns out that
it's like multi-tasking.
The great studies of
multi-tasking by Clifford Nass,
who tragically died
a few years ago,
showed that when
people multi-task,
they feel like they're doing
better and better and better
and better for
every task they add,
when in fact they're
doing worse and worse.
Every task they add,
they feel they're
doing better at every task.
And, in fact, they're
doing worse at every task.
And we have to force
ourselves to reconsider
that that extra
time at our email
is not time that's really the
most productive and the most
collaborative.
That's why I do case
studies of companies where,
instead of allowing for
conversation and collaboration,
the value of the company is to
keep everybody at their screen.
And they're losing
out, even though they
are stating that
really what they want
is people talking
and collaborating,
because the pressure
to stay at your screen
is such an important part
of the company culture.
So when somebody
asked about do I
want to have an
impact on businesses,
if I had one impact
on business, that
would be the conversation I
would want to start, I think.
Yeah.
AUDIENCE: Hi.
I was curious about, when you
were talking about resilience,
of that just a bit of time away
helps rebuild that empathy.
And it's particularly
interesting to me
because I keep Shabbat.
So from Friday afternoon
till Saturday night, my phone
is off-- no exceptions,
no computer, no nothing.
And the community of people
that I'm friends with,
and that I spend that time with,
also have their phones off.
And I enjoy it.
And I'm curious if there's
been any studies, either
examining the effect within
that sort of community,
but also, I would imagine
that that information would
be very useful
applying outwards--
of what sort of
techniques are useful
and how much time away
has an effect on empathy
and community.
SHERRY TURKLE: Well,
actually there's
a large community of
people who are working
on the notion of
a digital Shabbat,
not necessarily making
it a religious practice--
AUDIENCE: Right.
SHERRY TURKLE: --but sort
of using that experience.
And many people find that
the 24 hours turns out
to be almost ideal--
an ideal time.
Others find that taking three
hours a night is perfect.
So what people have shown
is that there are many ways
to do it, and that what makes
most sense for the beginning
is for people to tune
in to their own family
lives and their own stories.
But certainly, the one
day, once a week is ideal.
Many families take a
one-and-a-half-day vacation,
where they literally go
to a different place where
there's no Internet, where
they do things together.
The part in the studies
that were done-- I'm
forgetting the name
of the company.
It's a large consulting company.
It's public information.
It'll come back to me.
I write about it.
They do something called
predictable time off,
where they gave people
only one night a week.
But what you mentioned
was very important.
You're in a community of
people that talks about it.
And they didn't only give
people one night a week
where they said, you don't
have to be on your phone.
But they had people talk
about that experience
when they came to work.
And they gave them
support at work,
more support perhaps than other
workers had about the stresses
of the always-on life.
And many people think that what
is helpful about the Shabbat
is that so many people who
are taking that Shabbat,
they're not just
taking that Shabbat
but they are taking that
Shabbat and they're also
in community with other people,
which is why it makes it harder
to study your experience,
and make it seem like,
oh, well, we'll just
apply this to everybody
and that was the right
recipe for digital detox.
You're having a
combination of no digital,
but then an extraordinary
group community experience.
But I think people are
trying different things.
It makes sense-- different
people in different ways.
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
Thank you.
AUDIENCE: I liked
your term "seduction."
It's very easy to
get on and stay on,
even though there is no
reason to-- to say, well,
it's the easy thing to
do, just to stay on here.
My question, I
guess, is, is there
some way to use these tools
more intentionally, as you say?
Facebook, for example.
My kindergarten
friends-- sometimes
I do see them on Facebook.
I say, well, I had no idea
you were in California.
What have you been doing
for the last 50 years?
Or more, actually.
But so-- but on the
other hand, realizing
that I've just spent
an hour on Facebook,
I say, what the hell
have I been doing?
Right?
Is there some way to
use tools like that
more effectively,
more intentionally?
SHERRY TURKLE: Yes.
But I'm not sure that-- but
again, what is your intention?
I think we have to
figure out if-- I now
have an intention
that I actually like.
I've learned from this
tour that I actually
like connecting with
the people I knew
when I was a kid in Brooklyn.
So when I'm on
Facebook now, I'm not
wandering the plains
of Facebook just
hoping that somebody
will like me.
I actually-- if I
spend some time there,
I actually feel
motivated to look
for the people who were on the
masthead of the "Lincoln Log"
at Abraham Lincoln High
School in Brooklyn.
I feel that is joyful
and positive time online.
So that's behavior
with intention.
I think the issue is
behavior with intention.
When you're on the Internet
with behavior with intention,
what's not to like?
If students in our
classes actually
looked up something that was
crucial to the discussion,
brought it to the
class and said,
my god, here's the thing that's
crucial to the discussion,
and then that was the end
of it, that would be fine.
But that's not what happens.
They look it up, and
then they see a message
and then go-- as
one of my students
says, I can't bear not
to see who wants me,
when she sees a
message from Facebook.
And that's what it's about.
We all want to see
who wants us there.
So you go to Facebook,
and then once you're there
you see an ad, and
then we have the trail,
and then you're
buying REI sportswear.
I mean that's the
sort of MIT trail,
from the factoid to the "who
wants me?" to the shoes--
to the hiking shoes.
So I think that the notion
of acting with intention
is the one that matters.
But you have to decide
what your intention is
for each of these things.
AUDIENCE: Thanks.
SHERRY TURKLE: And this
is the last question.
AUDIENCE: OK.
I was wondering if you've
looked at the difference
between talking on the phone
with people and texting.
I notice that if my wife had
a conversation on the phone,
I'd overhear part of what
she was talking about
and you can ask
questions about it later.
But if someone picks up a phone,
looks at it, it's all private.
Have you looked
at the difference
between texting and talking?
SHERRY TURKLE: You know, there
was a wonderful-- we talk
about privacy and there's
so much to discuss here.
Let me just refer you
to one wonderful piece
of writing on the issue
of privacy and texting
and what you lose.
A woman recently wrote an op
ed in the "New York Times"
about being a mother, and
the difference between being
a mother and doing all of
her work for her children
like this on the
phone, and the way
her mother did work
for her by getting
on the phone-- organizing
a birthday party,
getting stuff, calling
up A&S and asking
do they have any
children's toys.
She says, my children
complain that I'm on the phone
all the time, texting,
but really, I'm
organizing their
birthday parties.
When my mother was on the
phone, I could hear her life.
I could hear that she
was doing things for me
and our family and
food and friendships.
And that part of the problem
with the privacy of what
we do on our phones is that we
don't see that we're actually
doing things for each other.
So I'm just so moved
by your saying,
I could hear what
my wife was doing.
So it's very complicated.
This whole part of how
texting takes us away
from each other
in this other way
is just something that people
are starting to study now.
Well listen, thank
you very much.
You've been a great audience.
Sorry about my phone etiquette.
Thank you very much.
[APPLAUSE]
