How Smartphones Are Killing Conversation
--by Jill Suttie, syndicated from Greater Good, Jul 31, 2016
What happens when we become too dependent on our mobile phones? According to MIT sociologist Sherry Turkle, author of the new book Reclaiming Conversation, we lose our ability to have deeper, more spontaneous conversations with others, changing the nature of our social interactions in alarming ways.
Turkle has spent the last 20 years studying the impacts of technology on how we behave alone and in groups. Though initially excited by technology’s potential to transform society for the better, she has become increasingly worried about how new technologies, cell phones in particular, are eroding the social fabric of our communities.
Her latest book, .Reclaiming Conversation is Turkle’s call to take a closer look at the social effects of cell phones and to re-sanctify the role of conversation in our everyday lives in order to preserve our capacity for empathy, introspection, creativity, and intimacy.
Turkle asserts
Conversation is the most human and humanizing thing that we do. It’s where empathy is born, where intimacy is born—because of eye contact, because we can hear the tones of another person’s voice, sense their body movements, their presence. It’s where we learn about other people. However, we’ve actually moved away from conversation in a way that her research shows is hurting us.
Cell Phones Hurt us
Eighty-nine percent of Americans say that during their last social interaction, they took out a phone, and 82 percent said that it deteriorated the conversation they were in. Her conclusion? We are doing something that we know is hurting our interactions.
Even simply going to lunch and putting a cell phone on the table decreases the emotional importance of what people are willing to talk about, and it decreases the connection that the two people feel toward one another. If you multiply that by all of the times you have a cell phone on the table when you have coffee with someone or are at breakfast with your child or are talking with your partner about how you’re feeling, we’re doing this to each other 10, 20, 30 times a day.
Why humans are so vulnerable to the allure of the cell phoneCell phones make us promises that we will never have to be alone, we will never be bored, that we can put our attention wherever we want it to be, and that we can multi task. And we will never be bored
Actually allowing yourself a moment of boredom is crucial to human interaction and it’s crucial to your brain as well. When you’re bored, your brain isn’t bored at all—it’s replenishing itself, and it needs that down time.
We can use our phones in ways that are better for our kids, our families, our work, and ourselves. It’s the wrong analogy to say we’re addicted to our technology.
It’s not heroin.
Social media Effects and concerns
If you’re a social person, your use of social media becomes part of your social profile. And I think that’s great. Her book is not anti-technology; it’s pro-conversation. So, if you find that your use of social media increases your number of face-to-face conversations, then I’m 100 percent for it.
She is more concerned about people for whom social media becomes a kind of substitute, who literally post something on Facebook and just sit there and watch whether they get 100 likes on their picture, whose self-worth and focus becomes dictated by how they are to one another.
Recommendations for keeping technology at a manageable level without getting so hooked?
The path ahead is not a path where we do without technology, but of living in greater harmony with it.
• Create sacred spaces—the kitchen, the dining room, the car—that are device-free and set aside for conversation.
• During meals with family, friends, colleagues friend , No phones on table. Make meals a time when you are there to listen and be heard.
It takes seven minutes to know if a conversation is going to be interesting. Many people are unwilling to put in her seven minutes. So allow for those human moments, accept that life is not a steady “feed,” and learn to savor the pace of conversation—for empathy, for community, for creativity.
This article is printed here with permission. It originally appeared on Greater Good, the online magazine of the Greater Good Science Center (GGSC). Based at UC Berkeley, the GGSC studies the psychology, sociology, and neuroscience of well-being, and teaches skills that foster a thriving, resilient, and compassionate society.■