Connected but alone Sherry Turkle

just a moment ago my daughter Rebecca

texted me for good luck her text said

mom you will rock I love this getting

that text it was like getting a hug and

so there you have it I embody the

central paradox I’m a woman who loves

getting texts who’s going to tell you

that too many of them can be a problem

actually that reminder of my daughter

brings me to the beginning of my story

1996 when I gave my first TED talk

Rebecca was five years old and she was

sitting right there in the front row I

had just written a book that celebrated

our life on the Internet and I was about

to be on the cover of Wired magazine in

those heady days we were experimenting

with chat rooms and online virtual

communities we were exploring different

aspects of ourselves and then we

unplugged

I was excited and as a psychologist what

excited me most was the idea that we

would use what we learned in the virtual

world about ourselves about our identity

to live better lives in the real world

now fast forward to 2012 I’m back here

on the Ted stage again my daughter’s 20

she’s a college student she sleeps with

her cell phone

so do I and I’ve just written a new book

but this time it’s not one that will get

me on the cover of Wired magazine so

what happened I’m still excited by

technology but I believe and I’m here to

make the case that we’re letting it take

us places that we don’t want to go over

the past 15 years I’ve

studied technologies of mobile

communication and I’ve interviewed

hundreds and hundreds of people young

and old about their plugged-in lives and

what I’ve found is that our little

devices those little devices in our

pockets are so psychologically powerful

that they don’t only change what we do

they change who we are some of the

things we do now with our devices are

things that only a few years ago we

would have found odd or disturbing but

they’ve quickly come to seem familiar

just how we do things so just to take

some quick examples people text or do

email during corporate board meetings

they text and shop and go on Facebook

during classes during presentations

actually during all meetings people talk

to me about the important new skill of

making eye contact while you’re texting

people explain to me that it’s hard but

that it can be done parents text and do

email at breakfast and a dinner well

their children complain about not having

their parents full attention but then

these same children deny each other

their full attention this is a recent

shot of my daughter and her friends

being together while not being together

and we even texted funerals I study this

we remove ourselves from our grief or

from our reverie and we go into our

phones why does this matter it matters

to me because I think we’re setting

ourselves up for trouble trouble

certainly in how we relate to each other

but also trouble in how we relate to

ourselves in our capacity for

self-reflection we’re getting used to a

new way of being alone together people

want to be with each other but also

elsewhere connected to all the different

places they want to be people want to

customize their lives they want to go in

and out of all the places they are

because the thing that matters most to

them is control over where they put

their attention so you want to go to

that board meeting but you only want to

pay attention to the bits that interest

you and some people think that’s a good

thing but you can end up hiding from

each other even as we’re all constantly

connected to each other 50 year old

businessman laments to me that he feels

he doesn’t have colleagues anymore at

work when he goes to work he doesn’t

stop by to talk to anybody he doesn’t

call and he says he doesn’t want to

interrupt his colleagues because he says

they’re too busy on their email but then

he stops himself and he says you know

I’m not telling you the truth I’m the

one who doesn’t want to be interrupted I

think I should want to but actually I’d

rather just do things on my blackberry

across the generations I see that people

can’t get enough of each other if and

only if they can have each other at a

distance in amounts they can control I

call it the Goldilocks effect not too

close not too far just right but what

might feel just right for that

middle-aged executive can be a problem

for an adolescent who needs to develop

face-to-face relationships an 18 year

old boy who uses texting for almost

everything says to me wistfully someday

someday but certainly not now I’d like

to learn how to have a conversation when

I ask people what’s wrong with having a

conversation people say I’ll tell you

what’s wrong with having a conversation

it takes place in real time and you

can’t control what you’re going to say

so that’s the bottom line

texting email posting all of these

things let us present the self as we

want to be we get to edit and that means

we get to delete and that means we get

to retouch the face the voice the flesh

the body not too little not too much

just right human relationships are rich

and they’re messy and they’re demanding

and we clean them up with technology and

when we do one of the things that can

happen is that we sacrifice conversation

for mere connection we shortchange

ourselves and over time we seem to

forget this or we seem to stop caring I

was caught off guard when Stephen

Colbert asked me a profound question a

profound question he said

don’t all those little tweets don’t all

those little sips of online

communication add up to one big gulp of

real conversation my answer was no they

don’t add up connecting and sips may

work for gathering discrete bits of

information they may work for saying I’m

thinking about you or even for saying I

love you I mean look at how I felt when

I got that text from my daughter but

they don’t really work for learning

about each other for really coming to

know and understand each other and we

use conversations with each other to

learn how to have conversations with

ourselves so a flight from conversation

can really matter because it can

compromise our capacity for

self-reflection for kids growing up that

skill is the bedrock of development over

and over I hear I would rather text than

talk and what I’m seeing is that people

get so used to being shortchanged out of

real conversation so used to getting by

with less that they become almost

willing to dispense with people

altogether so for example many people

share with me this wish that some day a

more advanced version of Siri the

digital assistant on Apple’s iPhone will

be more like a best friend someone who

will listen when others won’t

I believe this wish reflects a painful

truth that I’ve learned in the past 15

years that feeling that no one is

listening to me is very important in our

relationships with technology that’s why

it’s so appealing to have a Facebook

page or Twitter feed so many automatic

listeners and the feeling that no one is

listening to me makes us want to spend

time

machines that seem to care about us

we’re developing robots they call them

sociable robots that are specifically

designed to be companions to the elderly

to our children

to us have we so lost confidence that we

will be there for each other during my

research I worked in nursing homes and I

brought in the sociable robots that were

designed to give the elderly the feeling

that they were understood and one day I

came in and a woman who had lost a child

was talking to a robot in the shape of a

baby seal it seemed to be looking in her

eyes it seemed to be following the

conversation it comforted her and many

people found this amazing but that woman

was trying to make sense of her life

with a machine that had no experience of

the arc of a human life that robot put

on a great show and we’re vulnerable

people experienced pretend empathy as

though it were the real thing so during

that moment when that woman was

experiencing that pretend empathy I was

thinking that robot can’t empathize it

doesn’t face death it doesn’t know life

and as that woman took comfort in her

robot companion I didn’t find it amazing

I found it one of the most wrenching

complicated moments in my 15 years of

work but when I stepped back I felt

myself at the cold hard center of a

perfect storm we expect more from

technology and less from each other and

I ask myself why have things come to

this and I believe it’s because

technology appeals to us most where we

are most vulnerable

and we are vulnerable we’re lonely but

we’re afraid of intimacy and so from

social networks to sociable robots we’re

designing technologies that will give us

the illusion of companionship without

the demands of friendship we turn to

technology to help us feel connected in

ways we can comfortably control but

we’re not so comfortable we are not so

much in control these days those phones

in our pockets are changing our minds

and hearts because they offer us three

gratifying fantasies one that we can put

our attention wherever we want it to be

to that we will always be heard and

three that we will never have to be

alone and that third idea that we will

never have to be alone is central to

changing our psyches because the moment

the people are alone even for a few

seconds they become anxious they panic

they fidget they reach for a device just

think of people at a checkout line or to

red light being alone feels like a

problem that needs to be solved and so

people try to solve it by connecting but

here connection is more like a symptom

than a cure it expresses but it doesn’t

solve an underlying problem but more

than a symptom constant connection is

changing the way people think of

themselves it’s shaping a new way of

being the best way to describe it is I

share therefore I am we use technology

to define ourselves by sharing our

thoughts and feelings even as we’re

having them so before it was I have a

feeling I want to make a call now it’s I

want to have a feeling I need to send a

text the problem with this new regime of

I share therefore I am is that if we

don’t have connection we don’t feel like

ourselves we almost don’t feel ourselves

so what do we do we connect more and

more but in the process

set ourselves up to be isolated how do

you get from connection to isolation you

end up isolated if you don’t cultivate

the capacity for solitude the ability to

be separate to gather yourself solitude

is where you find yourself so that you

can reach out to other people and form

real attachments when we don’t have the

capacity for solitude we turn to other

people in order to feel less anxious or

in order to feel alive when this happens

we’re not able to appreciate who they

are it’s as though we’re using them as

spare parts to support our fragile sense

of self we slip into thinking that

always being connected is going to make

us feel less alone but we’re at risk

because actually it’s the opposite

that’s true if we’re not able to be

alone we’re going to be more lonely and

if we don’t teach our children to be

alone they’re only going to know how to

be lonely when I spoke at Ted in 1996

reporting on my studies of the early

virtual communities I said those who

make the most of their lives on the

screen come to it in a spirit of self

reflection and that’s what I’m calling

for here now reflection and more than

that a conversation about where our

current use of technology may be taking

us us what it might be costing us

we’re smitten with technology and we’re

afraid like young lovers the too much

talking might spoil the romance but it’s

time to talk we grew up with digital

technology and so we see it as all grown

up but it’s not it’s early days there’s

plenty of time for us to reconsider how

we use it how we build it I’m not

suggesting that we turn away from our

devices just that we develop a more

self-aware relationship with them with

each other and with ourselves I see some

first step

start thinking of Solitude as a good

thing make room for it find ways to

demonstrate this as a value to your

children create sacred spaces at home

the kitchen the dining room and reclaim

them for conversation do the same thing

at work at work we’re so busy

communicating that we often don’t have

time to think we don’t have some time to

talk about the things that really matter

change that most important we all really

need to listen to each other including

to the boring bits because it’s when we

stumble or hesitate or lose our words

that we reveal ourselves to each other

technology is making a bid to redefine

human connection how we care for each

other how we care for ourselves but it’s

also giving us the opportunity to affirm

our values and our direction I’m

optimistic we have everything we need to

start we have each other and we have the

greatest chance of success if we

recognize our vulnerability that we

listen when technology says it will take

something complicated and promises

something simpler so in my work I hear

that life is hard

relationships are filled with risk and

then there’s technology simpler hopeful

optimistic every young it’s like calling

in the cavalry an ad campaign promises

that online and with avatars you can

quote finally love your friends love

your body love your life online and with

avatars

we’re drawn to virtual romance to

computer games that seem like worlds to

the idea that robots robots will someday

be our true companions

we spend an evening on the social

network instead of going to the pub with

friends but our fantasies of

substitution have cost us now we all

need to focus on the many many ways

technology can lead us back to our real

lives our own bodies our own communities

our own politics our own planet

they need us let’s talk about how we can

use digital technology the technology of

our dreams to make this life the life we

can love thank you

you