Critical || TED talks: "Connected, But Alone?" by Shery Turkle || a Video, captured images and dictation

We remove ourselves from our grief or from our revery 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 and 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 customise 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. 

You can end up hiding from each other, even as we’re all constantly connected to each other. 

…

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.

When I asked 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 those 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 short-change ourselves. And overtime we seem to forget this or we seem to stop caring .

We use conversations with each other to learn how to have conversation with ourselves. So a flight from conversation can really matter because it can compromise our capacity for self-reflection. 

“I would rather text than talk…” And what I’m seeing is that people get so used to being short-changed out of real conversation, so used to getting by with less, that they’ve become almost willing to dispense with people altogether. 

…

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 a Twitter feed - so many automatic listeners. And the feeling that no one is listening to me makes us want to spend time with machines that seem to care about us. 

…

We expect more from technology and less from each other. 

…

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 with out the demands of friendship. We turn to technology to help us feel connected in ways we can comfortably 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; two, that we will always be heard; and three, that we will never have to be alone. Ant that third idea, that we will never have to be alone, is central to changing our psyches. Because the moment that people are alone, even for a few seconds, they become anxious, they panic, they fidget, they reach for a device.

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 likely 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 having 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, we 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 will only know how to be lonely.