Deluged by Devices: The Loneliness Debate

Before I could even wake up, my mother had e-mailed me Sherry Turkle’s New York Times piece titled, “The Flight From Conversation.”

My parents and I had just had a rare lengthy telephone call the day  before, talking everything — and nothing — from my kids’ activities, to a book my dad wrote, to El Convento, a cool hotel in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico.
The link to the MIT professor’s article came with a note saying she loved our conversation.  I smiled because my mother has made it clear over the years that she wants to talk more, and email less.   She’s resisted buying an iPhone, despite my prompting, in part, I think, because then she would be condoning the very thing she dislikes –dribs and drabs of text parceled out during the day.

The disconnect comes because that’s how I live my life with colleagues, friends, babysitter, and even my husband. To juggle all the balls that bounce around my life, I reach out quickly and efficiently.  It’s quite rare that I carve out 45 minutes to focus solely on a phone conversation.

Turkle writes that our smartphones and iPads have changed the psychology of conversation – we expect faster answers and “dumb down” our communication and have lost the ability for self-reflection as we are busy telling our “friends” what’s on our mind.  Not necessarily.

Conversation is a key element of a healthy society.  But it’s unfair to paint the mini-computer with its various means of communicating  — texting, emailing, direct messaging on Facebook to name a few – as the Darth Vader of this drama.  The extemporaneous sprurts provide a touchstone to daily life.  I send pictures of events in real time, articles I’ve found of interest, and even I-love-you notes.  It’s a form of connection we didn’t have when I was growing up.  And it keeps me closer to the ones I love.

As The Atlantic’s Stephen Marche writes in a fascinating piece titled “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely”:

“Nostalgia for the good old days of disconnection would not just be pointless, it would be hypocritical and ungrateful. But the very magic of the new machines, the efficiency and elegance with which they serve us, obscures what isn’t being served: everything that matters.”

Everything that matters? Part of our loneliness is rooted in the fact we don’t have a deep enough connection with the people we love.

I get the whole culture of let’s-stay-in-our-silos-and-message-our-Facebook-friends. I understand the notion that gadgets have taken over our lives. What’s missing from the debate is that these devices, if used in the right way, can keep us tethered to the people we love, thus keeping us less lonely.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some people I need to text.