People around the world, particularly in America, are disconnecting from humanity. This is a very serious problem affecting all of us which must be addressed. There are multiple reasons why we are witnessing this tragic phenomenon and the evidences are plentiful.
Humanity’s progress in technology cannot be understated, but there is a real and serious danger to our humanity if it is not used properly.
Harvard University trained, double doctorate psychologist and sociologist Sherry Turkle is a professor at MIT in the Program in Science, Technology and Self. Her TED Talk titled, “Connected, but alone?” is a wake up call for humanity. She argues that technology of cellphones, internet and other devices is pulling us away from ourselves and each other, and we’re lonely, yet we still flee from intimacy. Dr. Turkle shared some alarming truths regarding technology:
“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 found is that our little devices in our pockets, are so psychologically powerful that they don’t only change what we do, they change who we are.” …”being together while not being together” 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 how we relate to ourselves in our capacity for self reflection. We’re getting used to a new way of being along together….She explains the end result can end up as “hiding from each other even as we’re all constantly connected to each other.” “Across the generations I see people that can’t get enough of each other at a distance in amounts they can control.” Online bits of communication such as tweets, comments, instant messages, etc. do not constitute real conversation, they “don’t really work for learning about each other, for really coming to know and understand each other.”
“Flights from conversation compromise our capacity for self-reflection. For kids growing up, that skill is the bedrock for development. “The feeling that ‘no one is listening to me’ makes us want to spend time on machines that seem to care about us. We expect more from technology than from each other.” She states her reason why our realities have come this: “Technology appeals to us most where we are most vulnerable.”
In Turkle’s book Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other, she also asserts that the social media we encounter daily are confronting us with a moment of temptation. She believes we get caught up the illusion of companionship without the demands of intimacy, and that we confuse postings and online sharing with authentic communication thereby sacrificing real conversation for mere connection.
To Be Continued…