Sherry Turkle Quotes

I think that we live in techno-enthusiastic times. We celebrate our technologies because people are frightened by the world we’ve made.

People thought I was very pro-computer. I was on the cover of ‘Wired’ magazine. Then things began to change. In the early ’80s, we met this technology and became smitten like young lovers. But today our attachment is unhealthy.

You’ll always feel lonely if you always need validation. People don’t like to be around those kinds of people.

It is painful to watch children trying to show off for parents who are engrossed in their cell phones. Children are nostalgic for the ‘good old days’ when parents used to read to them without the cell phone by their side or watch football games or Disney movies without having the BlackBerry handy.

The selfie, like all technology, causes us to reflect on our human values. This is a good thing because it challenges us to figure out what they really are.

Technology doesn’t just do things for us. It does things to us, changing not just what we do but who we are.

Thumbs up or thumbs down on a website is not a conversation. The danger is you get into a habit of mind where politics means giving a thumbs up or thumbs down to a website. The world is a much more complex place.

Teenagers would rather text than talk. They feel calls would reveal too much.

I think computers are the ultimate writing tool. I’m a very slow writer, so I appreciate it every day.

I am not anti-technology; I am pro-conversation.

A selfie, like any photograph, interrupts experience to mark the moment. In this, it shares something with all the other ways we break up our day: when we text during class, in meetings, at the theater, at dinners with friends.

When I grew up, I lived in a neighborhood that had social clubs. It’s never delightful to glamorize one’s youth. My neighborhood was poor. But people felt part of the neighborhood. This was in Rockaway Beach, Long Island.

Face-to-face conversation unfolds slowly. It teaches patience.

We think constant connection will make us feel less lonely. The opposite is true.

There are moments of opportunity for families; moments they need to put technology away. These include: no phones or texting during meals. No phones or texting when parents pick up children at school – a child is looking to make eye contact with a parent!

Technology challenges us to look at our human values. We can try to use technology to cure Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s, which would be a blessing, but that blessing is not a reason to move from artificial brain enhancement to artificial intimacy.

The most used program in computers and education is PowerPoint. What are you learning about the nature of the medium by knowing how do to a great PowerPoint presentation? Nothing. It certainly doesn’t teach you how to think critically about living in a culture of simulation.

If we don’t know how to be alone, we’ll only know how to be lonely.

I’ve been studying the psychology of online connectivity for more than 30 years.

My highest value is not that the trains are on time. I want to be free.

I love sharing photographs and websites, I’m for all of these things. I’m for Facebook. But to say that this is sociability? We begin to define things in terms of what technology enables and technology allows.

Conversation is the most human and humanizing thing that we do.

The selfie makes us accustomed to putting ourselves and those around us ‘on pause’ in order to document our lives. It is an extension of how we have learned to put our conversations ‘on pause’ when we send or receive a text, an image, an email, a call.

Technology challenges us to assert our human values, which means that first of all, we have to figure out what they are.

I have to fight the impulse to use my phone as an alarm clock rather than leaving it in another room. If I don’t, I will wake up in the middle of the night and think, ‘I’ll check my messages. Or the number of my book on Amazon.’

I am a single mum. I raised my daughter, and she was very listened to.

We are inhibited from aggression by the presence of another face, another person. We’re aware that we’re with a human being. On the Internet, we are disinhibited from taking into full account that we are in the presence of another human being.

What I’m seeing is a generation that says consistently, ‘I would rather text than make a telephone call.’ Why? It’s less risky. I can just get the information out there. I don’t have to get all involved; it’s more efficient. I would rather text than see somebody face to face.

I am a partisan for conversation. To make room for it, I see some first, deliberate steps. At home, we can create sacred spaces: the kitchen, the dining room. We can make our cars ‘device-free zones.’ We can demonstrate the value of conversation to our children. And we can do the same thing at work.

In solitude, we find ourselves; we prepare ourselves to come to conversation with something to say that is authentic, ours.

It used to be that we imagined that our mobile phones would be for us to talk to each other. Now, our mobile phones are there to talk to us.

I think few people of education enter politics because it seems like a contact blood sport.

What is so seductive about texting, about keeping that phone on, about that little red light on the BlackBerry, is you want to know who wants you.