MIT professor says face-to-face conversation is a most human thing to do

Abu Dhabi: Excessive use of mobile technology and social media is creating new problems and challenges in modern societies, including lack of empathy and a poor quality of human relationships, a professor of social psychology said on Wednesday.

“I am not anti-technology, I am pro-conversation,” Professor Sherry Turkle, who serves as the Abby Rockefeller Mauze Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology in the Program in Science, Technology and Society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), told the majlis of His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces.

Shaikh Mohammad yesterday attended the lecture about direct human connection in the age of social media, held at His Highness’s Al Bateen Palace in Abu Dhabi.

“In my data, a phrase has come over and over again, ‘I would rather text than talk’ and it came up in a variety of ways not just texting. What they [people she interviewed for her research] wanted to express is that they wanted to stay behind their screens and feel less vulnerable about their communication. They were talking about emailing their colleagues rather than tapping them on the shoulder and talking to them,” she said.

Professor Turkle said another problem caused by over exposure to technology was that there was a loss of open-ended conversations which tends to make people vulnerable. “People are presenting the curated self of their everyday life,” and people are trying to show that they are living a better life, which can make other people, especially adolescents vulnerable, she said, adding that the “curated self” was so strange to some people that they start to feel “a sense of alienation from the personality they present online”.

Empathy

“Something is always lost in business, in family life,” as a result of indirect communication. “I’m pitching the importance of face to face conversation, it’s where empathy develops. Study after study shows that conversation is good for the bottom line.”

She said that with the maturation of social media networks, further challenges have emerged, including the fact that social media networks see what people are looking for and what they are feeling in real time, adding that social media websites have developed such algorithms that they could know if a person is depressed or maybe looking to buy a pair of shoes and then offer them the right ads that meet that immediate feelings or needs.

“There is a kind of dark side,” to social media, she added. “Facebook ran an experiment that showed people that their friends had voted, which made people more likely to vote. That’s great but the question is what kind of control can you have on a company like Facebook? The enormous power for behavioural change … needs to be discussed.”

Turning point

Professor. Turkle sounded a positive note on human connectivity, saying: “I am hopeful because I think we are at a turning point, a study showed that 80 per cent of Americans took out their phones during a conversation and 82 per cent of them said that doing that deteriorated their relationship.” She added that intuition was correct because it was corroborated by studies.

Professor Turkle is in a unique position to discuss the issue of direct human conversation in the age of mobile connectivity and social media platforms as she has written books, conducted research and provided professional consultation over the past 30 years in the field, where she paid close attention to the intersection of digital technology and human relationships from the early days of personal computers up to the present day.

“I’ve been studying culture and activity since the earliest days of America online and my interest has been in not only how technology changes what we do but also who we really are,” she said.

The Ramadan series of lectures is part of His Highness’s efforts to spread the spirit of knowledge and learning in the UAE, by inviting renowned scholars, experts, officials and entrepreneurs to speak at his majlis at Al Bateen Palace in Abu Dhabi. The lectures are attended by senior government officials, diplomats, business leaders and others.

Factbox: What to do to reclaim face to face conversation

Face-to-face conversation is the most human and humanising thing that we do. It can be reclaimed at work, at home, and in education, professor Turkle said.

She suggested two places to start:

* To clear a path for conversation, create sacred spaces where you set aside laptops and tablets. At home, start with the kitchen, dining room, and car. In education, work on the device-free classroom. At work, you can have device-free meetings.

* Second, cultivate solitude. In solitude we find ourselves, we prepare ourselves to come to conversations with something to say that is authentic, ours. And then, in conversation with other people — both in private and in the public sphere — we learn to have conversations with ourselves. Self reflection is the cornerstone for development that continues throughout life.

So, look up, look within yourself, look at each other, and start the conversation, Professor Turkle said.