Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less From Each Other

Turkle has noted that many young people ensnared in the web of modern communication technology long for a deeper, face-to-face connection. Texting, she claims, “makes a promise that generates its own demand” (265). The promise is that you can send a text and have a friend receive it in seconds, and the demand is that the friend is obligated to respond.

Turkle argues that part of the reason today’s children long for connection is that they grew up competing with phones for their parents’ attention. She paints the picture of parents texting with one hand and pushing swings with the other. She interviews many children frustrated with parents spending time on their BlackBerries at the dinner table or in the car while picking them up from school. Turkle draws a line between the children competing for their parents’ attention and competing for their peers’.

Robin, a 26-year-old copywriter, feels pressured to keep her BlackBerry out at all times, and now she feels anxious without it, “almost dizzy” (269). She uses it to browse Facebook now, too, which she has become increasingly annoyed with. She tells Turkle about her college friend Joanne, who wrote her long emails during a stay in Thailand. Now, Joanne is back there, but instead of writing personal letters, she publishes a journal on her blog.