Reclaiming Conversation (3 page)

I
n 2011, when I published
Alone Together
, a book critical of our inattention to each other in our always-connected lives, I knew I was describing complications that most people did not want to see. As a culture, we were smitten with our technology. Like young lovers, we were afraid that too much talking would spoil the romance. But now, only a few years later, the atmosphere has changed. We are ready to talk. When we have our mobile devices with us, we see that we turn away from our children, romantic partners, and work colleagues. We are ready to reconsider the too-simple enthusiasm of “the more connected we are, the better off we are.”

Now, we begin to take the measure of how our communications compel us. We have learned that we get a neurochemical high from connecting. We recognize that we crave a feeling of being “always on” that keeps us from doing our best, being our best. So we allow ourselves a certain disenchantment with what technology has made possible.

We recognize that we need things that social media inhibit. My previous work described an evolving problem; this book is a call to action. It is time to make the course corrections. We have everything we need to begin. We have each
other.

My guess—and I think
this will be debated for a long time—is that humans are very communicative, and so the fact that you're talking to more people with shorter bursts of communication is probably net neutral to positive.

—ERIC SCHMIDT, EXECUTIVE CHAIRMAN OF GOOGLE

Don't all these little tweets
, these little sips of online connection, add up to one big gulp of real conversation?

—STEPHEN COLBERT, ACTOR AND COMEDIAN

T
hese days, we want to be with each other but also elsewhere, connected to wherever else we want to be, because what we value most is control over where we put our attention. Our manners have evolved to accommodate our new priorities. When you're out to dinner with friends, you can't assume that you have their undivided attention. Cameron, a college junior in New Hampshire, says that when his friends have dinner, “and I hate this, everyone puts their phones next to them when they eat. And then, they're always checking them.” The night before at dinner he had texted a friend sitting next to him (“'S'up, dude?”) just to get his attention.

Cameron's objection is common, for this is the reality: When college students go to dinner, they want the company of their friends in the dining hall and they also want the freedom to go to their phones. To have both at the same time, they observe what some call the “rule of three”:
When you are with a group at dinner you have to check that at least three people have their heads up from their phones before you give yourself permission to look down at
your
phone. So conversation proceeds—but with different people having their “heads up” at different times.

I meet with Cameron and seven of his friends. One of them, Eleanor, describes the rule of three as a strategy of continual scanning:

Let's say we are seven at dinner. We all have our phones. You have to make sure that at least two people are not on their phones or looking down to check something—like a movie time on Google or going on Facebook. So you need sort of a rule of two or three. So I know to keep, like, two or three in the mix so that other people can text or whatever. It's my way of being polite. I would say that conversations, well, they're pretty, well, fragmented. Everybody is kind of in and out. Yeah, you have to say, “Wait, what . . .” and sort of have people fill you in a bit when you drop out.

The effect of the rule of three is what you might expect. As Eleanor says, conversation is fragmented. And everyone tries to keep it light.

K
eeping talk light when phones are on the landscape becomes a new social grace. One of Eleanor's friends explains that if a conversation at dinner turns serious and someone looks at a phone, that is her signal to “lighten things up.” And she points out that the rule of three is a way of being polite even when you're not at the dinner table. When “eyes are down” at phones, she says, “conversation stays light well beyond dinner.”

When I first planned the research that would lead to this book, my idea was to focus on our new patterns of texting and messaging. What made them compelling? Unique? But early in my study, when I met with these New Hampshire students, their response to my original
question was to point me to another question that they thought was more important. “I would put it this way,” says Cameron. “There are fewer conversations—not with the people you're texting, but with the people around you!” As he says this, we are in a circle of eight, talking together, and heads are going down to check phones. A few try not to, but it is a struggle.

Cameron sums up what he sees around him. “Our texts are fine. It's what texting does to our conversations when we are together, that's the problem.”

It was a powerful intuition. What phones do to in-person conversation
is
a problem.
Studies show that the mere presence of a phone
on the table (even a phone turned off) changes what people talk about. If we think we might be interrupted, we keep conversations light, on topics of little controversy or consequence. And conversations with phones on the landscape block empathic connection. If two people are speaking and there is a phone on a nearby desk,
each feels less connected to the other
than when there is no phone present.
Even a silent phone disconnects us.

So it is not surprising that in the past twenty years we've seen a 40 percent decline in the markers for empathy among college students, most of it within the past ten years. It is
a trend that researchers link to the new presence of digital communications
.

Why do we spend so much time messaging each other if we end up feeling less connected to each other? In the short term, online communication makes us feel more in charge of our time and self-presentation. If we text rather than talk, we can have each other in amounts we can control. And texting and email and posting let us present the self we want to be. We can edit and retouch.

I call it the Goldilocks effect: We can't get enough of each other if we can have each other at a digital distance—not too close, not too far, just right.

But human relationships are rich, messy, and demanding. When we clean them up with technology
, we move from conversation
to the efficiencies of mere connection.
I fear we forget the difference. And we forget that children who grow up in a world of digital devices don't know that there
is a difference or that things were ever different. Studies show that
when children hear less adult talk
, they talk less. If we turn toward our phones and away from our children, we will start them off with a deficit of which they will be unaware. It won't be only about how much they talk. It will be about how much they understand the people they're talking with.

Indeed, when young people say, “Our texts are fine,” they miss something important. What feels fine is that in the moment, so many of their moments are enhanced by digital reminders that they are wanted, a part of things. A day online has many of these “moments of more.” But as digital connection becomes an ever larger part of their day, they risk ending up with lives of less.

F
or many, a sentiment has become a litany, captured by the phrase “I'd rather text than talk.” What people really mean is not only that they like to text but also that they don't like a certain kind of talk. They shy away from open-ended conversation. For most purposes, and sometimes even intimate ones, they would rather send a text message than hear a voice on the phone or be opposite someone face-to-face.

When I ask, “What's wrong with conversation?” answers are forthcoming. A young man in his senior year of high school makes things clear: “What's wrong with conversation? I'll tell you what's wrong with conversation! It takes place in real time and you can't control what you're going to say.”

This reticence about conversation in “real time” is not confined to the young. Across generations, people struggle to control what feels like an endless stream of “incoming”—information to assimilate and act on and interactions to manage. Handling things online feels like the beginnings of a solution: At least we can answer questions at our convenience and edit our responses to get them “right.”

The anxiety about spontaneity and the desire to manage our time
means that certain conversations tend to fall away. Most endangered: the kind in which you listen intently to another person and expect that he or she is listening to you; where a discussion can go off on a tangent and circle back; where something unexpected can be discovered about a person or an idea. And there are other losses: In person, we have access to the messages carried in the face, the voice, and the body. Online, we settle for simpler fare: We get our efficiency and our chance to edit, but we learn to ask questions that a return email can answer.

The idea that we are living moments of more and lives of less is supported by a recent study in which pairs of college-aged friends were asked to communicate in four different ways: face-to-face conversation, video chat, audio chat, and online instant messaging. Then, the degree of emotional bonding in these friendships was assessed both by asking how people felt and watching how they behaved toward each other. The results were clear:
In-person conversation led to the most emotional connection
and online messaging led to the least. The students had tried to “warm up” their digital messages by using emoticons, typing out the sounds of laughter (“Hahaha”), and using the forced urgency of TYPING IN ALL CAPS. But these techniques had not done the job. It is when we see each other's faces and hear each other's voices that
we become most human to each other
.

Much of this seems like common sense. And it is. But I have said that something else is in play: Technology enchants. It makes us forget what we know about life.

We slip into thinking that always being connected is going to make us less lonely. But we are at risk because it is actually the reverse: If we are unable to be alone, we will be more lonely. And if we don't teach our children to be alone, they
will only know how to be lonely
.

Yet these days, so many people—adults and children—become anxious without a constant feed of online stimulation. In a quiet moment, they take out their phones, check their messages, send a text. They cannot tolerate time that some people I interviewed derisively termed “boring” or “a lull.” But it is often when we hesitate, or stutter, or fall silent, that we reveal ourselves most to each other. And to ourselves.

I
'm not suggesting that we turn away from our devices. To the contrary, I'm suggesting that we look more closely at them to begin a more self-aware relationship with them.

So, for example, I have a colleague, Sharon, thirty-four, who describes herself as “happily texting” since 2002. But she is taken aback when she hears a friend refer to her smartphone as “my tiny god.” The comment makes Sharon wonder about her own relationship with her phone. Are there ways in which she treats her own phone as a god? Perhaps.

As Sharon talks with me, it becomes clear that her main concern is how social media is shaping her sense of herself. She worries that she is spending too much time “performing” a better version of herself—one that will play well to her followers. She begins by saying that all interactions, certainly, have an element of performance. But online, she feels involved in her performances to the point that she has lost track of what is performance and what is not.

I spend my time online wanting to be seen as witty, intelligent, involved, and having the right ironic distance from everything. Self-reflection should be more about, well, who I am, warts and all, how I really see myself. I worry that I'm giving up the responsibility for who I am to how other people see me. I'm not being rigorous about knowing my own mind, my own thoughts. You get lost in your performance. On Twitter, on Facebook, I'm geared toward showing my best self, showing me to be invulnerable or with as little vulnerability as possible.

Research tells us that being comfortable with our vulnerabilities is central to our happiness, our creativity, and even our productivity. We are drawn to this message, weary, it would seem, of
our culture of continual performance
. Yet life on social media encourages us to show ourselves, as Sharon puts it, as “invulnerable or with as little vulnerability as possible.” Torn between our desire to express an authentic self and the
pressure to show our best selves online, it is not surprising that frequent use of social media leads to feelings of
depression and social anxiety
.

And trouble with empathy. Research shows that those who use social media the most have
difficulty reading human emotions
, including their own. But the same research gives cause for optimism: We are resilient. Face-to-face conversation leads to
greater self-esteem and an improved ability to deal with others
. Again,
conversation cures
.

To those with Sharon's doubts, this book says you don't have to give up your phone. But if you understand its profound effects on you, you can approach your phone with greater intention and choose to live differently with it.

S
o, my argument is not anti-technology. It's pro-conversation. We miss out on necessary conversations when we divide our attention between the people we're with and the world on our phones. Or when we go to our phones instead of claiming a quiet moment for ourselves. We have convinced ourselves that surfing the web is the same as daydreaming. That it provides the same space for self-reflection. It doesn't.

It's time to put technology in its place and reclaim conversation. That journey begins with a better understanding of what conversation accomplishes and how technology can get in its way. As things are now, even when people are determined to have in-person conversations, their plans are often derailed. Across generations, people tell me, “Everyone knows you shouldn't break up by text. That's wrong. A breakup deserves a face-to-face conversation.” But almost everyone has a story to tell in which they or a friend broke up a relationship by text or email. Why? It's easier.

We are vulnerable, compelled and distracted by our devices. We can become different kinds of consumers of technology, just as we have become different kinds of consumers of food. Today, we are more discerning, with a greater understanding that what tempts does not necessarily nourish. So it can be with technology.

A ten-year-old in New York tells me that he and his father never talk alone, without the interruptions of a phone. I ask his father, forty, about this. The father admits, “He's right. On Sunday morning, when I walk with my son to get the newspaper, I don't go out without my phone.” Why is that? “Because there might be an emergency.” So far, no emergencies have come up, but on the walk to the corner store, he takes calls.