Reclaiming Conversation (6 page)

But now we turn away from such reverie and connection. The multitasking we can do on our digital devices makes us feel good immediately.
What our brains want is new input
—fresh, stimulating, and social. Before technology allowed us to be anywhere anytime, conversation with other people was a big part of how we satisfied our brains' need for
stimulation. But now, through our devices, our brains are offered a continuous and endlessly diverting menu that requires less work.

So we move away from the slower pace, where you have to wait, listen, and let your mind go over things. We move away from the pace of human conversation. And so conversations without agenda, where you discover things as you go along, become harder for us. We haven't stopped talking, but we opt out, often unconsciously, of the kind of conversation that requires full attention. Every time you check your phone in company, what you gain is a hit of stimulation, a neurochemical shot, and what you lose is what a friend, teacher, parent, lover, or co-worker just said, meant, felt.

C
lifford Nass was a cognitive psychologist and communications professor at Stanford University who also worked as a “dorm dad,” living in a freshman dorm as a counselor and academic adviser. Nass describes how he tried to connect with one freshman by talking to her about his own high school emotional ups and downs. The student's response was that she and her friends were beyond those kinds of worries. Nass was surprised. Teenage angst was over? That's exactly what the freshman was saying, and she had a theory of why: Social media had stepped in to smooth things out. Her summation: “Technology makes emotions easy.”

This freshman's comment inspired Nass to explore the relationship of online life and the
emotional life of teenage girls
. Was this young woman's intuition correct? In short, the answer was no. Technology does not make emotions easy. Social media can make emotional life very hard indeed.

Nass compared the emotional development of young women who considered themselves “highly connected” with those who spent less time online: The highly connected young women did not have as strong an ability to identify the feelings of other people or, indeed, to identify
their own feelings. They felt less accepted by peers and did not have the same positive feelings from interacting with friends as those who used social media less frequently. Online life was associated with a loss of empathy and a diminished capacity for self-reflection.

This is not really surprising. If you are only partially present, it's easy to miss out on the emotional and nonverbal subtext of what people are saying to you. And
you are not focusing on your own feelings either
.

For Nass, the emotional tone of social media is another possible source of trouble. When students go online, some of what appeals to them is that they meet a world of good news. Facebook, Nass reminds us, has no “thumbs-down.” You can feel disappointed if something you share doesn't get the number of positive reactions you want, but you train yourself to post what will please.

So, on social media, everyone learns to share the positive. But Nass points out that negative emotions require more processing in more parts of the brain. So if you spend a lot of time online—responding to positive emotions—you won't get practice with this more complex processing. As a result, says Nass, your reaction time will be slowed down. This may be what happens to frequent users of social media: They can't respond quickly to others or to themselves. When they respond slowly to others, they “seem insensitive and uncaring.” When they respond slowly to themselves, they lose crucial
capacities for self-reflection
.

Nass worries that in the “thumbs-up” world of online life, young people learn the wrong life lessons. Among the wrong lessons they learn: First, negative emotions are something that unsuccessful kids have rather than normal parts of life that need to be addressed and coped with; second, it is natural to allow distraction and interruption to take you away from other people.

This is a lot of bad news. But here again, there is good news as well: Conversation cures.
Nass compares the parts of the brain that process emotion to a muscle: They can atrophy if not exercised, and can be strengthened through face-to-face conversation. Nass says, “The one positive predictor of healthy emotional interactions as well as feelings of social success (statements such as ‘people my age understand me' and ‘I feel accepted
by my friends'): lots of face-to-face communication.” Nass sums it up: “Technology does not provide
a sentimental education
.” People do.

R
eclaiming conversation begins with reclaiming our attention. These days, average American adults check their phones
every six and a half minutes
. We start early:
There are now baby bouncers
(and potty seats) that are manufactured with a slot to hold a digital device. A quarter of American teenagers are connected to a device
within five minutes of waking up
. Most teenagers
send one hundred texts a day
. Eighty percent
sleep with their phones
. Forty-four percent
do not “unplug,” ever
, not even in religious services or when playing a sport or exercising.

All of this means that during the dinner hour, the typical American family is managing
six or seven simultaneous streams
of information. Scattered about are laptops, tablets, phones, a desktop, and of course, in the background, a television, perhaps two. College students who are using any form of media are
likely to be using four at a time
. If students are on Facebook, they are also on Netflix, a music blog, and their class reading. What happens to conversation here? We want it to be something to which we can pay attention in the same way that we pay attention to other things—that is, we want it to be something we can drop in and out of. Something like the “crawl” on the bottom of a cable news screen.

Again, we live in a world of unintended consequences. Hyperconnected, we imagine ourselves more efficient, but we are deceived. Multitasking
degrades our performance
at everything we do, all the while giving us the feeling that we are doing better at everything. So
it makes us less productive
no matter how good it makes us feel. And recall technology's deficiencies as a “sentimental education”: Frequent multitasking is associated with
depression, social anxiety
, and trouble reading human emotions.

What is most hopeful is our resiliency.
If children develop
problems with self-esteem
and empathy when they turn to screens at an early age,
conversation, remarkably, seems able to reverse it. So, instead of doing your email as you push your daughter in her stroller, talk to her. Instead of putting a digital tablet in your son's baby bouncer, read to him and chat about the book. Instead of a quick text if you find a conversation going stale, make an effort to engage your peers.

But the talking cure is no simple matter. For one thing, we are wired to crave instant gratification, a fast pace, and unpredictability. That is, we are wired to crave what neuroscientists call “
the seeking drive
,” the kind of experience that scrolling through a Twitter feed provides. And people who chronically multitask train their brains to crave multitasking. Those who multitask most frequently don't get better at it; they just want more of it. This means that conversation, the kind that demands focus, becomes more and more difficult.

A twenty-four-year-old young woman who works at a start-up tells me that she is no longer able to focus on one thing or one person at a time. And that's the problem with conversation; it asks for a skill she no longer can summon. “If I try to do one thing, I'm not good. I pick my nails off. I can't do it. I physically can't do one thing.” At first her multitasking made her feel like Wonder Woman. Now she feels she needs help.

One college junior describes her “problem with conversation” in similar terms. It rules out multitasking, and multitasking is how she copes with life: “When you deal with people face-to-face, you are only seeing one of them at a time. When I get used to messaging with my Facebook groups, talking to one person at a time seems slow.” After college, she took a break from Facebook. She deleted the app from her laptop and her phone. She was off Facebook for only a few weeks, but she says the experience “calmed” her. “I am less impatient with people,” she says. “And for the first time I know I can be alone.”

We could say we are “addicted to multitasking,” but this is not the most helpful way to frame the problem. Our phones are part of our media ecology. We have to find a way to make our lives better with our phones. I prefer to think in terms of technological affordances—what technology makes possible (and often attractive and easy)—and human
vulnerabilities. If you are addicted, you have to get off your drug. If you are vulnerable, you can work to be less vulnerable.

Thinking in terms of technological affordances and human vulnerabilities positions us to
design for vulnerability
. I meet with an inventor who observes that when people engage with smartphones, they are compelled into a new kind of vigilant behavior. “They want to make sure they're not missing anything,” he says, “so they keep interacting with their devices.” He makes this intriguing suggestion: “What if we designed a smartphone interface that made it easy for us to do a specific task (such as messaging a friend or family member) and then, instead of encouraging us to stay connected as long as possible, would encourage us to disengage? The interface would be designed to reduce our usage, and make spending more time on our phone
a deliberate action
.” The point is not to make connection impossible or difficult. But it should demand intention; it should not be something the system helps you slide into. He says, “So instead of a phone that keeps us mesmerized, we may want to build a phone that lets us attend to our business and then gradually releases us because that is what is best for us
.
”

We can design technology that demands that we use it with greater intention. And in our families, we can create sacred spaces—the living room, the dining room, the kitchen, the car—that are device-free. We can do the same thing at work—for certain meeting spaces and classes. We can plan for a future in which the design of our tools and our social surroundings encourages us to be our best. As consumers of digital media, our goal should be to partner with an industry that commits to our using their products, of course, but also to our
health and emotional well-being
.

C
onversation implies something kinetic. It is derived from
words that mean
“to tend to each other, to lean toward each other,” words about the
activity of
relationship
, one's “manner of conducting oneself in
the world or in society; behavior, mode or course of life.” To converse, you don't just have to perform turn taking, you have to listen to someone else, to read their body, their voice, their tone, and their silences. You bring your concern and experience to bear, and you expect the same from others.

When we express our anxiety about conversation, we express our anxiety about our ability to do all of this. A sixteen-year-old boy tells his mother that he has just received a text from his best friend. His friend's father has died. He tells his mother that he has texted his friend to say he is sorry. His mother, almost uncomprehending, asks, “Why didn't you call?” She is thinking about consolation. The boy says, “It isn't my place to interrupt him. He's too sad to talk on the phone.” The boy assumes that conversation is intrusive even at moments that beg for intimacy.

I tell this story to a twenty-one-year-old college senior who has been working with me at my home every day for months, organizing my papers for an archive. She says that she wouldn't call me if she heard that there had been a death in my family. She says that she
knows
I would be more comforted by a call, that it would mean more to me. But she echoes the sentiments of the sixteen-year-old boy. She says, “Anything having to do with the voice feels like an interruption.”

One high school senior talks about a plan to put himself on a self-improvement program. He is going to “force himself” to use the telephone. I ask him why. “It might,” he says, “be a way to teach myself to have a conversation . . . rather than spending my life in awkward silence. I feel like phone conversations nowadays will help me in the long run.”

This is a poignant admission. This young man acknowledges that for all his many hours a day texting and messaging, he has not learned how to listen and respond. At news of a death, he, too, would send an email. These days, there are college courses on conversation. The curriculum includes how to pay attention to someone on a date. How to disagree with someone politically. It is an acknowledgment that students are comfortable going to bed with each other but not talking to each other. They will know each other's sexual preferences but not if their partner
has a widowed father or an autistic sister. They
may not even know
if their partner has siblings at all.

Employers have come to appreciate the vulnerability of the new generations. Some businesses explicitly screen for an ability to converse. A vice-president at a large pharmaceutical company tells me her strategy for hiring new recruits. “It's very simple,” she says. “I have a conversation with them.”

Most applicants are prepped for one conversation. And then at the end, I tell the potential recruits that their homework is to organize what we've discussed and from that make an agenda of interesting themes for our next conversation . . . hopefully tomorrow or the day following. They are stunned. They look like deer caught in the headlights. They don't want to have another conversation. They were hoping for some follow-up emails.