Sherry Turrkle The Flight From Conversation Summary

The Loss Behind Connection Today face-to-face conversation is being replaced by connection, by connecting through texts or social media. In her essay, “The Flight from Conversation,” Sherry Turkle, an author and professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, argues how technology has changed people and their behavior. In her opinion, people hide from others with their technological devices in order to not have to speak to someone. According to Turkle, people control their communication with others through technology, thus controlling what they say, or whom they want to speak to. She believes, that technology has become so important to people that some would much rather have robots listen to them instead of an actual person. Turkle claims, that through technology we use others in order to not feel alone. She concludes, by bringing up some suggestions on how to bring back face-to-face conversations, and ultimately stating how much she values actual conversation (136-39). Turkle is correct. So much is lost through a …show more content…
Conversations help people better their speech, their language, and their expressions, thus developing their learning abilities. Messaging each other can become time consuming; therefore, people find shortcuts to writing. According to Turkle, in order for people to communicate faster through their phones, they “dumb down” their conversations (137). People are choosing to not challenge themselves to get through their conversations quickly. This ultimately affects a person’s learning development. It is important to keep in mind that many of these people being mentioned are children. Children should take advantage of talking to one another in person, to better their conversational skills. Replacing conversation with connection, negatively impacts the learning development of people, especially