Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age

When Turkle refers to conversation, she means face-to-face, attentive conversation. This spans family dinners, romantic conversations, doctors conducting exams, teachers holding office hours, and more. Conversation is communication that leads to greater understanding, empathy, and emotional attachments between the participants.

Empathy is the ability to understand how others feel and to imagine their perspective. Empathy requires listening and attention, and conversation is the best mechanism for cultivating both. Turkle features the idea of empathy most prominently in her account of the troubled Holbrooke students, and she spends much time examining the importance of empathy in child development, particularly as it is impacted by digital technology.

Turkle defines The Goldilocks Effect in terms of people managing distance: “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” (21).