A prisoner was in the United States was recently released after 44 years of incarceration for the attempted murder of a police officer. Emerging onto the streets of New York City, Otis Johnson, now 69, found himself bewildered by the world before him. Seeing people apparently talking to themselves on the street, futuristic headphones dangling from their ears, reminded him of CIA agents. People barely paid attention to their surroundings, and instead studied their smartphones while crossing the street, engrossed in their own personal bubbles.
Technology had delivered Johnson a massive culture shock, the shock of a world where technology has quickly changed the way we live and the way we relate to one another.
In 2013, Sherry Turkle, a clinical psychologist and esteemed professor at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote Alone Together, in which she questioned the extent to which social media is bringing people together. Following decades of research on the profound impact of modern technology on human relationships, Turkle concluded that with the omnipresence of technology “we’re moving from conversation to connection.”
Connection, it seems, denotes a very different quality of social interaction in comparison to conversation, as it refers to continuous streams of little titbits of information, such as those neatly packaged into 140 characters on Twitter.
Conversation, on the other hand, refers to listening and empathic understanding, actively attending to another person, rather than fleetingly commenting on their status updates online while simultaneously talking on the phone, doing the laundry, or preparing the children’s dinner.
Something similar has happened in the world of online dating, which has moved away from traditional, detailed dating profiles that allowed compatibility matching based on detailed psychological assessment questionnaires. Instead new superficial dating apps such as Tinder provide matches based not on any suggested compatibility but on the user’s reaction to a profile picture. You don’t like the look of this Tinderalla’s haircut? Swipe her away. Don’t fancy that guy’s moustache? A swipe and he’s gone.
This couldn’t be further from meaningful conversations and real intimate relationships. The emergence of this new hook-up culture poses new challenges in how we relate to one another, and the criteria we use for mate selection. Research in this area is virtually non-existent, and it remains to be seen what sort of effects this has on forming and sustaining relationships.
Alone Together?
The internet increases our levels of connection, but may decrease our ability to have actual, deep and meaningful conversations with each other. This phenomenon was called the internet paradox by Robert Kraut and colleagues in their 1998 paper, referring to how the increased connectivity made possible by technology may counterintuitively reduce social involvement and increase loneliness. Are we in fact alone together when using social media?
