Connecting, not conversing

The allure of texting, email and posting is that they let us present the self we want to be. 

Sherry Turkle, a psychologist and MIT professor, suggests this means we can edit, we can delete, or retouch. Not too much, not too little — just right. 

We are tempted to think that our little bits of online connection add up to real conversation, but they don’t. She says email, Twitter and Facebook all have their places in work and play, but they do not substitute for conversation. 

We use conversation with others to learn to converse with ourselves. What we lose in substituting connections for conversation is the chance to learn skills of self-reflection. We have little motivation to post something truly self-reflective. Self-reflection in conversation requires trust, she says. It’s hard to do anything with 3,000 Facebook friends except connect. 

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