As soon as Sherry Turkle arrived at the studio for her Fresh Air interview, she realized she’d forgotten her phone, writes Terry Gross.
“I realized I’d left it behind, and I felt a moment of Oh my god … and I felt it kind of in the pit of my stomach,” she tells Terry Gross.
That feeling of emotional dependence on digital devices is the focus of Turkle’s research. Her book, Alone Together, explores how new technology is changing the way we communicate with one another.
“The pull of these devices is so strong, that we’ve become used to them faster than anyone would have suspected,” says Turkle, a clinical psychologist and the founder of MIT’s Initiative on Technology and Self.
Her research investigates how devices are changing the way parents relate to their children, how friends interact, and why many people — both young and old — keep their devices in-hand all the time — even as they sleep.
