Sherry Turkle’s “Connected, But Alone” TED Talk

Sherry Turkle in her TED talk, talks about how connected society is with our technology and devices. She claims that these devices take away solitude and the ability to connect with ourselves as we now look to be connected in all ways through these devices. We are being taught that it is not acceptable to be alone at any moments, and use our phones as a way to be heard and connected to others, even at a brief red light. This is compromising our self reflection and we instead need to learn how to be alone to stop feeling so lonely, and enjoy our personal time. We are become “alone together”, Turkle claims, meaning when we are alone, we are still connected in all social media platforms and through all these devices. Turkle claims that we are now expecting more from technology than we are expecting from each other. We use social media as a way to be heard instead of engaging with another person face to face. This is why people prefer to text rather than talk. People in society have commented on this reasoning and said talking in person is “in real time and you can’t control what you say”, rather than texting where you can edit, delete, and rephrase any sentence. She says we must change this about society and address the issues we have with this “necessary” connection. In order to do this Turkle suggest designating areas or times of the day to avoid the use of these devices and engage with one another in person. This can help people regain solitude and a better sense of reflection in their life. Throughout the TED talk, Sherry Turkle uses many signal verbs to engage the listeners by saying “she explained”, “they progressed”, “we learned”, instead of ordinary words that wouldn’t engage the listeners as much as these signal verbs have. They provide vivid images and a way for the audience to connect personally – as many people can connect to this TED talk because we are all engage with technology for the majority of our day.