Sherr Turkle_connected, but alone.docVIP

Sherry Turkle: connected, but alone? Just a moment ago, my daughter Rebecca texted me for good luck. Her text said, Mom, you will rock. I love this. Getting that text was like getting a hug. And so there you have it. I embody the central paradox. Im a woman who loves getting texts whos going to tell you that too many of them can be a problem. Actually that reminder of my daughter brings me to the beginning of my story. 1996, when I gave my first TEDTalk, Rebecca was five years old and she was sitting right there in the front row. I had just written a book that celebrated our life on the internet and I was about to be on the cover of Wired magazine. In those heady days, we were experimenting with chat rooms and online virtual communities. We were exploring different aspects of ourselves. And then we unplugged. I was excited. And, as a psychologist, what excited me most was the idea that we would use what we learned in the virtual world about ourselves, about our identity, to live better lives in the real world. Now fast-forward to 2012. Im back here on the TED stage again. My daughters 20. Shes a college student. She sleeps with her cellphone, so do I. And Ive just written a new book, but this time its not one that will get me on the cover of Wired magazine. So what happened? Im still excited by technology, but I believe, and Im here to make the case, that were letting it take us places that we dont want to go. Over the past 15 years, Ive studied technologies of mobile communication and Ive interviewed hundreds and hundreds of people, young and old, about their plugged in lives. And what Ive found is that our little devices, those little devices in our pockets, are so psychologically powerful that they dont only change what we do, they change who we are. Some of the things we do now with our devices are things that, only a few years ago, we would have found odd or disturbing, but theyve quickly come to seem familiar, just how we do things. So just to ta