Sherry Turkle Is Wrong in Some Ways

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Recommended: Technology and adolescents

In Turkle’s book Alone Together, she discusses how new technologies are generally damaging the teenagers. She thinks new technologies are letting teenagers lose interest and attention in many ways like over-excessive texting rather than talking on the phone or even face to face talking, being more alone in reality but talkative with Facebook friends by showing a lot of anecdotage, and talking in her keen psychoanalytically-trained psychologist’s tone. But this does not mean Sherry Turkle is absolutely right. Just like that you can’t say the viewpoints of an argument essay must be right, if there is a mount of examples. In recent years, teenagers were born and being raised in an environment of cellphones, televisions and computers. I have a strong feeling about high technology life. Just like now, teachers require us to use laptops writing an essay; more and more online classes are available in our school schedules. There is no doubt that Turlke does do a good job on showing the variety of pathology engendered by social media, but I still think her book is one-sided bias, because she just presents some extreme examples. Through her opinions, while she doesn’t mention any ‘welfare’ that new technology brings to human beings; her ignorance of Sturgeon’s Law and her lack of access to any real long-term studies bring her the one-side biased argument—human beings’ self-destructiveness from new technology.
In my opinion, the points that are made in the book are very compelling. For example, in Turlke’s Along Together, she writes that “I interrupt a call even if the new call says ‘unknown’ as an identifier—I just have to know who it is. So I’ll cut off a friend for an ‘unknown’, said by Maury”(171) and “If I know someone writes something...

... middle of paper ...

...Turkle in some ways, but I don’t think she is a Luddite, and Alone Together is not a book of Luddite either. She took her time to see how we use modern technologies and people’s thoughts of technologies.

Works Cited

Sherry, Turkle. Along Together. Basic Books, First Trade Paper Edition, October 2, 2012
Jeffrey, McMahon. “Lesson 3: Getting Lost in the Liminal World.” Breakthrough Writer. Feb. 07, 2013. May 07,2014. Print.
Admin. “How technology has affected our everyday lives.” TNARK. Aug. 29, 2012. May 07,2014. Print.
Sen-Chi, Yu. Wei-Hsin, Hsu. Min-Ning, Yu. Hao-Yi, Hsu. “Is the use of Social Networking Sites Correlated with Internet Addiction?” Ebscohost. Aug. 1, 2012. May 07 2014. Print.
Jonah, Lehrer. “We, Robots.” NYTIMES. Jan. 21, 2011. May 07, 2014. Print.
Sherry Turkle. “The Flight From Conversations.” NYTIMES. Apr. 21, 2012. May 07, 2014. Print.

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