Sherry Turkle's Connectivity And Its Disconnects?

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“I am not, talking to Sierra because she Facebook messaged me yesterday, and was really rude. She even said that she hated you.” In today’s world conversations like this are happening a lot more frequently, mostly because of the misunderstandings that can arise through text messaging, and emails. These types of disagreements happen because when texting someone you cannot hear their voice, or see their face, and this can lead to misconstruction of a person’s message. In Sherry Turkle’s essay “Connectivity and its Disconnects” Turkle says that technology is changing the way that we interact with each other. She explains that there is a “real” and “virtual world” in which we act in two completely different manners depending on which world we …show more content…

Texting however keeps people at arm’s length and prevents relationships from getting past a certain level of rapport. Text messages help people create distance between them and another person. This distance can lead to many things, like lost friendship. Friendships can be lost in text messages because of tone. I was texting my sister one day, who types in all capital letters, and finally halfway through the conversation I asked her why she was yelling at me, because that is how I was reading them, as me being yelled at. When she responded she was very confused, and told me that she didn’t realize that she had been yelling at me and was sorry. This can happen to anybody. People can confuse tone in text messages, and that can lead to one person arguing with someone who has no idea that they are in a fight. Text messages are also used by people to purposely keep others away from them, and by some it is used to hide. Alice G Walton, a science journalist with a Ph.D. in Biopsychology and Behavioral Neuroscience says, “People like to text because the message gives them the ability to hide,” (Walton). It is like the saying “a drunken mind speaks a sober heart,” When people are drunk they hide behind being it, and use alcohol as their mask, but when they are texting, it’s the phone. They are able to say what they would like, without having to actually face the person they are talking to, and …show more content…

These people are called your friends or followers. They however, are not all your friends. They are people that you keep up with. You probably met some of them once or twice, so in everyone’s race to get more followers and friends you added them on whatever social media outlet you use. This keeping up with people is called ambient awareness which is like being close to somebody and picking up on their mannerisms that would give away that they were upset (Thompson 587). Ambient awareness was created by things like the Facebook news feed, and the Twitter feed. When people update once or twice a day, people who read them are able to get a feel for their personalities. When a person who normally posts happy statuses suddenly puts something up about how they hate life, it’s so different you click on it and read the comments left by people so you can find out what is going on in their life. Clive Thompson, a Canadian science and technology journalist says that, “Ambient awareness, makes people think that they have plenty of friends when in the ‘real world’ they do not have seven hundred really close friends,” (Thompson). Ambient Awareness allows you to keep up with everyone you have ever met. By being able to do that, one is never able to form close bonds with people, because there is always someone else they can talk to. Through this constant connect with old friends there would be no need for new ones, and

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