Technology proposes itself as the architect of our intimacies.
― Sherry Turkle, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other

Recently, I was working with a former colleague who asked if I’d ever read Sherry Turkle’s essay, “Growing Up Tethered.” I hadn’t, but my interest was piqued, so I read it. Turkle, the Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT, has written much about the effects of technology on how we relate to one another. I can’t say that I was surprised by the discoveries and claims she makes in this essay. But I was troubled by them, particularly by the notion that technology purports to be the architect of our intimacies.

We’ve all seen, and undoubtedly lamented, the types of scenes that frequently unfold at restaurants and family dinners, in classrooms and waiting rooms: people glued to their devices, fingers and thumbing pecking, eyes riveted to screens, heads bent attentively. Eerily quiet except for the rapid tapping on keys, these scenes are peopled by those who may be communicating with distant others or with those sitting right next to them. They may be using their devices to close a gap of miles or inches. Either way, they’re using these devices as conduits. And are these technological conduits building intimacy? Turkle and others continue to weigh in on this.

The APA Dictionary of Psychology defines intimacy as:

an interpersonal state of extreme emotional closeness such that each party’s personal space can be entered by any of the other parties without causing discomfort to that person. Intimacy characterizes close, familiar, and usually affectionate or loving personal relationships and requires the parties to have a detailed knowledge or deep understanding of each other.

Most of us would agree that intimacy involves a detailed knowledge and deep understanding of another. To have an intimate conversation requires time, proximity, full attention, and intense desire to really know someone. Whether in friendship, parenthood, or marriage, this type of intimacy characterizes the relationships that most of us seek and treasure. Is it reasonable to suggest that technology can play a legitimate role in fostering intimacy?

In her book, Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age, Turkle cites what she calls the Goldilocks Effect:

We can’t get enough of each other if we can have each other at a digital distance—not too close, not too far, just right. But human relationships are rich, messy, and demanding. When we clean them up with technology, we move from conversation to the efficiency of mere connection. I fear we forget the difference.

If just right means establishing the correct digital distance and cleaning ourselves up with the technological tools at hand, what does this say about intimacy? Like Turkle, I fear that it reveals much. It reveals that if we’re reliant on technology to build intimacy into our lives, we’re building our emotional foundations on the sinking sand of mere connection. And it reveals that we increasingly rely more on these technologies than on face-to-face conversations and relationships.

Turkle argues that these technologies facilitate connections in sips, for gathering discrete bits of information. She goes on to explain, however, that they neither have the power nor means to faciliate genuine understanding and intimacy. I confess that an I love you (followed by an exclamation point and a heart emoji) is always a weak substitute for looking deeply into another’s eyes and speaking these words with clear intent. Understandably, most of us use our cell phones and computers to send words of love and encouragement to loved ones who live too far away to frequently visit. We rely upon social media to see pictures of our families and friends, our former classmates and their families, etc. And we’re grateful for the technologies that make these connections possible. But to confuse these connections with intimacy is quite another thing.

For me, Turkle’s most troubling claim is that as we lose the ability to converse intimately with others, she fears that we also lose the ability to converse authentically with ourselves. And as we lose the ability to converse with ourselves, she argues that we also lose our capacity to self-reflect. I’ve thought a lot about this recently. I can painfully recall how many times I was frustrated by my students’ inability and unwillingness to be self-reflective. This frustration only grew throughout my 40-year teaching career. More than anything, I dreaded teaching the narrative essay, for increasingly students responded with comments and questions like these: I don’t have anything to write. What do you mean “write about a time or incident that mattered to me”? And what do you mean by “mattered”? Do I just write about what I did last summer? No matter how many examples I provided, how much I modeled reflective thinking, most of my students still looked at me with expectant faces–as if I could do more, as if I could just think reflectively for them.

In her essay “Growing Up Tethered,” Turkle also writes about how technology may be seriously delaying the rite of passage from adolescent to adult. If you can’t be self-reflective, if you’re tethered to your phone, if you’re reliant on how others see and respond to you digitally, if you’ve never experienced genuine solitude, how can you mature into a self-reflective, independent adult capable of intimate relationships? And worse yet, will you even want to?

I agree with Turkle when she writes that [o]ur networked life allows us to hide from each other, even as we are tethered to each other. What an incredible paradox: the desire to be hidden and yet to be connected. It’s no wonder that this tension manifests itself in the types of depression, anxiety, and loneliness that we read about and experience now. A year of Covid-induced Zoom schooling, working, and communicating has only exacerbated a problem that had already grown deep roots in our society.

To a certain extent, we’ll always rely on technology. That barn door is open and won’t likely be closed. Still, I’m grateful for and encouraged by frank discussions about how technology is affecting our relationships, positively and negatively. And because, like Turkle, I’m convinced there are no cheap substitutes for intimacy, I’m hoping that we continue an honest investigation into the notion that technology can be the architect of our intimacies.