Why we need one and need not fear the other.

Photo by Keegan Houser on Unsplash

Sherry Turkle’s 2015 book, Reclaiming Conversation, is a poignant account of the power conversation has to cultivate empathy. In the book, Turkle, a professor of the Social Studies of Science at MIT, outlines the “flight from conversation” our culture has embarked upon in our digital age. And while the turn away from face-to-face interaction to internet and text-mediated connection can have devastating developmental consequences, Turkle is doggedly optimistic in the resiliency of the human mind. She cites the ability of participants at device-free summer camps to “increase empathy within days.” In this way, Turkle claims that she is not so much anti-technology as she is pro-conversation.

More specifically, Conversation is primarily concerned with the ways excessive social media and text-based connectedness and a lack of face-to-face conversation effects individuals developmentally. Turkle is less concerned with the relational effects of such a digital situation. And while the difference between the two is subtle, it is nevertheless significant.

Much of the debate swirling around Big Tech and social media operates within a framework whereby the negative consequences created by Google, Facebook, and others are tabulated and judged based on harm done to relationships and the community. Common complaints claim people are distant from each other, more isolated. Relationships are fraught and frayed because of these technologies.

And while there certainly is a relational cost to a society dominated by platform technologies — from the governmental down to the familial level — it is worth looking at how texting and tweeting, oversharing and mindlessly scrolling, effect individuals, not in relation to others, but in relation to themselves and what would be considered normal cognitive development.

One of the most startling statistics Turkle mentions is the 40% decline in the markers of empathy among college students seen over the last twenty years. Given that this decline coincides almost perfectly with the rise of the internet, social media, and the smartphone, it is little wonder that researchers link the demise of empathy to the presence of digital communication.

But with the prevalence of digital technology, how can empathy be restored?

Throughout the book, Turkle appeals to American essayist and poet Henry David Thoreau’s “three chairs.” In his cabin in Concord, Massachusetts Thoreau kept three chairs — “one for solitude, one for friendship, and three for society.” According to Turkle the work of restoring conversation and empathy begins with a reclamation of solitude—Thoreau’s first chair.

Turkle claims that developing the capacity for solitude is one of the most important tasks of childhood — it is where we can construct a stable sense of self. However, in our culture of constant connectedness, people recoil at the very idea that being alone could be a good thing.

But here Turtkle quotes Paul Tillich to shatter the misunderstanding that being alone equals loneliness. Wrote Tillich in his book The Eternal Now,

“Language…has created the word ‘loneliness’ to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word ‘solitude’ to express the glory of being alone.”

The distinction between loneliness and solitude may be merely a matter of perspective, but the difference is profound. Especially in regards to the loneliness epidemic.

Our culture’s plunge into loneliness is well documented and often attributed to changing relational behaviors. Delayed marriage, declining fertility, and astronomical divorce rates all have been pegged, in one way or another, as contributing to an increase in loneliness. It is almost a self-evident fact that we as a people are more independent and isolated that any culture in the history of the world. We lack the social capital necessary to cope. Thus the loneliness epidemic.

And while those factors may be a piece of the puzzle, could it also be the case that the loneliness epidemic is not simply a result of being alone more often, but of being unprepared for alone time? Instead of conceptualizing alone time as healthy and productive — as solitude — it is viewed as a menace, a problem to be solved. If as a society we sought not to eradicate loneliness but to cultivate the capacity for solitude would we not be better served?

As Turkle states eloquently, “If we don’t know the satisfaction of solitude, we only know the panic of loneliness.”

In the Christians tradition we know that solitude is not a disease but the cure. Throughout his life and ministry Jesus sought solitude regularly. Before beginning his earthly ministry Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness (Matthew 4:1–11). After learning that John the Baptist had been beheaded, Jesus again sought the quiet of the mountain (Matthew 14:1–13). And before his crucifixion, Jesus spent the night praying in the garden of Gethsemane — alone (Luke 22:39–44).

We can see from these few examples that solitude — being alone — is not something to run from, but to press into. But it has to be done right. Turkle wisely condemns any feeble attempt at solitude that includes our devices. We need to be free from the externalities that crave our attention. Only when we are alone with our thoughts, free to process and pray, can we claim to be in the restorative refuge of solitude. And that solitude can free us from the fear of loneliness, give us the opportunity to know ourselves and our maker, and create in us the empathy that we need to meaningfully interact with one another.

John Thomas is a freelance writer. His writing has appeared at Christianity Today, Desiring God, and Christ and Pop Culture. He writes regularly at Soli Deo Gloria.