I interviewed this group of college students, and one of them said, “Our texting is fine, it’s what our texting is doing to our conversations when we’re together, that’s the problem.” I think social media is great. The question is, are we on a diet of social media that’s hurting our face-to-face conversation? And if we are, how can we put ourselves on a different kind of diet? That’s the conversation I’m trying to start.

Davis: You also say that another bedrock of conversation is solitude and self-reflection. Why do you think technologies, specifically, are responsible for eroding our ability to be alone?

Turkle: I don’t want to say technologies are responsible as if they’re the only [factor]. … But I think technology has a very big role, because [mobile devices], I think unlike other similar technologies, make three promises. I call it “three gifts from a benevolent genie”: that you’ll never have to be alone, that your voice will always be heard, that you can put your attention wherever you want it to be. And that you can slip in and out of wherever you are to be wherever you want to be, with no social stigma. [These devices create] a new set of social mores that allow for a split attention in human relationships and human community.

I grew up with the book, and when I was talking to my best friends, I really couldn’t, without penalty, say “Oh, excuse me” and just open up a book in the middle of a conversation. You didn’t have permission to slip back and forth from Nancy Drew to your friends.

We are telling people that they are not as interesting or informative as where we can go in a flash [on our devices]. People have to work to not feel devalued when they’re put “on pause.” … Because I’ve interviewed people and they say, “It makes me feel terrible—I’d never say that, but it does. I feel I’m being put on pause. It’s bad when I do it to other people, but then I don’t really think of how they feel when I do it to them.” You need to suppress your empathy “gene” in order to participate fully in the mobile revolution.

Davis: In some ways what you’re describing is a culture of individualism where codes of etiquette aren’t restraining us from going on our phones. We’re not feeling that sense of, “I feel bad that I’m not giving you my attention.” And could that predate phones? I don’t know.

Turkle: That’s such a fascinating question. You could say that this is a radical code of individualism—so radical that we deny the power of all communal affiliations even as we participate in them. And at the same time, when we’re online, we talk about new communities and the importance of our participation in new communities. So we are in one confusing soup. It certainly leads right back to people [being] in conflict, which is one of my big themes.

The statistics I like are the Pew numbers. It’s a very confusing report. Over 80 percent say that a phone was out during their last social interaction, and they describe what kinds of ways in which that was positive for them—they were sharing, they were looking things up. We have many positive ways to describe how we’re using our phones—I take it out and I show you this or that—but when it came to the bottom-line question, “What do you think it did to the conversation?,” 82 percent say it deteriorated the conversation.