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- Author: Paula Span
- Full Title: Sherry Turkle
- Category: #books
- The more time people spend on their phones instead of talking to each other face to face—and teenagers spend an astounding amount of time on their phones—that affects even something as simple as an apology. Children are terrified of apologies. They don’t know how to do apologies. They don’t know how to do them in college or in the workplace, either. If I apologize to you, I have to see whether you think I’m sorry enough. Are you picking up that I’m hurting? I have to see that you see that. Then I have to check if there’s a softening that gives me the opportunity to make this negotiation. This is a complex human interaction and it’s not going to happen if I type “I’m sorry” and hit send. You probably won’t forgive me, because none of this complicated human transaction will have happened.
- I’m trying to be a little more interesting here today than I am normally, but there’s a limit. Nobody, only real professionals, can sustain the perfectly constructed persona for hours and hours. If we had done this interview online, though, I would be so perfect. I’d be more organized. I’d be more poetic. My students don’t want to come to office hours. I tell them, I’m famous! I tell them, people pay to talk to me. They don’t want to come to office hours. They want to send me an email with the perfect question, and then they want me to send them back an answer, that I’ve composed, that’s curated and perfect for them.