Quotes from Sherry Turkle

If you're constantly stimulated by being called away to the buzzing and the excitement of what's on your phone, solitude seems kind of scary.

I have to fight the impulse to use my phone as an alarm clock rather than leaving it in another room. If I don't, I will wake up in the middle of the night and think, 'I'll check my messages. Or the number of my book on Amazon.'

I am a partisan for conversation. To make room for it, I see some first, deliberate steps. At home, we can create sacred spaces: the kitchen, the dining room. We can make our cars 'device-free zones.' We can demonstrate the value of conversation to our children. And we can do the same thing at work.

Robots want to love us because the field of artificial intelligence has programmed robots to say they want to love us.

Our mobile devices are so powerful that they don't just change what we do, they're changing who we are.

I think computers are the ultimate writing tool. I'm a very slow writer, so I appreciate it every day.

Face-to-face conversation unfolds slowly. It teaches patience.

When I grew up, I lived in a neighborhood that had social clubs. It's never delightful to glamorize one's youth. My neighborhood was poor. But people felt part of the neighborhood. This was in Rockaway Beach, Long Island.

We live in a technological universe in which we are always communicating. And yet we have sacrificed conversation for mere connection.

You'll always feel lonely if you always need validation. People don't like to be around those kinds of people.

We think constant connection will make us feel less lonely. The opposite is true.

The selfie, like all technology, causes us to reflect on our human values. This is a good thing because it challenges us to figure out what they really are.

I've been studying the psychology of online connectivity for more than 30 years.

Computers are not good or bad; they are powerful.

The computer takes up where psychoanalysis left off. It takes the ideas of a decentered self and makes it more concrete by modeling mind as a multiprocessing machine.

The computer is a mind machine. It doesn't have its own psychology, but in a way it presents itself as though it does.

I am a single mum. I raised my daughter, and she was very listened to.

If we don't know how to be alone, we'll only know how to be lonely.

Does virtual intimacy degrade our experience of the other kind and, indeed, of all encounters, of any kind?