The shelf · Pets, robots and AI companions
Does Reclaiming Conversation hold up?
Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age, by Sherry Turkle (2015)
Argues that phones are eroding face-to-face conversation, empathy and the capacity for solitude.
The short answer
Partly overtaken. The empathy decline it cites has reversed, and the phone-on-the-table study failed to replicate.
The claims, checked
Empathy among college students has fallen by about 40%.
Outdated A 2023 update covering 38,693 students from 1979 to 2018 found empathy fell from 2000 to 2007, then rose. Over the whole period there was no significant decline.
Evidence: Konrath et al., 2023
A phone on the table makes conversation more trivial and lowers empathy.
Contested A pre-registered replication in 2021 failed to reproduce the original 2013 effects.
Evidence: Linares and Sellier, PLoS ONE, 2021
89% of Americans used their phone in their last social gathering, and 82% say it worsened the conversation.
Holds with conditions The 89% is of phone owners, not all Americans. The 82% say phone use hurts conversation at least occasionally.
Evidence: Pew Research Center, 2015