Sherry Turkle: connected, but alone?Just a moment ago, my daughter Rebecca texted me for good luck. Her text said, Mom, you will rock. I love this. Getting that text was like getting a hug. And so there you have it. I embody the central paradox. Im a woman who loves getting texts whos going to tell you that too many of them can be a problem. Actually that reminder of my daughter brings me to the beginning of my story. 1996, when I gave my first TEDTalk, Rebecca was five years old and she was sitting right there in the front row. I had just written a book that celebrated our life on the internet and I was about to be on the cover of Wired magazine. In those heady days, we were experimenting with chat rooms and online virtual communities. We were exploring different aspects of ourselves. And then we unplugged. I was excited. And, as a psychologist, what excited me most was the idea that we would use what we learned in the virtual world about ourselves, about our identity, to live better lives in the real world. Now fast-forward to 2012. Im back here on the TED stage again. My daughters 20. Shes a college student. She sleeps with her cellphone, so do I. And Ive just written a new book, but this time its not one that will get me on the cover of Wired magazine. So what happened? Im still excited by technology, but I believe, and Im here to make the case, that were letting it take us places that we dont want to go. Over the past 15 years, Ive studied technologies of mobile communication and Ive interviewed hundreds and hundreds of people, young and old, about their plugged in lives. And what Ive found is that our little devices, those little devices in our pockets, are so psychologically powerful that they dont only change what we do, they change who we are. Some of the things we do now with our devices are things that, only a few years ago, we would have found odd or disturbing, but theyve quickly come to seem familiar, just how we do things. So just to take some quick examples: People text or do email during corporate board meetings. They text and shop and go on Facebook during classes, during presentations, actually during all meetings. People talk to me about the important new skill of making eye contact while youre texting. (Laughter) People explain to me that its hard, but that it can be done. Parents text and do email at breakfast and at dinner while their children complain about not having their parents full attention. But then these same children deny each other their full attention. This is a recent shot of my daughter and her friends being together while not being together. And we even text at funerals. I study this. We remove ourselves from our grief or from our revery and we go into our phones. Why does this matter? It matters to me because I think were setting ourselves up for trouble - trouble certainly in how we relate to each other, but also trouble in how we relate to ourselves and our capacity for self-reflection. Were getting used to a new way of being alone together. People want to be with each other, but also elsewhere - connected to all the different places they want to be. People want to customize their lives. They want to go in and out of all the places they are because the thing that matters most to them is control over where they put their attention. So you want to go to that board meeting, but you only want to pay attention to the bits that interest you. And some people think thats a good thing. But you can end up hiding from each other, even as were all constantly connected to each other. A 50-year-old business man lamented to me that he feels he doesnt have colleagues anymore at work. When he goes to work, he doesnt stop by to talk to anybody, he doesnt call. And he says he doesnt want to interrupt his colleagues because, he says, Theyre too busy on their email. But then he stops himself and he says, You know, Im not telling you the truth. Im the one who doesnt want to be interrupted. I think I should want to, but actually Id rather just do things on my Blackberry. Across the generations, I see that people cant get enough of each other, if and only if they can have each other at a distance, in amounts they can control. I call it the Goldilocks effect: not too close, not too far, just right. But what might feel just right for that middle-aged executive can be a problem for an adolescent who needs to develop face-to-face relationships. An 18-year-old boy who uses texting for almost everything says to me wistfully, Someday, someday, but certainly not now, Id like to learn how to have a conversation. When I ask people Whats wrong with having a conversation? People say, Ill tell you whats wrong with having a conversation. It takes place in real time and you cant control what youre going to say. So thats the bottom line. Texting, email, posting, all of these things let us present the self as we want to be. We get to edit, and