Children and technology: The empathy problem

Stop.

Are you reading this on your phone? Are you reading it while you should be talking to your friends, your spouse or your children?

You're not alone.

The rise of technology — including email, texting and messaging apps — has cut in on the time people spend in face-to-face conversations.

Sherry Turkle, the author of "Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age," points out the danger of this: Increased screen time can affect how children develop empathy.

Turkle and Dr. David Walsh, a psychologist, educator and author, joined MPR News' Tom Weber to talk about children and technology.

"We're finding in a recent study that in the past 20 years, there's been a 40 percent decline in all the ways we know how to measure empathy among college students," Turkle said.

The sharpest decline has happened in the last ten years, and researchers associate it with the rise of mobile devices that distract from traditional communication.

"Face-to-face conversation is the most human — and humanizing — thing we do," Turkle said. "It's where intimacy is born, it's where empathy is born."

Walsh agreed. "Interpersonal communication is much more than words. It's reading social cues, it's reading facial expressions — those are all of the elements of a very important thing called empathy."

In her research, Turkle observed that children are hardly the only ones buried in social media and devices.

"Parents were texting during breakfast and dinner. Parents were burying themselves in email when kids were pulling at their sleeves and wanting to talk. Parents were sitting in parks and not looking up when kids were saying, 'Hey, look at me!' on the jungle gym," Turkle said.

"Parents have not stepped up in mentorship for how to use these devices — they've stepped back."

Turkle underlined that her book "is not anti-technology — it's pro-conversation." It encourages parents to model responsible digital behavior and have conversations — actual face-to-face conversations — with their children.

Walsh thinks of it as "a third leg to the definition of digital health." The first is digital literacy: knowing how to use devices. The second is digital citizenship: avoiding cyberbullying and other online abuse. The third, according to Walsh, should be "digital discipline: when to use it, how to use it, when to put it away."

To hear the full conversation about how technology is affecting the development of empathy, use the audio player above.