Nashville English teacher Elizabeth Smith introduced Thoreau’s Walden by asking her AP juniors if they were ever truly alone in a hyper-connected world — even without a smartphone. In doing so, she wanted to emphasize how Thoreau’s Transcendentalist
experiment living alone in the woods might be nearly impossible to
replicate in modern, plugged-in lives — at least not without some
effort.
“One student said that he gets panicked if he goes an hour
without a text message,” she said, “and he has to blow up his friends’
phones with messages to make sure they are still out there.” Other
students, she said, bristled at the idea they were sheep in the digital
herd, and liked to think of themselves as being able to manage a healthy
balance between solitude and digital connection.
But for both adults and kids — parents, teachers, and
students — because we have the luxury of being instantly and constantly
connected, “Being alone feels like a problem to be solved,” said MIT
Professor Sherry Turkle in the moving TED Talk based on her book, Alone, Together.
Based on her research, Turkle argued that relationships maintained
through texting and social media might make kids feel connected, but
because the phone is always buzzing, they may miss valuable
opportunities to experience real solitude, which is vital for
self-reflection. “If we don’t teach our children how to be alone,” she
said, “they will only know how to be lonely.”
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