Technology as cause of and solution to the empathy problem

Abstract

For decades, Sherry Turkle has explored the risks and opportunities of technology for people, relationships, and society. In The Second Self (1984), Turkle emphasised the positive potential of digital technologies and computer games. But since then, her work has increasingly documented the risks of technology as they have crystallised into tangible harms. Culminating in her recent memoir, The Empathy Diaries (2021), Turkle’s oeuvre is best viewed as a warning that our increasing use of ICTs, and reliance on smartphones in particular, is causing usto become less empathetic.Here,we acknowledge Turkle’s warning and use her own earlier technological optimism to investigate potential technological solutions to the emerging empathy problem.