In the text “Romance: Where are you? Who are you? Wait, what just happened?

”, the
author Sherry Turkle, an American professor of the social studies at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, claims that replacing face-to-face communication with smartphones is decreasing
people’s ability to empathy and intimacy. The author uses interviews with teenagers as a
research method to represent her issue successfully.
The author starts her article by defining “the nothing gambit” as silence response after
romantic texting. She directly refers her talk to the methods of handling with silence texting.
Then she compares the response of people in 2008 and after that year. In 2008, “the nothing
gambit” was bothersome enough that the person used to search on other platforms on social
media to find a reason for rejection. The advice here is: 1) cope with reality, 2) pretend not to
notice and 3) feel comfortable with it. Furthermore, the right response is to be more active on
most social media platforms so that the person who went silent on you will notice that. The
author interviewed a teenager, Hannah, and depended on her testament to back up her standpoint
concerning the technique of handling silence texting.
Then the author between 2008 and 2010, spoke to 300 people regarding methods of
dealing with silence. Their responses were: 1) denying it hurts, 2) accepting the hurt, and 3) not
showing hurt to others. Turkle does significantly give the ideal, needed information to support
her claim. The author interviewed 300 people to support her claim regarding the approaches to
deal with silence. She wanted to have trustworthy and rich data to write her article.
Turkle also mentions Tinder as a mobile dating application. She further explains that this
application uses your picture and status. It can join a couple on a drink when both of them are
available. This leads to a “friction-free” easiness to decline with no awkwardness. Moreover,
Turkle recommends fluidity in applications such as apps for texting, video chat, and messaging.
She thinks these applications will connect people in a smooth way. The new generation will set
the path between connectivity and isolation. The author appears knowledgeable enough with new
mobile applications. She picks Tinder, a location-based social search phone application, used for
dating service. Furthermore, she has used several quotations such as “swiping left”, “who is
available” to give instructions for appropriate usage of Tinder with one essential main target,
teenagers not feeling lonely.
Finally, Turkle states that technology has many doors, but they give false promises. She
gives more importance to face-to-face encounters. The author here mentioned it is easy to engage
in apps promising closeness, however; we end up less connected because the truth lies in face-to-
face encounters. Hence, Turkle is trying to emphasize her statement by telling the reader that he
might feel romance through words however direct contact with the person is much influential.
Overall, the author talks about a problem in which the younger generation in the whole
world in our days is facing. She explores the power of new tools that have changed our social
lives. She effectively surveyed three hundred people to get their own opinions to be able to
support her claim which says that replacing face-to-face communication with phone apps is
reducing people’s ability to empathy and intimacy.