A Quote by Sherry Turkle

It is painful to watch children trying to show off for parents who are engrossed in their cell phones. Children are nostalgic for the 'good old days' when parents used to read to them without the cell phone by their side or watch football games or Disney movies without having the BlackBerry handy.

Sherry Turkle

Quote Topics

Movies Ball Games Blackberry Cell Cell Phone Cell Phones Children Days Disney Football Football Game Football Games Games Good Good Old Days Handy Having Nostalgic Off Old Old Days Painful Parents Phone Phones Read Show Show Off Side Them Trying Used Watch Without

Quote Author

Sherry Turkle
American - Educator
Born: June 18, 1948

The cell phone has transformed public places into giant phone-a-thons in which callers exist within narcissistic cocoons of private conversations. Like faxes, computer modems and other modern gadgets that have clogged out lives with phony urgency, cell phones represent the 20th Century's escalation of imaginary need. We didn't need cell phones until we had them. Clearly, cell phones cause not only a breakdown of courtesy, but the atrophy of basic skills.

Mary Schmich

The children are watching us, and they're jumping and singing and bouncing, and essentially wiggling around. Some of the parents do watch us, but most of the parents literally just watch their children for the entire show because they're so excited that they're enjoying themselves.

Emma Watkins

If you're like me, you probably take your cell phone with you everywhere you go. That means that everywhere you go, you can be tracked and located through that cell phone. It's a feature of cell phones that's not often mentioned, but that is being used by law enforcement to catch criminals.

Audie Cornish

You must learn to look at people who are angry with you straight in the eye without getting angry back. When children see their parents treating them this way, they then recognize the parents' authority. It speaks louder than words. Their new respect for the parents is as good for them as it is for the parents. It never works to demand respect of children. It must be given willingly as a result of strength of good character in the parents, which is manifested by their non-reaction to stress in the children.

Roy Masters

Music. I could not go without that. My mind would not let me be without music. I hiked the trail in 1995 - before there were iPods or music on our cell phones or even cell phones. So I was truly out there with just my thoughts. After a few days there was a continuous loop of songs playing silently in my mind.

Cheryl Strayed

Teenagers talk about the idea of having each other's 'full attention.' They grew up in a culture of distraction. They remember their parents were on cell phones when they were pushed on swings as toddlers. Now, their parents text at the dinner table and don't look up from their BlackBerry when they come for end-of-school day pickup.

Sherry Turkle

The children of the 1980s were the last before a lot of things changed. We were the last generation not to have cell phones, not to have video games, not to have parents who worried if we strayed from the yard.

Michelle Dean

With the advent of cell phones, especially with the very small microphone that attach to the cell phone itself, it's getting harder and harder I find, to differentiate between schizophrenics and people talking on a cell phone.

Bob Newhart

Parents should watch what their children watch and not use TV as a babysitter. If a show is objectionable they should turn it OFF. They should write the president of the network and tell him they are never going to watch that program again and why.

Bill Bixby

I don't text, I don't have a Blackberry. Literally, I just have a cell phone that I haven't programmed and the whole Bluetooth. No. I don't even have an earpiece for my cell phone.

Steve Carell

I have an idea I want to test, for combining old peoples' homes and orphanages. Old people are lonely without children, children are lonely without parents. Why not bring them together?

Zhou Xun

I have an idea I want to test, for combining old peoples homes and orphanages. Old people are lonely without children, children are lonely without parents. Why not bring them together?

Zhou Xun

I think that what kids watch now a days is different than what kids watch when I was young so I don't know. I think that it's up to the parents to decide. That's the truth. I'm not a parent. I have no idea, but I think some parents let a ten year old watch it and some parents wouldn't.

Mila Kunis

I think leaders lead themselves, but leaders have ideas and maybe they're visionary ideas. Probably today, people would say Steve Jobs was a visionary because he invented this little gadget, the cell phone. But he didn't invent cell phones, and he didn't design the cell phone. He just took a couple of ideas and put them together, and no one else put those same ideas together as successfully as he did. But he had something that he was trying to do that intrigued him, and he could do it very well.