Skill for an AI-Age: Conversational Ability
Skill for an AI is now a must have for younger generation.
Conversing is something it’s easy to take for granted. We speak all the time, after all - via text, email, phone calls, during meetings, with friends and family: but are we truly conversing, in the sense that we are gaining an understanding of other people and their interests, needs, and habits? As noted by sociologist and tech ethicist Sherry Turkle at MIT:
“…to converse you don’t just have to perform turn taking, you have to listen to someone else, to read their body, their voice, their tone, and their silences. You bring your concern and experience to bear [on the interaction] and you expect the same from others.” (1)
Children benefit from exposure to conversations and face-to-face interactions from birth:
Young children learn to empathise and relate to others' perspectives by watching their parents or caregivers converse face-to-face
Having regular face-to-face family conversations builds a sense of trust for a child that, in turn, supports their identity development and long term emotional ability
Research shows that children who had insufficient face-to-face interactions with their main caregivers during infancy are less able to recognise others' emotions and connect with others later in life
What’s At Stake: Connection with Yourself and Others
When children converse at home with their families and caretakers, and witness their families conversing in front of them face-to-face, they are building essential social-emotional skills to take into school, work, and personal life. Although conversations may be mundane, over time these face-to-face interactions help children develop their understandings of trust, self-esteem, empathy, friendship, and intimacy (2).
Pre-COVID, kids under the age of 14 were already spending more than twice as long on their devices as they were talking to their families (3), and the effects have been showing in the classroom, as well as at home. Said a University of Chicago professor Kigumi spoke to recently, “You can see [the impact of not socialising enough] in this generation of students. They don’t know how to work together, they don’t know how to listen to each other or negotiate when they disagree” (4). He observed the irony of the situation was that while most of these students came from families that invested extensive resources to produce a high-performing child who could achieve in a competitive schooling system and end up at a top university, once the student arrives they still often lack the basic social-emotional intelligence to succeed in a real-life setting.
Did you know? Beginning from birth, a critical part of child development comes from a child seeing their caregivers’ facial expressions, hearing their voices, observing their range of emotions, and making eye contact. These basic parts of child development carry over into later stages of life in all face-to-face interactions and conversations with loved and trusted ones.
This translates into real losses in the workplace and economic settings, as well. Conversational ability and the capacity to explore ideas in a group or dyad setting are integral skills to achieving shared goals, navigating challenges for the collective good, problem solving, coming up with new, innovative and/or divergent ideas. One of my favorite stories about the importance of conversation (and face-to-face interactions) is from Bell Labs, the R&D arm of AT&T. (If you’ve done our Cyber Ethics Hackathon you’ll recognise this story!)
Between 1920 and the late ‘60’s, Bell Labs was home to the nucleus of researchers and scientists that drove one of the most innovative companies of the 20th century, responsible for major innovative strides including the invention of transistors (which unblocked the path to semiconductors, which eventually led to our ability to have at-home computing devices), among others.
In fact, Bell Labs was so incredibly prolific in generating unique, groundbreaking research and patents that at some point in the ‘60’s, the then President of Bell Labs, Mervin Kelly, decided to do an internal investigation to find out what was driving innovation. The secret sauce he found was simple: a good face-to-face conversation. Bell Labs had a cafeteria where many employees ate meals or had break times; Kelly found that most of the patents came from scientists who had spent time casually conversing over meals with others. (Specifically, he found that there was one employee, an electrical engineer named Harry Nyquist, who had an informal skill of asking really good questions in the course of a conversation, and that people who took a few moments to converse casually with Harry while getting their morning coffee were much more likely to have a higher number of patents.) (5).
The atrium at Bell Labs (now Bell Works), New Jersey. Photo Credit: Curbed, 2025
Who’s to Blame?
At home, conversational abilities have been flagging for years. It’s common to hear Millenial parents complaining that their Gen Z and Gen A children are “addicted” to their tech and too busy to have conversations during meals or family time - but what about how the parents are using their tech themselves? Drawing on Kigumi interviews with parents and pre-teens as well as research on parenting attitudes in a digital age over the last year, we find that it’s high time to flip the script and start talking to parents about how their own social skills have been weakened in a digital age. As described by Turkle, “We are at an off standoff” with parents and children blaming each other about how they use technology, and “neither side [is] happy” about the loss of conversation at home. (6).
So: are you ready to begin changing your own habits to be able to role model good conversation at home?
Tech as a Conversation Starter
Does this mean that we should all turn off our devices and stop giving our kids any technology? Not at all. It simply means reframing how we use technology and prioritising face-to-face conversations at home, particularly in front of our children. Dr. Margaret Morris, a psychologist who has worked in R&D for companies like Amazon and Intel designing technology devices, sees the main benefit of tech as being a conversation starter for in-person interactions. She believes that the tech she designs should help to jumpstart and initiate real-life conversations and interactions, rather than absorb users into digital-only conversations and interactions. Said Morris, “[The apps and tech I design] are most powerful as a starting point, not an ending point…everyone of them started a conversation. To the extent that these technologies have an impact, it’s because they spark conversations along the way” (7).
Think about it: Do you know how to use your tech devices to jumpstart real conversations? What would you like to change about your tech habits to reprioritise your face-to-face conversational skills?
Everyday Habits to Encourage At-Home Conversation
Just like with all behavior, habits are hard to change (that’s why they’re habits!). Don’t worry if you don’t see an immediate change or if you get off to a rocky start. When it comes to building conversational habits, try the following:
Step 1 (with your partner and other caregivers)
Examine your family’s current state of conversation. Where and when does face-to-face, non-digitally mediated conversation take place right now? (Meals, during bedtime routine, going home after church, etc.) Brainstorm + write down these slots of times along with your partner (and/or other caregivers) because these are where you can begin extending conversational time.
Step 2 (with your partner / other caregivers)
Think about whether you role model face-to-face conversation time with each other in front of the kids. How much do the kids get to see how you navigate conversations (without looking at or multitasking on your phone or other device) socially with other parents, other family members, or other community members? Remember that it’s important for you to demonstrate non-tech distracted conversational skills in front of them before you can expect them to do the same.
Step 3 (with your children and household members, including helpers / caregivers)
Have a family meeting to decide when and where you all value spending time with each other and having conversations. Allow your kids to share their opinions about which kinds of family gatherings or events they don’t want phones or devices to be allowed. (We suggest starting the list with: during any meal time; at least 1 hour before bedtime; and for 30 mins after you wake up on the weekends.) It may also help to discuss a “charging dock” policy, where everyone needs to charge their phone and tablets in a common place in the household. (This can help decrease the temptation for family members to escape to their private spaces to use their phone :))
For a step-by-step guide to how to do the above steps with different age groups and developmental stages and real-life tips from parents, join our parenting community on Open Collective here and email us afterwards at info@kigumigroup.com.
References
1, 2, 6, 7 - Turkle, S. (2013) “Reclaiming Conversation”
3 - CensusWide & ROXI (2019) UK Survey of 2,000 families
4 - Kigumi Group (2025) Stakeholder Interviews
5 - Gertner, J. (2012) “The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation”
