The book is split up into two parts. The first part on robot toys is worthless, the second on new forms of communication is merely bad. I would recommend reading the concluding chapter, and skipping the rest.
I think there are a let of legitimate arguments to be made about the pernicious effects of new communications media, but Turkle seems to miss the boat entirely, instead focusing on a few extreme examples and spending most of the book complaining about how it would be better if we could just spend more time with one-another.
The constant moralizing was grating. Turkle consistently denigrates the state of ‘modern humanity’, but she never establishes a baseline for comparison. I feel like I’m expected to sympathize with her beliefs, but I find myself more sympathizing with the kids who would prefer anamatronic turtles.
She misses the most interesting comparisons by dismissing them outright, saying things like ‘To treat these robots as mere toys was to miss the point’ and completely missing the diversity that exists within modern communications media. Skype, Facebook, SMS, video games, etc. are all very different media, but Turkle lumps them all together into ‘modern communication’ and in doing so loses the ability to find nuance in how technology is changing the way that humans interact.
The subject is important though, so props to her for working on it (hence two stars and not one), I just don’t think her conclusions are useful and am sad that she is considered an authority on the topic.