Is the internet killing empathy?

[seabeyond]

In an earlier time we might have been instructed to look away or give the person privacy. No more. We click and click.

Have our brains become so desensitized by a 24/7, all-you-can-eat diet of lurid flickering images that we've lost all perspective on appropriateness and compassion when another human being apparently suffers a medical emergency? Have we become a society of detached voyeurs?

According to the most recent findings from the Kaiser Family Foundation, 8- to 18-year-olds on average spend 11½ hours a day using their technology.

Their brains have become "wired" to use their tech gadgets effectively in order to multi-task -- staying connected with friends, texting and searching online endlessly, often exposing their brains to shocking and sensational images and videos. Many people are desensitizing their neural circuits to the horrors they see, while not getting much, if any, off-line training in empathic skills. And the effects may even reach young people.

In a 2002 study published in Brain and Cognition, Robert McGivern and co-workers found that adolescents struggle with the ability to recognize another person's emotions. The teenage volunteers in their study had particular difficulty identifying specific emotions expressed by another person's face.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/02/18/small.vorgan.internet.empathy/index.html?hpt=C2

[Bluebear]

1. Have we become a society of detached voyeurs? Absolutely.

great subject, great post

[seabeyond]

2. massive experiement with our kids unlike anything in the past. i dont play the game with my kids.

they dont participate in the social aspect of internet. they understand why they dont. and they agree with it and go with it. told them, by the time they are out of house, and can do what they want, there will be plenty of info on all this with our children.

[MineralMan]

3. That's an interesting thing to think about.

In some ways, I think it's probably true. In other ways, perhaps not. It does seem to me that things like Facebook and other social media expand our range of people we follow, and that may well expose us to more people in distress than otherwise. On the other hand, the story about the poor reporter who had what looked like a stroke on the air got a lot of guffaws on the Internet. And then there are all those discussion forums, where people sometimes post about their difficulties and get a lot of support from the forum community.

I'm not sure. It could be a wash.

[seabeyond]

6. i am speaking about kids, but you know what bothers me about allowing kids the access?

parents pay attention to who kid hangs with. yet on net, we allow kids to interact with whomever, and take away their ability to be wise. they have none of their senses involved in deciding who the person is and if they are worthwhile to hang with. there is a voice that becomes one as a whole, that really may only be a minority, conditioning the kids to believe that certain thinking or action really is ok cause everyone is doing it.

taking away the kids ability to look in the eyes, and judge words, i think, handicaps them too much.

[MineralMan]

12. You could certainly be right. I'm not a parent, but if I were I'd

be very careful with my children's internet activities. The bullying stories, sexual predation, and access to stuff that even adults cringe at is all there. Kids need direction, for sure, and protection from the ugliness that is so prevalent in the world. They need time to grow and gently move into the adult world, I think.

So, I think you're probably right.

[tridim]

4. It'll be interesting to see how the Internet is altering our DNA.

The answer will come with the next generation. Evolution in action.

I started using the Internet in 1989, at 19 years old. My young brain missed out on the rewiring.

[Dogmudgeon]

5. Yes. Just ask poor old Hosni Mubarak.

For those too desensitized to figure it out, --> :sarcasm:

--d!

[seabeyond]

7. or.... lara login? nt

[Warren DeMontague]

24. So the internet is responsible for what happened to Lara Logan?

How do you get that, exactly?

[leftstreet]

8. If it means people aren't watching as much TV, I'm all for it

TV isn't interactive and viewers have no choice but to take in whatever content the various channels are blasting out.

Very interesting article!
Thanks for posting

K&R

[seabeyond]

11. we rarely have tv on, either. too much trash. hubby watches. nt

[n2doc]

9. I blame Faux and the rest of the MSM

Yes, the internet does make it easy to spew. But people are getting spewed at 24/7 of hate tV and radio, and told over and over that it is fine, just dandy, to blame others for their misfortunes. Everybody is on their own. No one should care for anyone else, because if they do, the other person will just stab you in the back. It is why I think that really poor people are the ones that still have empathy, because they don't get inundated with that crap all day long.

[seabeyond]

13. i see this.

this is a big reason i have liked the results of not encouraging kids to play in this. agree.

[murielm99]

10. I think it is true.

In face to face encounters, I find it easier to give people the benefit of the doubt. I can work with and tolerate all sorts of people in real life. Even without considering the lurid images, on the internet, it is easy to snark at people we don't know and to ridicule each other. Most of us would never do that in real life. Our children are learning to behave this way. They will grow up with no filters on their behavior.

[seabeyond]

14. this is what has bothered me last couple years and seeing how i have been effected on du

du is about the only interaction i have on the net. and i see how it has adjusted my thinking in some ways, that are not positive. i starting seeing that ALL people, adn the reality is, it is not ALL people. i tell my kids, if it effects me this way, what is it doing to kids.

[hfojvt]

15. come on

in an earlier time we'd have been reading People magazine or the National Enquirer or reading the local gossip column.

11.5 hours is kinda hard to believe, especially for kids in school. And it is not all voyeurism. Much of it is connecting with friends, or finding information.

[seabeyond]

17. lol, or time, smithsonian, nation geographic. we dont do people, NE or gossip. lol. nt

[hfojvt]

20. my point is that the same group of people

who are being voyeuristic used to do the same thing with TV, magazines and newspapers.

[seabeyond]

21. i dont agree. i think it is much larger. nt

[JackRiddler]

16. No, it's battering the corpse of empathy after TV, RW radio and neoliberalism did the killing.

[seabeyond]

18. when kids were young, the tv shifted to inappropriate. even the cartoons for kids

they would watch history or A&E but they dont even watch much of that anymore. rarely is tv on. i hear ya. it is pretty bad, too.

[devilgrrl]

19. I thought empathy was dead and buried back in the mid-80's

eom

[Ichingcarpenter]

22. Beck's conclusion: "Empathy leads you to bad decisions every time."

Tea Party mouthpiece and Fox News host Glenn Beck. One of Beck's recent Nazi comparisons involved taking a closer look at the concept of empathy in politics and - get this - how Hitler used 'empathy' to euthanize baby Knauer, a child born with significant birth defects in 1938 Germany, amid the debate over Hitler's eugenics policies. Beck's conclusion: "Empathy leads you to bad decisions every time." While Glenn Beck's logic is certainly twisted, I think we can safely say that he takes Godwin's Law to new heights.

[seabeyond]

23. sad day when the word empathy becomes a bad word. there are other words we have

done this to, the last decade. nice. decent. we don't/can't use those words anymore

[Warren DeMontague]

25. "lurid, flickering images"

Writhing, scantily clad bodies, consumed by lust... tempting lost souls to the devil with the fiery promises of flesh!!!!!!!



...sure, sign me up.

[shireen]

26. no but it's killing my bank account

every time i read about human or animal suffering, i reach for my paypal account or credit card. Empathy is alive and well on the internet.
:(

[OneGrassRoot]

27. My experience is just the opposite...

Becoming aware of the experience of others in a way many never had before the Internet information age has increased awareness and empathy, especially in my teenage daughter and her friends. The ability to directly engage about it adds to the empathy and understanding.

I suppose those inclined towards empathy can have it heightened via the Internet, while those less inclined to begin with can go in the other direction.