Students 40% less empathetic than they were in 1979

Today’s college kids are 40-per-cent less empathetic, study finds Facebook and MySpace cited as major forces in the rise of narcissism and the ‘ability to ignore others’ pain’ http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/work/todays-college-kids-are-40-per-cent-less-empathetic-study-finds/article1587609/

We needed a study to prove that social networking sites are destroying our ability to communicate with one another?

The irony is, most people will shrug this off because they'll think it doesn't affect them, being better and more important than everyone else and all...

to myself of the best thing ive done in recent years was to delete for my myspace and facebook pages .....  sometimes even get rid of numbers on my phone i just like to talk to people now face of face.

This research really stunned me.  Assuming the protocols etc. were valid and the conclusions correct that is a potentially hugely consequential sea change in the way people relate to one another. 40%! 

The article mentions callous reality shows, and I couldn't agree more.  The entire genre invites the polarized objectification of people and their troubles.  Even something like Survivor glorifies and rewards the self serving. I wach one episode years ago and swore never to watch again, and I haven't.  I'm always the odd duck out at work who refuses to play in the Survivor pool.

This wasn't mentioned in the article, and may not be relevant, but I would put forth another theory as well.  I think empathy is also developed though one's own experiencing of pain, hardship, failure, rejection etc. etc.  Much of this latest generation has been largely insulated from an awful lot of that because their lives and social interactions are so managed.  Nobody fails anymore, everybody gets a trophy, anti-bullying measures are encoded in educational charters, parents agressively solve their children's problems for them across mutlple dimensions, and children's free play is more organized and monitored by adults than it ever has been in history.

And the creating of little narcissists can begin even before children are born.  In another little odd duckism baby showers are a grim experience for me.  The sheer amount of consumerism and truly unnecessary luxuries literally heaped and piled on a prospective human life is absurd.  I sit there thinking about babies born in abject poverty in so many other places and I feel like I'm participating in something deeply illogical and even a little obscene.  I sound like so much fun at a party, eh! LOL  Anyway, it continues for many children through the rest of their lives and I'm not surprised in any way at the rise in narcissim as discussed in the article.

Facebook and other social media are likely culprits for sure, but so is the internet in general for people of any generation.  I've done a tremendous amount of reading and reflecting about human behaviour from personal interest and frankly sheer necessity, and I know full well the risks of abusing others over the internet through the suspension of normal social rules and the behaviour of groups and I still find I have to check my behaviour and pull back in certain situations.   And I'm a person with awareness and a desire to do the right thing who should know better.

Another aspect of the internet and intolerance and a lack of empathy with other people's point of view is the ability to completely isolate yourself from competing ideas and seek out only reinforcement for what you already believe on a scale that is essentially limitless.  It's the electronic version of studies that have explained the predominance of single political ideologies in flyover country as resuting from community echo chambers where beliefs are continuously reinforced.  To counter this I regularly read two prominent conservative/libertarian blogs with an eye to really digging in and understanding the point of view even though I rarely completely agree.

Jesus what an unforgivabley long post.  I'm so sorry.  If you've gotten this far and would like an apology please let me know. ;)  I'll just end by saying that I've been speaking as though maximum empathy is the most desirable state, and that's really perhaps not the case.  It's really about adaptablility and being able to function in your world.  If 80% of the world is less empathetic or whatever than you are (my situation for sure) then it's you (me) that has to make the adjustments in cognition and interpretation of the actions of others and most importantly in one's expectations of others.  There are entire philosophies (like Ayn Rand's obectivism) that completely eschew obligations to others and instead advocate responsibe self interest as the best way towards progress and personal fulfillment.  If all these newly unempathetic people are all operating by the same set of rules that may work out just fine.

Great post Grateful Fan. You're a real asset to Queenzone: an intelligent and thoughtful person.

This thread reminds me of a cartoon I saw a while back -- university life, then and now:

http://selection.weblog.glam.ac.uk/assets/2009/11/30/The_Geek02.jpg

^  :) I had something else I wanted to add last night but was afraid one more paragraph might tip over the whole forum. ;)  Guess what else is messing with the comprehension of emotional language and cues from others?  Botox. As in people who have had botox struggle with comprehending certain types of emotional cues from other people.  I found that fascinating.  http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/sc-health-0602-botox-20100603-11,0,5579516.story Also,  some might be interesed in this doc called 'Hyper Parents & Coddled Kids'.  Runs about 40 minutes and talks among other things about the typical lives of young children today and how kids are arriving at university more stressed out and less prepared for the workforce than at any time in history. http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/Shows/Doc_Zone/ID=1405930535

GratefulFan wrote:

"I sound like so much fun at a party, eh! LOL"

I'd be the chap at the other side of the room thinking the same things you're thinking.  We'd chat up the storm and be the life of the party... even though nobody else would think so !

Excellent post, as always.

Thanks Sir GH.  :)  As I tried to tell someone earlier today, it's the kind of post that could easily have dropped like stone here, so I'm grateful to those who took a moment to tell me it hadn't.

ah yes, a friend of mine "tweeted" this to me earlier...

So I've posted it on Facebook.

That's cold Microwave.  Really cold.  Brrrrrr.

A wonderful article I thought about a man who lives across from a popular suicide spot in Sydney, Australia.  It begins: "In those bleak moments when the lost souls stood atop the cliff, wondering whether to jump, the sound of the wind and the waves was broken by a soft voice. "Why don't you come and have a cup of tea?" the stranger would ask. And when they turned to him, his smile was often their salvation." http://www.comcast.net/articles/news-world-asia/20100613/AS.Australia.The.Suicide.Watchman/ I enjoyed the read for it's own sake, but what struck me and why I posted it here were the haunting and sometimes final words of those who would not have carried out their plan if someone, anyone, had taken a moment to connect with them and notice their pain.  A situation bound to get worse if the original article in this thread is to be believed.  Lonliness is a terrible and unnecessary scourge, and this article demonstrates that looking up from our own lives, sometimes even for just a few moments, might be a wonderfully worthwhile thing.

The story was great.  And the fact that the man is not driven crazy or even having insomnia after these incidents is the most remarkable thing (I think).  He does seem pretty angelic to me.

GratefulFan wrote:

'll just end by saying that I've been speaking as though maximum empathy is the most desirable state, and that's really perhaps not the case. 
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I think we can be quite sure that's not the case! : )

I agree with much of that, but I'd qualify your conclusions by remarking that there are many people, much more than we are ready to admit, whose shy and introspective behaviour is trait-related and may not have anything to do with internet or
facebook. We like to think of ourselves as social beings; fact is that a huge chunk of humanity is simply
not predisposed to social interaction - they'll keep to themselves even if their parents go out of their way
to "socialize" them.

In the past, that person would either hide behind any lonely hobby or be forced to get along with other
people; the more gifted, the likes of Nietzsche or Van Gogh, would probably hide behind their genius at
a very high cost.

People who are good at, and enjoy, interacting more closely and more often with others
will likely succeed in doing so both in and out of the web, I guess. 

I say for myself: I'd hate to live in an all-empathetic society. Really. More often than not, I'm simply
not in the mood to socialize, and I'm not a TV or internet-addict! In fact, I barely watch TV, and I
have a genuine distaste for reality shows and don't even have a facebook profile!

Yara:

I don't think the desire or ability to empathize is related at all to how intrinsically introverted or extraverted a person is. Empathy does not even require interaction or socialization; one can be wordlessly empathetic from across the room, or in the case of the internet, across an ocean. Empathy does not always require any action, just the desire and the ability to feel how another might feel. Sometimes the specific action of empathy is actually inaction, when one perceives that's what the object of one's empathy needs or wants.

In fact, I'd even challenge your post to the point of flipping on it's head. Introversion, sensitivity and egocentrism are often bedfellows, all interacting together as both cause and effect for each other. Remember that empathy is partly defined as the projection of feelings onto another, which is a different thing completely from the accurate perception of the feelings of someone else. Those who quietly hang back are often introspective and intensely observant of both their own inner words and the worlds of others. The less one directly interacts with people, the more reliant one is on empathy to make sense of the world.

Finally, I think it would be a huge mistake to assume all socially tentative people are the way they are due to an inherent desire for solitude. The more sensitive a person is to the bumps and bruises of social interactions the more life can wear them down. Their emotional lives can become dominated by fear of rejection, feelings of worthlessness, and a helpless sense of being on the outside looking in. People can find themselves completely unable to express their needs or forge the connections they very much want. Then they end up pacing up and down the Golden Gate Bridge in tears, desperately hoping, often fruitlessly, that someone will see.  'Seeing' is not a responsibility that is for everyone, but there are a great number of people, like that man in Sydney, who find it a natural and fulfilling part of their own makeup.

GratefulFan wrote:

"Introversion, sensitivity and egocentrism are often bedfellows, all interacting together as both cause and effect for each other. Remember that empathy is partly defined as the projection of feelings onto another, which is a different thing completely from the accurate perception of the feelings of someone else. Those who quietly hang back are often introspective and intensely observant of both their own inner words and the worlds of others. The less one directly interacts with people, the more reliant one is on empathy to make sense of the world."

Excellent post, as always.  I highlight this part in particular and would like to challenge it.  Are you thereby suggesting that the more one interacts with others, the less empathetic they are?  Or just in the case of some?