The Damage Social Media Does on Empathy

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People of all ages are trying to learn and understand the etiquette of social media, as a fast growing platform in our society there is no one there to tell everyone the right way to behave. New things go viral every day, and the trending lists on the various social media platforms perpetuate them. Some of these things are promoting positive change, while others are attacking people or companies around the world. The big question is how is our ability to empathize is effected by social media. While I believe that social media can do amazing things in fighting a common cause or connecting us with people around the world, I believe that it can also cause a lapse in empathy.

16-year-old Phoebe Cannop

16-year-old Phoebe Cannop

About a month ago I was scrolling through my facebook when I saw this story that my friend had shared. It was about a teenage girl, Phoebe Connop, who took her own life out of fear of being attacked on social media for a picture she sent to friends in a private message. She was sixteen. In the photo she darkened her skin and covered her head with a scarf and sent it with a caption saying that this was the only way her new boyfriends parents were going to accept her. The photo was taken from the chat and shared on social media. After it received some negative attention she feared being deemed a racist and took her own life (Matthews).

This is a very extreme case of something that unfortunately happens too often on social media. Personally I have been witness to more than my fair share of facebook fights and social media shaming’s, fortunately, none of which have lead to such tragic outcomes. However, witnessing it regularly makes you wonder why people are so unable or unwilling to empathize with people on the internet. P.J. Manney discuses in her article things like compassion fatigue, confirmation bias, and our willingness to demonize the “out group” limit our ability to empathize on social media platforms.

The average time spent on social media rises to 1.72 hours.

The average time spent on social media 1.72 hours.

Compassion fatigue explains the phenomena where people are constantly bombarded with tragic stories and eventually get emotionally worn out. Even before social media this was a problem. Such as with the Columbine shooting, in his book, Dave Cullen describes how one news columnist cited that the victims families were “milking” the tragedy, the bigger shock was from the response of the readers who agreed with him, “‘All of us are sick and tired of the continued whining,’ a reader responded,” (Cullen, 300). And that was in 1999, before social media existed. Now people spend, on average, 1.72 hours on social media per day (Mander). In that time between the status updates and photos that friends post timelines are filled with tragic stories from across the world. We feel compassion fatigue with wars overseas, tragedies at home, and other awful things that occur in the world around us. We see the same thing over and over, and eventually lose the ability to empathize. We have to distance ourselves from the tragedies for self-preservation, to not allow the stories to compromise our own emotional well-being.

“When people see something disagreeable on social media they are ready to label the person, who they likely don’t know, as an other, as a racist, a sexist, or a bigot.”

Another limitation of empathy created by social media is confirmation bias. In this instance, confirmation bias refers to people only exposing themselves to “their own thoughts repeated in recursive echo chambers of increasingly radical and exclusionary thought” (Manney). In this way we are able to understand and empathize with the people who agree with us but when it comes to people who disagree or the “out-group” we find ourselves unable to empathize, and all too able to demonize. In the example of Phoebe Connop, she feared that she was going to be labeled a racist, as she had probably seen done before on social media. The negative attention that the post received from people who didn’t know her, and even some people who did, ultimately lead her to kill herself. When people see something disagreeable on social media they are ready to label the person, who they likely don’t know, as an other, as a racist, a sexist, or a bigot. The moral superiority that they feel to this “other” makes it easier to go on the attack. After all the person on the other side of the computer,  is just this screen name with the one trait that they have deemed them to have. Not seeing the whole person and the good parts of them causes an inability to empathize with their intentions, their mistakes, or their humanity.

I feel that while there are many benefits to a world that is constantly connected by social media, it can lead to problems in our ability to empathize if we are not careful with how we use it. It is important that we as a society examine how we react to and behave on social media to try and prevent anything like what happened to Phoebe Cannop from happening again.

Works Cited

Cullen, David. Columbine. New York: Twelve, 2010. Print.

Mander, Jason. “Daily Time Spent on Social Networks Rises to 1.72 Hours.” Globalwebindex.net. N.p., 26 Jan. 2015. Web. 17 Oct. 2016.

Manney, P.J. “Is Technology Destroying Empathy?” LiveScience.com. N.p., 30 June 2015. Web. 17 Oct. 2016.

Matthews, Alex. “Halesowen Teen Took Own Life after Fearing She’s Be Called …” Daily Mail.com. N.p., 28 Aug. 2016. Web. 16 Oct. 2016.

Images:

nintchdbpict0002625703211.jpg

http://www.globalwebindex.net/blog/daily-time-spent-on-social-networks-rises-to-1-72-hours

http://blog.umy.ac.id/bellagrandyna/2015/11/20/stop-judging-people/

97 thoughts on “The Damage Social Media Does on Empathy”

  1. The article I used for my blog post also fits your blog post. I read the article “Deconstructing Empathy in the Digital Age” by Abhilasha Belani. She talked about the aspects of empathy that have been degraded by the use of technology and social media. Her first point was affective understanding. The lack of affective-understanding is applicable to almost any social media post. The post was taken out of context and it wasn’t seen by her facial expressions and non verbal cues that she was joking. If she was with her friends they would be able to tell it was a joke, though a poor one. However, when posted online there is no context in what she was doing and she is branded as a racist. Belani’s second point had to do with emotional-contagion. When one person was outraged with Phoebe’s photo, they shared it and more people became outraged after seeing the comments and views other people had. Outrage is very contagious online and this is what causes posts like this to become viral for negative reasons (Belani). The last topic Belani touched on was cognitive perspective taking, however I did not think this was relevant to my post and I do not think that it is that relevant to your post. It is when the reader of the post sees something from the writers perspective. In this case if the viewers of Phoebe’s post had taken her perspective they would have known she was joking. However, this photo was taken out of context and it would be hard to take her perspective simply from a photograph. This article by Belani uses a different approach to show how the lack of empathy in social media affected Phoebe.

  6. thank u for sharing

    ” It is important that we as a society examine how we react to and behave on social media to try and prevent anything like what happened to Phoebe Cannop from happening again.”

  17. I dont believe, This is my first time visit here. Great Article it its really informative and innovative. I guess I am not only one having all the enjoyment right here!

  21. People of all ages are trying to learn and understand the etiquette of social media, as a fast growing platform in our society there is no one there to tell everyone the right way to behave. New things go viral every day, and the trending lists on the various social media platforms perpetuate them. Some of these things are promoting positive change, while others are attacking people or companies around the world. The big question is how is our ability to empathize is effected by social media. While I believe that social media can do amazing things in fighting a common cause or connecting us with people around the world, I believe that it can also cause a lapse in empathy.

  23. Agreed to what you want to explain through this Article. The thing is all depend on the person exposed to Social Media. The problem that I see is that kids get exposed to the internet on every early age. This immense flow of knowledge and images and social statuses ruined their normal mind growth.

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  86. her own life (Matthews).

    This is a very extreme case of something that unfortunately happens too often on social media. Personally I have been witness to more than my fair share of facebook fights and social media shaming’s, fortunately, none of which have lead to such tragic outcomes. However, witnessing it regularly makes you wonder why people are so unable or unwilling to empathize with people on the internet. P.J. Manney discuses in her article things like compassion fatigue, confirmation bias,

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