We all have tears when we see sad scenes in movies or drama. Empathy is the ability to understand another person’s feeling, and it is the most important trait humans demonstrate. Empathy is all around us. It makes people love, learn, communicate, cooperate and live in a successful society. But, I asked myself, can we raise the capacity of empathy in our society? Is it an environment that can enhance empathy?
Communication is the center of empathy’s creation. Due to the development of technology in the 21st century, it is possible to communicate through cell, text, video and photography without looking at people’s faces. But, many articles and studies have shown that, communication technologies that can destroy empathy. It drags people away from their awareness in the surrounding environment. Here is the first example that technology brings lack of empathy found in CNN. “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. These young people were at an age when they are still developing the capacity for empathy, the ability to understand another person’s emotional point of view. In many ways, the young teenage brain is non-empathic.” For the second example that supports this idea is that people are filming accidents instead of helping. Two years ago, a car parked at a gas station in Beaverton, and caught fire. People gathered around it, not to help a woman trapped inside the vehicle, but to take video of the unfolding tragedy. For the last example, I found this idea from the novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Chapter 1). After the World War, the planet becomes a place where life is difficult to live because of the earth’s pollution. Since most animals have already become extinct, living pet breeding has become a measure of wealth. The main character wanted to buy real sheep instead of the electric sheep, and he has a chance to buy a real sheep if he catches some robot who has escaped from another planet. In this chapter, it shows electric sheep have no empathy at all, unlike real sheep.
In conclusion, we found that technology has a great impact on empathy. These examples show that technology can cause decreased levels of empathy in our lives, and it affects every single one of us. The best way to increase empathy in our lives is to stay away from the phone or computer or television and have various experiences. The more experience you have the better understand people’s feeling. Through this assignment, I learned a lot, and have a time thinking about myself.
This is the CNN link that internet affects empathy in negative sides.(First example)
http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/02/18/small.vorgan.internet.empathy/index.html
