Empathy on the Rise: Bloggers Unite!

“I’ve started putting intentional margins into my life…. I have designated times when I unplug the gadgets, no matter how useful they may be.” I’m encouraged by this comment by Cameron Strang, founder of Relevant magazine, especially considering Relevant’s younger, techno-centric audience and a new study that says college students are less empathetic today. Perhaps you guessed as much, but the following statistic surprised me:

"College kids today are about 40 percent lower in empathy than their counterparts of 20 or 30 years ago, as measured by standard tests of this personality trait."

That’s serious stuff. Researchers connected to the study took stabs at why this has happened, including significant increase in exposure to “nonwork-related information” and the “ease of having ‘friends’ online.” Sadly, I don’t feel immune, and I'm long out of college. For example, if you called me with a problem, I’d respond quite differently than if you posted the same problem on Facebook. I can’t seem to help that. Bystander apathy and social loafing are pervasive in crowds, and I'm susceptible to both of them. Someone else will jump in, I say.

Looking for a cure

I’m wondering how to minimize this unbecoming behavior; how to improve my own empathy score online. Part of the solution, I believe, has to do with setting margins. Strang seems to think so. I’m not sure how his life has changed since October when he made that statement above, but I’d bet he’s seen some improvement. At least he’s thinking in the right direction:

“We were created for connection and relationship, but rather than looking for it in artificial, fleeting ways, let’s choose to chart a different course. After all, it’s not about how many online followers you have – real influence and connection happens in more than 140 characters.”

Sounds like what Marcus envisioned from the start of HighCallingBlogs.com: a healthy use of technology to create and foster real community. Can it be done? Speaking from personal experience, yes. I've made dear friends over the past two years here. Not friends based on the number of comment and email exchanges we’ve had, but friends based on real life sharing and deep knowing that grew out of blogging together.

Paying attention

I know that relationships call for empathy and empathy requires time and time requires margins, which is why I have to pay attention to the delicate blogo-system I'm co-creating here along with all of you. Too much logging in and out and clicking here and there makes me prone to superficiality. This particular place, however, is turning out to be okay and part of that is due to it being infused with and dependent upon the very technology that seems to be causing empathy trouble to begin with. Paying attention helps me safeguard technology from making me less human, which is exactly what I become when empathy wanes: less human. I may be a dreamer, but I believe this network and others like it have a shot at shifting the results of the next empathy study.

• What technology margins, if any, do you practice? And do you relate them to the spiritual disciplines?

• Where does empathy suffer for you online?

• Conversely, are there technologies that facilitate empathy better than others?

Read the empathy study summary here. And find out in about two minutes how your empathy compares with the empathy of college students here. (Then tell us if you need as much help as I do!)

Photo by Claire Burge. Used with permission. Post written by Sam Van Eman.