The Impacts of Digital Media on Empathy

What is empathy? It explores the talent to consider and assess another’s feelings and behavior, to have an intellect of understanding the individuality, to recognize and predict other’s thoughts and emotions. It has certain types like self-empathy, cognitive empathy; affective empathy, imaginative empathy, and empathic concern. When digital media is involved in the empathy, a new term “Digital Empathy” arises. My goal in this paper is to study the impacts of digital media on empathy and evaluate the results and consider certain sources.

To achieve my objective I have divided my paper into two parts initially. In the first part, the introduction of the problem and comparing the sources and the second part consist of the thesis.

Today, in the computerized age, online networking is a gigantic piece of our regular daily existences. There are huge amounts of cases where individuals are utilizing their skills via online life. In any case, there are some in which web-based social networking has played a critical part in demolishing one's professional and personal life as well. This trend is dangerous and it is viewed as the open disgrace. The individual contemplations and state of mind of the general population communicated in advanced media might be not quite the same as those communicated at the time. While there are situations where individuals show uncommon demonstrations of the benevolence, more often than not individuals in online networking have a tendency to be snider.

Obscurity in digital life grants individuals to have another personality, which liberates them to express antagonistic vibe and feedback i.e. trolls, because of this reason people involved in internet-based life can dodge the reaction of online talks. The absence of eye to eye contact enables individuals to maintain a strategic distance from any sort of non-verbal. Compassion in the digital age is turning into a mainstream subject nowadays and there are increasingly insightful and non-academic articles committed to the theme. In the New York Times article written by Sherry Turkle, the same exact problem was reviewed with facts and figures. Mobile Phones are now the most common medium involved in the digital life. The young generation is using it when they want to be both with their friends and, as some put it, “elsewhere" that is causing the lack of empathy due to the lack of face to face connection. By the Pew Research Centre, about 82 percent of adults felt that the way they used their phones in social settings hurt the conversation. Conversations solve the problem, when you are not giving attention to other person’s feelings you directly or indirectly hurting the sentiments and that is the lack of empathy Turkle reviewed in the article.

The limitations made by digital life is affirmation tendency. Confirmation bias indicates that the individual is just presenting himself to his own particular musings rehashed in recursive resound assemblies of progressively radical and exclusionary thought. Along these lines we can comprehend and feel for the general population who concur with us however with regards to individuals who differ or the "out-gathering" we get ourselves unfit to sympathize, very ready to disparage. The antagonistic consideration is the troll post creating havoc in many people’s life. Turkle suggested that even a silent phone disconnects us from each other and we fail to become aware of another person’s posture and tone due to the lack of personal touch that is decreasing empathy and intimacy is being diminished. At the point when individuals see something unsavory via web-based networking media, they are prepared to name the individual, who they likely don't have the foggiest idea whether a supremacist, a sexist, or a biased person.

The ethical prevalence that they feel over this "other" makes it less demanding to go on the assault. After all the individual on the opposite side of the PC is only this screen name with the one quality that they have regarded them to have. Not seeing the entire individual and the great parts of them makes a failure identify with their goals, their mix-ups, or their mankind. Turkle well pointed out that these are psychologically potent devices that change not just what we do but who we are.

In another article “When Your Smartphone Is Too Smart for Your Own Good: How Social Media Alters Human Relationships” written by Wagner states that Human beings are social animals who cannot live alone, they are in need of constant communication. Human’s beings are neurologically attuned to be social creatures. Digital Media cannot be solemnly blamed for the lack of attention in modern age in fact in some cases it is bringing us together i.e. the update statuses rather than meet for coffee; this does not mean that human beings are less social, it means that people are getting to know the daily activities of the people and getting the attention the people require.

Studies show that people are becoming more social nowadays than ever before but Wagner and Turkle are intersecting each other on one point that the lack of personal connection is the downside of the Digital Media life for example in a wife-husband relationship, if the digital medium is involved it will eradicate the involvement of intimacy. The role of five senses in a relation is declining for example the wife could not hear the pain and humiliation beneath the anger in her voice over the Facebook chat but Wagner is not that worried about the havoc created by the digital social mediums as he quotes Dreikurs that a Perfection in relationships is unattainable, and so it is better to have honesty, to have courage, to risk imperfection than to live a lie

Digital Media is responsible for the lack of empathy. It has created more gaps than bridges. Yes, it has many advantages but when it comes to the direct connection it has minimized the roles of human senses which are responsible for building the empathy.