The Future of Feeling: Building Empathy in a Tech-Obsessed World

by Kaitlin Ugolik Phillips

Clearly everyone commenting had been thinking about this long enough to know what they wanted to say, but I wondered if any of us—myself included—had really considered how our words would impact one another.

read it. Years later, this whole exchange makes me cringe. It wasn’t about him, but it wasn’t about me either.

I had first started talking to friends and strangers on the internet via AOL Instant Messenger in the early 2000s. I’d rush home from middle and then high school every day to message people I may or may not have even made eye contact with in the halls. I’ll admit I was a bit of a fanatic early adopter, but I wasn’t alone—there were always at least a dozen other kids logged on at the same time, and I remember regularly keeping a handful of conversations going at once, well into the night.

But as the more modern versions of social media have become obsessive parts of our everyday lives—Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and Tumblr pinging us every time someone likes or comments on one of our posts—their magic of creating bridges is sometimes overpowered by their capacity to help us burn them.

it. At the same time, that feeling of safety and vulnerability we had with platforms like Instant Messenger and the early blogging site LiveJournal has all but evaporated. It’s hard to feel comfortable enough to access vulnerability or empathy in the quick-fire world today’s platforms have created.

We each closed our eyes and imagined ourselves in a place we’d been, with a person we knew, doing a thing we’d done, but in a different combination than had ever occurred in real life.

Studies show that triggering this type of empathy can lead to taking future action. But it doesn’t happen without some work and a willingness to try imagining the unknown. In a room full of adults trying to do this, the mood was somewhat hesitant, somber, and quiet. But in a room full of students playing the Face the Future game, there was mostly enthusiasm and excitement. People tend to grow more skeptical as they get older,