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

by Kaitlin Ugolik Phillips

compassion is feeling for someone; empathy is feeling with them.

The people who scored higher in empathy also scored much higher in reading body language, conflict-resolution skills, resilience, and standing by their values. “If there is one emotional intelligence skill that we would recommend developing, it’s definitely empathy,”

This reaction tends to be less common with tragedies that affect larger groups of people, a phenomenon sometimes called the “collapse of compassion.” Experts think this happens because we automatically regulate our emotional reactions when we expect them to be overwhelming.

even though they were constantly sending messages back and forth, none of these kids seemed to know how to talk to one another. Technically they were communicating all the time—they just weren’t really saying anything. Whether it was through Musical.ly, the photo-and-video-sharing app Snapchat, or text messages, they were in constant communication. But Stumbras observed that they cared less about what was said than about how many times they said it. Tools like the “streak” feature in Snapchat prioritize quantity over quality, making a game out of keeping a back-and-forth of messages going as long as possible. Not only is this annoying in the classroom, but Stumbras worries that it causes social skills to atrophy.

According to the nonprofit Common Sense Media, kids under the age of eight spend about two hours on screens every day, which is not a huge increase from previous years. What has changed is how they experience screens—forty-eight minutes of those two hours are reported to be on mobile devices, which is three times more than in 2013. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that the screen time (mostly mobile) grows exponentially as kids do. Children aged eight to ten spend an average of six hours a day in front of a screen, while those eleven to fourteen spend about nine hours in front of a screen every day.

The average adult spends about ten hours a day “consuming media,” most of the time via screens, according to Nielsen. Thanks to Apple’s Screen Time feature, I know that I spend an average of four hours per day looking at my phone alone; add to that eight or so hours of screen staring at work and one or two of TV time in the evenings, and I’m well above average for an adult, and even for a millennial (my generation actually looks at our phones less than those aged thirty-five to forty-nine).

In 2015, researchers in Canada surveyed more than seven hundred fifty students in grades seven through twelve and found that those who used social-networking sites more than two hours a day also self-rated their mental health as poor and had higher levels of psychological distress and suicidal ideation than those who used it less. Rather than conclude that social media was the cause of mental illness, these researchers argued that young people with poor mental health might be using social media more as a coping mechanism.

People like this are often called “trolls.” Some of them have one goal: to derail a conversation and turn the attention on themselves. They will start off civil, then purposely change their rules with every response from their target, and they feel they’ve won if the other person seems angry or upset or shows any emotion.

The problem exists among those with good intentions too. Without tone of voice, facial expressions, or any real accountability for what we say, even those of us with the best intentions can have a hard time remembering the humanity of the people on the other side of the keyboard. The former classmate I sparred with on Facebook about police brutality had something real to say to me, but it was clear by the way he presented it that he didn’t even want a debate—he simply wanted to pour out his words, screw on the top, and throw the bottle away. That probably felt good for a few minutes. But I know from experience that that feeling likely didn’t last. I’ve won my share of online battles too, and I even saw that conversation as won for a while when he didn’t answer. In the trenches of social media, it can feel good in the moment to have pelted your opponent into submission with long, eloquent comments and carefully researched links. But whenever I’ve had this experience, I’ve always felt tired, anxious, embarrassed, and still upset about the thing I’d posted about in the first place. I’ve never changed anyone’s mind or convinced them to see things my way in these gamified conversations. I never furthered any cause or helped myself come to peace with awful things in the world. I just raised my blood pressure, lost a few friends, and pissed off some family members.