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

by Kaitlin Ugolik Phillips

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’s hard to feel comfortable enough to access vulnerability or empathy in the quick-fire world today’s platforms have created.

Americans had become increasingly lonely over the preceding two decades, with nearly a quarter of people saying they had no one in their lives to talk to about important issues.

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.

Platforms like Facebook and Twitter can feel like battlefields where it’s hard for us to convince one another to set down our weapons long enough to understand a different experience or perspective. Opportunities to talk at each other are so common, and the energy to really listen is so limited, that it can feel like we’re spending most of our online time on the defense. Meanwhile, bad news seems worse than ever, and some days it seems like the only way to cope with the sensational headlines and endless tweets and posts about death and destruction around the world is to ignore them. In a world in which we’re each increasingly individualistic while also being constantly tethered digitally to others, everything is presented as extreme and binary.

talking to people online can sometimes open our minds and allow us to give and receive empathy at levels never before possible, and it can also make us angry, resentful, bitter, hostile, and depressed. While some people thrive on finding connection online, for others the digital world is a place of suffering.

people have a particularly hard time talking about issues on which there is no general consensus. Unknowns cause us anxiety, and when we perceive them to be connected to our identity in some way, even talking about them can feel like being threatened. This can be especially true between strangers, who don’t know from the start what the other person’s position—or disposition—might be.

Psychologist Linda Skitka and her colleagues at the University of Illinois at Chicago have come to an additional conclusion about why we have such trouble with conversations about politics and identity: a lot of us see these things as moral values, and those are starkly delineated in our minds. If we think something is either good or bad, moral or immoral, we’re less likely to want to talk to someone who we believe falls on the “bad” or “immoral” side; the issue at hand is not a matter of opinion to us in that case, and we assume the interaction will be unpleasant or unnecessary.

“We used to think you were either empathetic or you weren’t, but the truth is you can increase your empathy, and one of the best and most effective ways is by hearing other people’s perspectives and experiences.”