Feeling bad for others (or not): Media ushers in the downfall of civilization (maybe)

Science says: We are bigger assholes than our parents.

A few months ago, my roommate and I were sitting on the floor playing “Go.” This is a game I have yet to fully grasp and usually lose miserably at, yet I still somehow enjoy it. We had been discussing personality quirks and the subject of empathy arose. He told me of a memory watching an older man fall. “If someone falls, it physically hurts me to watch it,” he said. “It really bothered me.”

That conversation came to mind after reading an article on nytimes.com called “From Students, Less Kindness for Strangers?” because it is in direct contrast to the result of the study, though I think my roommate is not that representative of the majority of people probably polled (which is good). With that caveat aside, a study of Gen Y-ers by “Sara Konrath, a researcher at the University of Michigan, found that college students today are 40 percent less empathetic than those of 30 years ago, with the numbers plunging primarily after 2000.”

The article goes on to account for some possibilities for the bad behavior, including: “a millennial mixture of video games, social media, reality TV and hyper-competition have left young people self-involved, shallow and unfettered in their individualism and ambition.”

I never thought that the reasons listed (texting, facebook, Bravo) actually led to anything more than a mere distraction. It seems that now it has re-wired our nervous systems. I agree that it makes sense to focus on media – it’s fun and pervasive, making it a natural choice. We are obsessed with ourselves to the point of saturation (look at me, jenniferfinan.com, I mean comon…).  I will maintain that I am not a dick, but some of you definitely are.

Maybe that dip in character can be attributed to those of us who are bored with the access we all have to … well, everything. Information is so easily had and under normal circumstances, I think most people need challenging environments to stay interested. That’s how biology works, right?

Our evolving technological lives are pretty challenging (to keep abreast of) though the purpose of new tech/gadgets is supposedly to organize and connect our “crazy” lives. It’s an interesting contradiction to me, at least. Over-complicating through the guise of simplicity.

This paradox I can attribute it to going to any large supermarket and the paralyzing effect of too many choices. It is a dizzying and daunting endeavor to find tomato sauce when you have a veritable wall of choices, all marketed to appeal to some aspect of your personality. Invariably, I grab something on sale and try to shake off the regret at not splurging for the $12 organic vodka sauce by complimenting my thriftiness instead. Sometimes I just straight up foolishly buy expensive stuff and find some way to rationalize it but damnnit, I have made a choice! It’s a relief either way.

Of course, this choice is made with real implications: I am going to ingest this sauce. It is going inside of me. So it’s a vaguely important or at least a necessary decision. In contrast, when I browse the App Store on my iPhone, at worst I experience a fleeting sense of disappointment when the novelty wears off. This choice doesn’t matter too much, but its a common enough occurrence to make a careless choice –  YouTube benders, pirating music and movies, things that don’t matter but it takes up a lot of my time. Time when I just as easily could be making decisions that have an actual impact on some part of my real life.

My point: There’s a disposable lack-o’-responsibility with media – we can cast our net far and wide without any real consequence. Much different than real life but both aspects are so directly intertwined that perhaps the mindlessness has bled into the other half of our analog lives, making us bigger assholes than those less technologically-tied.

Here’s the actual question: Are the media choices we have so vast and disconnected from our actual reality that we incorporate arbitrary, undiscerning behavior into our really real lives, therefore abandoning our pre-2K social mores?

…….i dunno……

So getting back to my game of “Go.” I wondered how often had I seen someone wipe out and feel an inadvertent smile form. Did my iPhone contribute to this blatant assholery or have I been nurturing terrible qualities since Nintendo?

Maybe a bit of both.

Posted on Tuesday, July 6th, 2010 at 12:39 pm. Filed under: blog Tags: empathy, Go, internet, media, NYT, probably embarrassing myself, the kids RSS 2.0 feed.