The [in]human factor - empathy lost

Trolling, virtue signalling and doxing. These recently growing behaviours are a consequence of more and more generations living their most expressive and intimate lives on social networks, and far from enabling freedom of expression this is causing whole groups to lose the ability to empathise with those who do not conform to their particular viewpoint. This seed, if left unchecked could grow into an overpowering tangle of insularity and cost us all more than just “likes”.

“People never speak to one another anymore”. While not entirely accurate it is a trend that has become ever more common as the technology available is introduced to newer generations at constantly earlier ages - that “2.5 year old using an iPad” is now 12.5 years old.

With technological innovation and dissemination it has become increasingly easier to organise certain interactions into their own boxes; many friends and even families have moved their regular communication from verbal to virtual, with family WhatsApp groups taking the place of the weekly family phone call, discussing “the game” with friends moving to reactions and “stories” on Instagram and debating political and moral subjects from conversations in the pub or at the dinner table to diatribes on Facebook or vitriolic outbursts on Twitter.

These behaviours, especially within the millennial generation have become more and more extreme, and with tribal alliances that will not tolerate anything that looks for middle ground, there is no longer reasoned debate amongst groups, there is taking sides and trying to shame the other for not seeing reason.

This is all a lot easier from behind a keyboard, where the consequences of actions have no real impact [at least for those self-proclaiming the moral high-ground] and without having to interact with a real person, to justify the words or point of view that they may adhere to, this holding to account of the individual is lost. As is the empathy of interacting with another human being, when all there is to go off is a username and an avatar, writing words that aren’t aligned with a particular view it seems all too easy to dehumanise the individual and lump them in with the rest of the “insert current condemned group here”.

The issue is that the more this continues, the more disengaged with actual society groups will become. Then what happens when this generation beings to make decisions on the use of technology?

Take the morally complicated subject of “robot carers” - something that has proven benefits for the elderly, but with the huge caveat that this care giving is in no way able to replace or replicate the interaction with a real person, relative or otherwise - if the decisions on the use of these machines was put in the hands of those who haven’t even learnt how to empathise with their own generation, let alone the generation who - as we are being constantly bombarded by social media - “ruined the earth”, “stole their futures” and are “behind the times”, it could be a quick decision that doesn’t consider the intricacies of the human factor.

In a world where we spend most of our time looking at screens, perhaps humanity needs us to make more effort to interact in “real life” as well as online.