Caring for America

Today we read an article titled "What, Me Care?" It stated that our nation's current college students are much less empathetic then they were thirty years ago. People have been saying things like that forever: nostalgia. They miss the "good old days" from when they were younger and think that people are just getting worse. Usually there is no statistical evidence to prove their point, but this article contains some legitimate studies. While it seems like some of the studies they cite may be flawed, as a high school student, I see their point.

Both "Today's College Students Lack Empathy" and "Generation Me: Study Finds College Students Lack Empathy" say that social media is to blame. That theory is proven daily at my school. Communicating, and in some sense living, online is putting distance between people. They are willing to say more offensive things when they are not face to face. They don't connect with other people in the same way when they have discussions with people via Facebook rather than in person. And, what I believe is primarily leading to the decline of empathy, they are constantly bombarded with stories, pictures and emotional moments. They see both terrible and beautiful things constantly over both social media and on the news, which now focuses primarily on "sob stories" or the most extreme news they can find. Constantly seeing things that would have moved the previous generation to tears has made those things normal. They see them so often that they no longer have meaning.

This phenomenon has become increasingly obvious in our society. People don't care about each other like they used to; they have a tendency to personalize everything. Their feelings towards others do not compare to their own. It has gone so far that movies have been made on the subject of the decrease in empathy and kindness in American society. Social media and the internet in general and a large part of this problem, and "What, Me Care?" brings up issues that we must be wary of as a society, or it will only get worse.