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College Students and Empathy: Can Social Media Create a Bystander Effect That Can Inhibit One’s Compassion?

June 2, 2010 in Technology-Social Media, Therapy-Psychology with 9 Comments

Compassion on the Decline Among College Students

A new study finds that today’s college students are not as empathetic as college students of the 1980s and ’90s.

University of Michigan researchers analyzed data on empathy collected from almost 14,000 college students over the last 30 years.

“We found the biggest drop in empathy after the year 2000,” said Sara Konrath, a researcher at the U-M Institute for Social Research.

“College kids today are about 40 percent lower in empathy than their counterparts of 20 or 30 years ago, as measured by standard tests of this personality trait.”

If the data in this research is accurate enough to extrapolate across college students in general, then I consider myself really blessed to have served alongside some of the most compassionate people during my seven years on staff as the college pastor at Bel Air Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles. So in my own experience this research doesn’t match my reality, but then again I was serving as a college pastor where students were striving to serve God and to serve others in a myriad of ways.

In this 30 year study, researchers have hypothesized several reasons why they think college students in the last 10 years are less compassionate, and less able to empathize, than those students in previous decades.

“The increase in exposure to media during this time period could be one factor,” Konrath said.
The recent rise of social media may also play a role in the drop in empathy, suggests O’Brien. “The ease of having ‘friends’ online might make people more likely to just tune out when they don’t feel like responding to others’ problems, a behavior that could carry over offline,” he said.“
College students today may be so busy worrying about themselves and their own issues that they don’t have time to spend empathizing with others, or at least perceive such time to be limited,” O’Brien said.“College students today may be so busy worrying about themselves and their own issues that they don’t have time to spend empathizing with others, or at least perceive such time to be limited,” O’Brien said.

One of the questions that I asked in the recent post, Technology: Connected, Yet Lonelier Than Ever, was:

I wonder if technology and social media has compressed our relationships into a process that we can barely recognize?

So on the one hand, there is something cool and convenient with clicking a button online that brings us into contact with a person. But on the other hand, the ease and convenience has disconnected us from the process of relationship making.

Has all the technology relationally disconnected us in a sense, replacing the processes (befriending, getting to know each other, sharing life, etc), where instead we just value the end results (number of followers, blog traffic, etc.)

Can social media allows us to keep others at an arm’s length from one another? This can definitely happen in real life as well, but I wonder if social media can exacerbate the bystander effect when it comes to empathizing with others and being compassionately involved? (For a look at some of the more infamous examples of this effect, check out 10 Notorious Cases of the Bystander Effect.

Of course, I could now show you all the wonderful examples of where people have used social media as a means to demonstrate compassion to others. Think of the earthquake in Haiti. The floods in Nashville. The protests in Iran. Etc. Etc.

I guess the question for researchers (and for us) is, are we able to move beyond showing our compassion to others through a click of the button (though there is nothing wrong with that and I hope people keep doing that), and move into situations that may demand more of us than clicking buttons and counting followers?

Maybe this is why each of us plays a various role in the body of Christ? When the body of Christ is working together harmoniously (some online getting involved, others ‘on the ground’ in person involved, others sending money and resources, etc.) it is an unstoppable force.

Text Messaging & the Church’s Need to Re-Evaluate Effective Means of Communication

December 12, 2008 in Ministry-Theology with 5 Comments

Text Messaging: Best Way to Communicate?
I came across the article Gmail Preferred By Students, But Nothing Beats Texting, this morning via Twitter (HT: Terry Storch & Matt Knisely).

Lots of interesting things in this article but a couple stood out to me in particular.

The article begins:

Today’s high-school and college students got their first email account at an average age of 13. Most students have had one of their email addresses for 8 years and have an average of about 2.4 addresses each. But if you really want to reach these students, you should forget email. Send a text message instead.

And ends:

In the end, the survey finds that students do use email – perhaps even more than we realized – but if you really want to reach them, you should do it via text or IM. For marketers, this means that the easy method of sending out newsletters and coupons to mass email lists may become a thing of the past – only 16% of students read marketing email. Companies will have to come up with new ways to to advertise to this demographic. May we suggest social media?

Why is this interesting to me? Because I have long wondered, especially as it relates to ministry if we are communicating, or trying to communicate to an audience in a non-effective mean, or in a way that is less effective in not only communicating the gospel, but just basic information such as times, dates, events, details, etc.?

Looking Back
In June I posted this short blog, Classic: Email and the Phone are Slow and Backward. The article, Big Blue Embraces Social Media was about how IBM was adapting to social networking and new avenues of communication, especially among its younger and newer employees. They said,

Adapting these tools, according to IBM, is also important for recruiting. Hotshots coming out of universities are accustomed to working across these new networks—and are likely to look at a company that still relies on the standard ’90s fare of e-mail and the phone as slow and backward.

My entire post was:

I still use email and the phone, but I understand what they are saying. 9 out of 10 communications with my college students was via text messaging and Facebook.

And at least 5 out of 10 of my communications with staff was via text, Twitter and Facebook as well.

I know some churches have done away with work email and are now communicating and collaborating on inter-office wikis.

What is your pervasive form of communication with friends, family and co-workers?

Looking Forward
As I think about that post from June, it’s become more increasingly clear the need to re-evaluate how I communicate, and the tools that I use.

I have the 1,500 a month text plan…and I pretty much use all of them. In fact, my wife and I are looking to get an unlimited text messaging family plan. That being said, that should be an indicator of the importance of text messaging in my context (former college pastor, social media/ministry author, social circle of many 22-35 year olds). You may be in a different context, and text messaging is not that primary.

That means on average I sent out 50 texts, or Twitters a day. That’s low compared to some of my friends, and high compared to others. But it has become the primary means of much communication.

Why? Because I think it’s short, concise, and to the point. That’s why Twitter is gaining popularity and more businesses, churches and organizations are getting on Yammer. In a busy world people are looking for more effective and efficient means of communication. When text does not suffice, then email or phone is better. Obviously, being in the presence of the person and talking in person is the best.

But in a busy world, we can’t always meet face to face, and we always can’t get on a long phone conversation….and we don’t have time to look through hundreds of emails a day.

I think that’s one reason text messaging is so popular. I also think it’s fun.

All that being said, it’s important for us as people to think more critically about what is not only the most effective and efficient means of communication, but in what ways can we maintain our humanity in a tech driven world that aims for shorter and shorter discourse and sound bites? How does this effect/alter our opportunities to communicate the Gospel in this context?

Have you evaluated your context? What forms of communication is the most effective? Why?