A decline in empathy in our smartphone world

INDIANAPOLIS—Sure, we can board an airplane using our smartphone, or find our way around a new city with a map app. We have tons of information at our fingertips. But research by Sara Konrath suggests that as we live in this well-connected world full of sophisticated communication devices we are losing our ability to walk in other people’s shoes.

Konrath’s research at the Indiana University School of Philanthropy doesn’t necessarily place all the blame on technology or social media. Her findings say the problem may be busyness and frantic lifestyles. Or family breakdown. Or more children growing up with no sisters or brothers. Or loss of neighborhood connections. Or all of the above.

But the trend Konrath is tracking has a potentially dire social consequence: If everyone keeps becoming more narcissistic, we will perish as a civilization.

“This is the empathy paradox,” she notes. “As we are becoming more interdependent in a global sense we are becoming less interdependent within our individual lives.”

Face-to-face communication, for example, strengthens empathy in a way social media usually misses. Going anonymous adds to the problem. Keep victims at a distance, research suggests, and aggressors don’t mind turning up the pain.

Yet Konrath’s work is not all doom and gloom, and she doesn’t believe that all technology leads to bad habits. For example, she’s looking for remedies, including the development of a smartphone app (the Random App of Kindness) designed to help teens build empathy.

But Konrath offers an even simpler discipline to boost empathy: volunteering. Her research verifies the common sense instinct that serving others can build empathy. It could involve tutoring students who face various challenges, or serving food to the homeless at a rescue mission.

Coming to the philanthropy school in Indianapolis from the University of Michigan, Konrath traces her interest in empathy research to her family’s background in Canada. As one of eight children, Konrath watched her mother struggle as a single parent. But then a very dedicated volunteer named Ruth Zehr stepped into their life and filled many gaps with practical service and love. “Ruth would invite us to church, but she didn’t preach to us,” Konrath recalls. “She just lived out her faith before us.”

Konrath does not quote chapter and verse of Scripture in her research, but it’s wonderful when scriptural principles find a way to work out with some blessing even when someone isn’t consciously applying the Bible. Empathy, for example, correlates with fruits of the spirit such as love and kindness. And Proverbs suggests a kind of empathy as beneficial: “Gracious words are like a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and health to the body” (Proverbs 16:24, ESV). Konrath’s emphasis on volunteering also goes hand-in-hand with biblical commands to serve others.

So let’s heed the warnings of Sara Konrath’s research and realize that our smartphones may not always be the best way to love our neighbors as ourselves.