Re: Today's College Students Lack Empathy
I have several thoughts on this.
1) In the last 6 years, our governor has forced legislation that requires every high school student to do 100 hours of volunteer work in order to graduate from high school. This was supposed to make students more empathic and care about the world around them more. Undergraduates are also forced to do about 100 hours of community service to graduate college. I am not sure if this is a nationwide thing or not. All this started after 2000. I thought it was a bad idea from the start and now, I have evidence that it's not working
I didn't think it would work and it didn't. People are actually less empathic than before all this forced volunteer work.
2) I think one poster on Yahoo news had it right. Kids do need to spend more time with their parents. I see so many kids here being raised by sitters and services. In some ways, they are the lucky ones, because I see just as many kids raising themselves. I am not talking 12+ year olds. I am talking 4+ who have no one at home most of the time. These kids who are left alone the majority of the time are the meanest ones of all. There are several of these types in my complex. I let my kids play with them once and only once, because they immediately started bullying and name calling my kids because I was there. My kids came home angry and crying. You would think these "latch key" grade schoolers would come from very poor single parent homes, but they don't. Half the time, the parents really are home, they've just kicked the kids out of the house for the day for the neighborhood to deal with them.
I also have seen the drastic improvements in kids when their parents start taking an interest in them.
3) I am not sure the media and video games are to blame. I grew up during the Vietnam War and everyday all day the tv was covered with people getting their heads blown off and all sorts of terrible things. There has always been terrible violence on the news.
4) I think social media may be playing a role in this problem -especially Facebook and Twitter type social media. For one thing, a person can't really share their problems in safety. For another, if one person says something mean, others seem less like to speak up than they would in person. I have noticed a big difference between how "grown ups" treat each other on FB and how younger people do. For example, if someone over 30 were to say, "I lost my job today." How would you respond? Probably say you were sorry to hear that. Maybe offer a lead on a job. You probably won't call a person names or make fun of them for loosing their job and certainly wouldn't say "Like I care you lost your f***ing job." But younger people do.
On the computer, people just say things they would never say in person. I think it's because there's no accountability. If you said "I hate cats. I"m glad your cat got hit by a car" in person, there would be consequences. For one thing, you would not have to worry about the cat lover ever "wasting" your time talking about her cat or anything else in the future, because she would probably not be your friend anymore and you would miss the her space in your life. But if all your friends are online and you don't really care about them, plus there's so many others out there, then what are the feelings of one person?
At any rate, I think we really need to work on this empathy thing as a nation, because it seems like a serious flaw. Also, who wants to live in a place where nobody cares about anybody else?
