My six year old brother wakes up every Saturday morning around 7 am. The first thing he does is turn on the TV to Netflix. He will spend over an hour flipping between his favorite shows. He will then start playing various games on his IPod, and turn on his Leapster. My 3 year old sister will join him in texting each other back and forth; this all occurs before we even wake up. It is sad that a six year old boy does this every single day. While he is not old enough to acknowledge the issue personally, we as adults can. Acknowledging instant gratification over long term benefits, can allow us to begin exploring its meaning in depth. With constant access to distractions and media, the possibilities are endless. Students can study while checking
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To find a compelling demonstration of this issue with a lack of empathy, one would need to look no further than a 2010 report published in ____ where Sarah Konrath and other researchers from the University of Michigan examined on over 13,000 college students between 1979 and 2009, how empathetic concern and perspective taking play a role in their lives. Konrath study became especially significant when one considers her conclusion, “to summarize the present research examined changes in empathy over time based on speculation that related trends and correlates reflect a diminishingly empathetic society.” To put Konrath’s point here in lay man’s terms, when she refers to “dimishingly empathetic society,” what this means is that empathy is decreasing in a shocking amount. For example, many people today would pass a broken down vehicle, versus stopping to make sure everyone was okay. Konrath’s study becomes especially compelling when one considers her conclusions that, “the relationship between personality and culture is dynamic, with societal changes affecting empathy and changes in empathy feeding back into societal beliefs and norms.” In terms of losing emotions because we are not interacting with people, the reason that Konrath’s point in this passage is important is that it shows how our culture is constantly plugged-in and it is making us less empathetic, due to fewer interactions. An example of this would be my sister, she is constantly updating her status on Facebook, texting her friends, and listening to music. She is so absorbed by the technology that she did not realize her goldfish died, until two weeks later. Of course, for the average person, the reason that the studies by Konrath are important within larger context of
To find a compelling demonstration of this issue with a lack of empathy, one would need to look no further than a 2010 report published in ____ where Sarah Konrath and other researchers from the University of Michigan examined on over 13,000 college students between 1979 and 2009, how empathetic concern and perspective taking play a role in their lives. Konrath study became especially significant when one considers her conclusion, “to summarize the present research examined changes in empathy over time based on speculation that related trends and correlates reflect a diminishingly empathetic society.” To put Konrath’s point here in lay man’s terms, when she refers to “dimishingly empathetic society,” what this means is that empathy is decreasing in a shocking amount. For example, many people today would pass a broken down vehicle, versus stopping to make sure everyone was okay. Konrath’s study becomes especially compelling when one considers her conclusions that, “the relationship between personality and culture is dynamic, with societal changes affecting empathy and changes in empathy feeding back into societal beliefs and norms.” In terms of losing emotions because we are not interacting with people, the reason that Konrath’s point in this passage is important is that it shows how our culture is constantly plugged-in and it is making us less empathetic, due to fewer interactions. An example of this would be my sister, she is constantly updating her status on Facebook, texting her friends, and listening to music. She is so absorbed by the technology that she did not realize her goldfish died, until two weeks later. Of course, for the average person, the reason that the studies by Konrath are important within larger context of