So this is what it looks like when observers and pundits kneejerk all over a new study, seemingly at random singling out [insert latest bête noire du jour of your choice -- in this case: social digital media/technology] for blame. What am I talking about? The recent University of Michigan study which has concluded that today’s college students are 40% less empathetic than their ’80s and ’90s counterparts. First of all, and I do have to say it appears to be fairly rigorous, employing a timeline of 30 years as well as a decent sample of almost 14,000 students, but regardless, I feel obliged to add that I’m always fairly suspicious of anything that parallels the conclusion of that old chestnut tenuously attributed by Plato to Socrates:

What is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders, they disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them?

In other words, every so often somebody (almost exclusively a member of a previous generation) decides that those young folk just aren’t bringing the goods any more, and in fact may well be morally reprobate to boot. Funny, isn’t it, how civilization has managed to limp along for well over two millennia since then?

But over and above those misgivings, the ease with which the authors’ speculations on causal factors leap so quickly to blaming social networking and texting –

technologies that allow people to tune others out when they don’t feel like engaging [...] physically distant online environments [that] functionally create a buffer between individuals, which makes it easier to ignore others’ pain, or even at times, inflict pain upon others

– feels premature and unfair. Granted, they also speculate about reality television and changing parenting styles and (sigh) violent video games, but that’s all it is; speculation, however interesting a launchpad for future studies such theorising may be.

For me, it’s just as easy to surmise that the rise of the internet has broadened peoples’ circles of empathy via exposing them to a wider swath of humanity, and that, in order to distort these findings to the degree they have been distorted, something far more nefarious must be going on… such as the increasing emergence of right wing political ideologies which promote the individual over the common good, say.

My point is, we can all play the blame game, but I think it’s fairly irresponsible to point random, unsupported fingers, even if our initial data is good. Correlation is not causation, in other words. Or even better: intuition alone is not science.

I mean, my own anecdotal experience of young people is that, increasingly, they possess a well-developed sense of irony and are very much inclined to mock any displays of earnest sincerity, even when answering test questions (or especially when answering test questions like these — take a look, and do the test if you like). Part of this is an instinctive recoil, on their part, from the self-aggrandizing nature of the Baby Boomers, alongside a corresponding desire to not be seen as a “hippie”. Quite simply, it’s a front, and one not qualitatively different from the pop cultural hip-hop braggadocio/swagger which also happens (not coincidentally?) to get their Boomer elders all a-twitter (pun not intended, although I could pretend it was and reap dubious kudos).

Anyway, point is, this is not the same thing as lacking in empathy, even if it appears to be. Overall, young people demonstrate, if anything, more empathy and kindness and gentleness than previous generations, although to stave off accusations of hypocrisy, I will completely own the subjectivity of that particular generalisation, and leave it there.