Rob Mondello
English 100
Professor Amy Bolaski
7-21-12
Blog #5 Opinion
For our 5th blog I chose the article " Is the Internet Killing Empathy?" from cnn.com, written by Gary Small and Gigi Vorgan. The article essentially asks the question "Have our brains become so desensitized by a 24/7, all-you-can-eat diet of lurid flickering images that we've lost all perspective on appropriateness and compassion" ? The article gives a great example of a news reporter that almost had a stroke on camera, and the following youtube frenzy that obsessed over the footage. The authors state "In an earlier time we might have been instructed to look away or give the person privacy. No more. We click and click."
I agree with the authors of the article, in the sense over exposure to violence seems to change the way in which we act and react to others. In a "2007 study of 197 students age 17 to 23 years, participants were asked to quickly identify the emotional expression of a face as it rapidly morphed from neutral to an angry or happy face. Happy faces were identified faster than angry faces, but when the volunteers played a violent video game before the facial recognition task, they were much slower to recognize the happy facial expression." The results of this study indicate that empathy goes through a rewiring phase that coincides to what activities we are engaged in.
A useful question we could ask ourselves is, if empathy can be adversely affected by violent media, then could favorable empathetic responses be created by using the opposite means? Perhaps the same power the internet and media exert upon us could be harnessed for good. This seems like a reasonable assumption. What I would like to see is a more positive voyeuristic tendency in internet users. The younger the viewer, the more images seem to affect the ongoing construct of their psyche. If people were naturally drawn more to positive content then they were to negative content, this process could snowball to influence the hordes of developing internet users for the better.
2 comments:
I agree with your opinion. It is crazy and sad how people would actually like to watch someone almost have a stroke. It really feels like people are viewing real life as interesting as a soap opera.
Good opening here: "The article essentially asks the question "Have our brains become so desensitized by a 24/7, all-you-can-eat diet of lurid flickering images that we've lost all perspective on appropriateness and compassion" ? A timely article, to be sure.
You put this well: " The results of this study indicate that empathy goes through a rewiring phase that coincides to what activities we are engaged in."
I like this: " This seems like a reasonable assumption. What I would like to see is a more positive voyeuristic tendency in internet users." Perhaps a bit idealistic but I really like that you're analyzing the logic behind this, and that you're thoughtful about it.
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