Comments about ‘Teens feel Facebook and Twitter enhance empathy for others’

I can see what the article is saying. But I have to disagree. Facebook is mind numbing and makes you feel more apathetic towards people around you. When you hear people's every little problem and doings via status updates, it tends to be bothersome to most. Facebook may make you more aware of things that are going on around you, but it has disconnected many people from traditional relationships. Facebook is a huge game. A game to try and portray that you are a certain way. A game of trying to get compliments or affirmation. A game of trying to act like you don't care, because not caring is the cool things to do now days.

Also, I do think the article title would read better if it said it enhanced 'sympathy' for others. Empathy implies that we have experienced a similar situation, which is usually not the case.

This article should be renamed, "Teens more likely to be addicted to Facebook and Twitter."

So many teens (and even adults) are so involved in Facebook and Twitter that they forgo the ability and awareness to empathisize with the very people they are with.

Agree in large part with UtahUte and ouisc.

How do websites or social media that diminish true interpersonal communication help enhance empathy? They may let us know quickly what is happening all over the world, but we earn to empathize by being connected personally with real humans, not by endlessly tweeting or blogging out into cyberspace, commenting on other peopleâs blogs how sorry we are about their challenges.

Itâs great that young people are using social media to get involved in things like 30 Hour Famine, and they are to be thanked and commended. But how well do these media really help them connect and serve in their everyday lives?

Who has not seen someone walking along with head down, engrossed in the world delineated by their screen and earphones, and not see the flesh-and-blood person they are about to run into? Or tried to carry on a real live conversation with someone who is paying closer attention to their texting or tweeting than to the people in the same room with them? Some such people act as if no one else exists, let alone needs a helpful or thoughtful deed.

Who does not know a young (or not so young) person who is totally fluent in everything virtual and gladly joins "service projects" that someone else organizes, but in real life sits and watches everyone else pull the weeds or move the furniture; or walks past someone struggling with a bulky load; or sits on the bus while the elderly or disabled stand?

Empathy is about feeding the famine-stricken on distant continents, but itâs also about recognizing mundane everyday needs in our own front yard. We donât see those with our eyes glued to a flickering screen in the palm of our hand.