Does Social Networking Dumb Down Your Empathy?

If your social network is a group of people you never actually see or hear, are they really a social network? Has the world gone so digital as to feel that a digital connection is as valuable as a traditional connection? Read on to see some information on the results of the era of information on social thinking.

A popular news site from Europe says that social sites like Facebook and Twitter are "infantilising" the human mind. Is that so? Is using a social site likely to make a person childish? Well, claims Lady Greenfield, a professor of synaptic pharmacology at Lincoln college in Oxford, children can be negatively impacted by social sites. She claims that it is possible that the human mind will be beset with short attention spans, making it harder for people in the future to learn. The "get it now" attitude of the internet, where everything is fast and repeatable, may make a generation of individuals that are devoid of real patience.

In a social network, the user is treated as the center of attention. This is hardly the way things are done offline. The user of a social network has their digital social life completely under their control. Again, this is far from the truth of reality. Even people with scads of power are not as in control as they may think. One example that comes to mind is Rupert Murdoch, exposed for breaking privacy rules that he himself would never have put up with. The idea of getting a palpable and immediate reward by accessing a social network or just the internet in general is a break with the reality of the offline world. We live in the offline world. Our fantasy of "get it now" tries to continue in the offline world, but those who are most in tune with reality know this is not a realistic endeavor. To eat, to have a place to live, to have a successful family, to have a healthy social life all take face to face encounters that a computer screen will probably not be able to deliver.

Empathy could very well be affected in the future if a generation makes the mistake of trying to make the "all in control" social network their offline reality. Online you can say what you want and so far, there is little recourse in most countries for the person on the receiving end. If they do not know where you are or your real name, accountability becomes a murky, avoidable edict. There is no way to keep people from lying, either offline or online, but it is much easier to do online. Social networks are being credited with a lack of empathy in society precisely because there is not a "face" tied to the person on the other end of the connection. Of course, Facebook is named "Facebook" and encourages people to upload a picture of their face so that this problem can be addressed.

Empathy is defined as a deep emotional understanding of another persons problems or feelings. Understanding the mental processes of others require that we have them ourselves. It is a human link from one life to another. Being able to identify or assume identity with another human is done with the right front part of the brain called the inferior medial prefrontal region. Studies have shown that people with damage to this part of the brain do not "get it" where empathetic circumstances are concerned. Interesting studies show that people with a big brain also have larger social networks on sites like Facebook.

Humans are social beings. When a human is confronted with a social setup or website that is based on trust, such as Twitter, Google+ and Facebook, they do their best to act the same online as offline. The ingredient in the human brain that causes a person to be more trustful and empathetic is oxytocin, a neuropeptide. Women have 30 percent more of this ingredient in the brain than men. The oxytocin is the social glue that enables the empathy and controls the trust from one human to another. Social networking sites, like regular offline living, start this oxytocin to be released in the brain. It is called the "hormone of love" because it is involved in the bonding of husband and wife and mother and child. How many of those "introduction" sites are there online? The oxytocin is really flowing on sites like those. Getting that flowing in the offline realm is of course a needed paradigm. Does social networking dumb down your empathy? No, but the end result is that it seems like it. In reality, the web does not change anything about the humanness of people. It just makes things happen faster. Moderation in usage is critical here.