Not seeing eye-to-eye : social media, disembodied interaction and the erosion of empathy

The field of serious, scholarly analysis of the social, philosophical and personal ramifications of ubiquitous computing is maturing, and the debate between technology producers/technophiles and those less sanguine about the digitalisation of our lives is intensifying. Some unintended, negative consequences of immersive gadget-mediated experience are coming into clearer focus. Among them is the emergence, particularly among the young, of a plethora of ‘iDisorders’ of personality and mood. More specifically, an increase in narcissistic personality traits has been widely discussed, and since narcissism correlates negatively with empathy it is necessary to examine the connections between immersion in social media - or, put differently, the popularity of remote and disembodied forms of communication and social interaction - , the increasing prevalence of narcissistic personality traits and an apparent decline in dispositional empathy. The central issue here is the extent to which the formation and maintenance of the capacity for empathy requires the co-presence of embodied persons in social interaction. A long tradition of philosophical, social-psychological and sociological thinking in this area attests that it does. More recently, neuroscientific research on the Mirror Neuron System has been offering support for these older arguments about embodied intersubjectivity and the importance of face-to-face encounters in the development of the self and social relations. It is argued here, given this, that the new global, digital infrastructure and the widespread dependence on the gadgets that provide access to it are contributing to the erosion of dispositional empathy among the young and, further, that many users are being harmed by a convergence of their own behaviours and interests and the requirements of the new media corporations, which program narcissistic patterns of behaviour into the screen interface and frame the subject positions of young users while financially exploiting their online activity surreptitiously.