The Importance Of Empathy In Social Media

Empathy’s emotional nature tempts us to pass it off as a fixed concept. Just as emotions tend to elicit a consistent response, such as tears in response to sorrow, we often categorize empathy as having particular unwavering benefits and downfalls. Empathy’s benefits lie in its connective abilities, but its short duration is often its undoing. Yet the history of humanitarianism implies that empathy is not as steadfast as its stereotype. In early Western history, pain was seen as “a pathway to spiritual enlightenment,” thus inciting little empathy from its witnesses (Hutchinson). Then, upon the emergence of modern medicine, pain became an option rather than a requirement of life, and thus the culture that had once responded to pain with apathy began to show empathy (Hutchinson). Societal expectations clearly mitigate empathetic responses to some extent, which means changing these expectations could revitalize modern humanitarian efforts. Of course, the transformation that Hutchinson refers to took place over

The ice bucket challenge of 2014, on the other hand, managed to progress empathy one step further. As a fundraiser for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and the act of ‘passing it on’ by tagging someone after completing the challenge led the challenge to extend across an entire summer (The ALS Association). Several months of donations, in contrast with the Syrian cause’s much briefer donation spike, led to millions of dollars in donations to ALS (The ALS Association). However, in this case, many participants dropped “ALS” from their video titles and neglected to donate. The ice bucket challenge thus succeeded in extending the duration of its donations, but failed to propagate the empathetic element of its