Lost in Digital World: A Trolley Misadventure

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It was a foggy day. As usual, I was waiting at the trolley stop to get on the trolley route 36 to go to

school. From a far distance, I saw a trolley was coming towards me. Being busy texting with a friend, I

got on the trolley without hesitating. Afterwards, I continued to immerse in my digital world until twenty

minutes later when my eyes was a little bit sore; I looked around and outside the window. Surprisingly,

nobody but me was still in the trolley and I noticed that the street somehow looked unfamiliar to me.

Although my instinct didn’t feel right, I did not give up keeping my eyes on the screen, surfing facebook

and reading news on the internet. Finally, when I saw a trolley route 34 approaching from the opposite

side, I …show more content…

The misuse of digital technology gradually replaced face-to-face conversations and reduce

people’s capacity for empathy. Empathy has been defined as the understanding of and sharing in

another’s emotional state or context, as well as the behavior of comforting others. Also, empathy is the

ability of getting one self in other’s shoes. In the chapter “The Flight from Conversation”, Turkle

describes a lot of vibrant examples about how electronic communication can ruin their ability to

empathize with each other. Obsessions with digital technology and its communication platform are

sounding like a death knell for human empathy. For examples, friends find ways to proceed

conversations by following the “rule of three” that you’re safe to check your phones when at least three

people have their heads up; so, conversation won’t be fragmented. To take this into consideration, our

electronic devices make us hardly give others our full attention but split attention; the feeling of being

neglect or being put “on pause” by a friend or a capturing phrase: “I’d rather text than talk” are not rare

anymore. Moreover, people type “I’m sorry” and send message instead of practicing their …show more content…

On the other hand, Teddy Wayne and L Mark Carrier opposed to Turkle’s claim about

negative impact of digital technology on human empathy. According to Teddy Wayne’s article “

Found on Facebook: Empathy,” he insist that being on the Internet does not displace face-to-face

time nor reduce real-world empathy. Instead, specific online activity like playing video games

instead has negative effects on empathy. Moreover, empathy can be found online, but in-person

empathy has six times the impact on feelings of social support. As an opponent of Turkle’s point

of view, L Mark Carrier and all of his colleagues used variety of scientific support to conclude

that virtual empathy does exist and relate to feelings of social support and virtual empathy was

positively correlated with real-world empathy, according to Carrier’s journal “Virtual empathy:

Positive and negative impacts of going online upon empathy in young adults”. My own view is

that virtual empathy does exist and connect with real-world empathy. Though I concede that

virtual empathy was positively related to social support, I still maintain that real-world

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