A Study of Empathy-Sympathy among Digital Natives in Contemporary Network Society

Humans are at core social beings whose survival depends on interactions with others. The powerful communication depends on one's body language, tone and mirror neurons, which are no doubt conspicuously missing during digital interaction. Such electronic interactions don't carry the same emotional weight as a face to face tangible interaction. The most adverse effect of digital revolution can be seen on teenager's "Empathy Map", whose level of empathy is dropping at fast pace since last two decades. They are being converted from human teens to cyber teens. With this changing scenario, the present study is an attempt to explore the levels of empathy, sympathy and internet usage among teenagers and further to find out the relation of empathy and sympathy with internet usage. A purposive sample of 60 teenagers both male and female aged 13-18 years old from various school of Rohtak city, Haryana (India) was drawn. Their empathy and sympathy were measured by using Vossen et al. test of Adolescent Measure of Empathy and Sympathy and internet usage was assessed by Young's Internet Addiction test. Descriptive and correlational statistics were computed to find out the levels of empathy sympathy and internet usage and the correlation of empathy- sympathy with internet usage respectively. The results have been discussed in detail in the research paper.