Ukraine. Palestine. Afghanistan. We know the wars; we see the trauma. But do we truly empathise from the other side of a screen, or has trauma turned into white noise?

Our smartphones facilitate intense engagement with global news; in fact, there’s a word to describe this magnetic pull: doomscrolling, whereby we relentlessly scroll from one news item to the next. When we are bombarded by so much news all the time, it’s only natural to feel disconnected from what we see on screen.

How to cultivate empathy in the face of the false sense of connection that comes with our digital devices is the subject of research by Professor Jenni Lauwrens of the School of the Arts: Visual Arts at the University of Pretoria (UP).

“We believe that our devices boost our efficiency and expand our knowledge,” she says. “We also assume that having an internet connection deepens our ‘connection’ with others. But what is the nature of this so-called ‘connection’ in the digital realm?” 

She asks the following questions: Are we able to have deep, meaningful connections online? Or are such connections superficial and meaningless? In short, can digital communication technologies enable empathetic connections with others, both known and unknown?

What is empathy?

“First applied in the field of art, empathy denotes the experience of ‘feeling into’ an aesthetic object (like a photograph or a painting),” Prof Lauwrens explains. “In psychology, empathy means to ‘feel with’ another person. When we empathise with someone, we come to understand their inner life and emotions. Images, both static and moving, can thus cultivate our capacity for empathising with others.”

Unfortunately, our capacity to empathise with those depicted in images and on-screen can easily be manipulated and compromised. In her book Regarding the Pain of Others, cultural critic Susan Sontag contemplated how repeated exposure to photographs of people suffering and in pain can reduce people’s emotional and empathic responses. She concluded that “compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers”.

South African-born artist Candice Breitz also comments on how our empathy for others is manipulated by the screen-based technologies through which we increasingly live our lives. In an intriguing installation titled Love Story, which was exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 2017, Breitz exposes people’s tendency to be more interested in looking at (and listening to) the familiar faces of celebrities than in the plight of unfamiliar, nameless people describing their traumatic experiences of migration and displacement.

“Owing to the ubiquity of digital devices in our lives, we have become overexposed to news stories that represent various people experiencing turmoil across the world,” Prof Lauwrens says. “The screen, which connects us to the plight of those who are suffering, also manipulates us into disconnecting from them. Through constant (doom)scrolling, we never reach the end or any real depth, and we hardly pay attention to the images before us. It is the scrolling that brings satisfaction and not a deeper knowledge of the content. Thus, repeated exposure to images of suffering on our smartphones has a numbing effect rather than increasing connection and empathy.”

Sociologist and media theorist Sherry Turkle has argued that digital devices have led us to a “crisis of empathy”. When we operate in a state of constant distraction, we neglect to ask deeper questions about a given situation. However, if we recognise how our digital tools manipulate us, it is possible to avoid the path of mindlessly interacting with them.

“Taking responsibility for our ‘connection’ with our digital devices can lead to deep, meaningful connections and ensure that our empathy for others does not wither and die,” Prof Lauwrens says.