Editor’s Note: This opinion piece discusses cyberbullying and harmful online language.
As I scroll on social media, I do not realize I am losing my empathy. Instead, it slowly slips away, and I find myself much more likely to complain about how annoying I found someone’s video or post. To make matters worse, the post in question often isn’t even controversial—it’s just about someone else’s life.
We see examples of this decrease in empathy when we consider the prevalent and often casual use of abbreviations like “KYS,” which unfortunately stands for “kill yourself.” This jargon did not exist until the early 2000s when it was first used in internet chatrooms and posts, according to Dictionary.com.
As social media grew in popularity, so too did the sharing of unfiltered, insensitive words and ideas, spawning a lack of overall empathy.
According to the Pew Research Center, 59% of teenagers have experienced cyberbullying, which they consider to be offensive name-calling, physical threats or spreading false rumors.
I have seen this statistic in real life, with some of my friends being told “KYS” under their posts. I wonder, would the commenter think twice before telling my friends to kill themselves if they saw them face-to-face?
“It’s a lot easier on social media to make really mean comments because you’re not getting direct feedback. You’re behind anonymity sometimes,” said Anna Guerin, director of Counseling and Psychological Services at California Lutheran University.
While I have never gone as far as to say anything that might directly incite harm to another person, I have found myself in situations where I’ve lacked empathy. I find myself being less empathetic toward a post where someone is complaining about food if I saw a post with explicit violence before it.
Guerin said that seeing violent videos constantly can cause a person to start to feel less empathetic as a defense mechanism. She said lessened empathy could be caused by a mental burnout from seeing many violent things on a daily basis.
The Youth Endowment Fund found that 70% of teenage children had encountered real-life violence on social media platforms in 2024. The majority of their exposure to the content had been accidental, with the same survey reporting only 6% had searched for violent content.
You may wonder why less empathy matters. It can be easy to disconnect what happens in the real world from the online sphere. It is important to remember, however, that what is said online does have very real consequences.
In 2023, ResumeBuilder.com surveyed 1,013 employees capable of making hiring decisions. The survey found that seven out of 10 of the people surveyed admitted to spying on applicants’ social media before hiring them.
“It’s just something that people need to be cognizant about is that if you are putting something online, it is online. It’ll be online forever, no matter what, if you delete it or what,” said Kaj Overlie, a political science student at Cal Lutheran.
I should also acknowledge that social media is not some overall evil force. It does have its benefits.
The Pew Research Center says that 80% of teens reported social media helped them feel more connected to their friends’ lives. Another 71% of teens reported that social media was a good creative outlet for them.
I do agree that social media has helped me positively, as I frequently use it as a creative outlet. However, I believe it would be terrible to ignore its negative effects on empathy. If people do not strive to feel more empathetic toward others online, it could slowly harm how they treat others in real life.
“For people that feel called to make those maybe mean or nasty or harassing comments and it’s not usually within their nature, like pausing to really think, okay, would I say this to this person’s face if they’re standing in front of me?” Guerin said.
In the end, it’s clear social media has harmed everyone’s ability to empathize. Despite this, there is hope—if people pause to assess what they’re typing, then there would be less harm.
