Categories: Articles

Digital Empathy

When I drive home from the office, I pass an elementary school and there are always shenanigans taking place.

I worry that my children are going to face bullies. They will. We all do. Regardless of the mass media attention that this has received in the past few years. Regardless of how many young lives we have lost or that still remain ruined. People often point to social media as an aggravator of the situation. A friend of mine put it best: "social media is the best thing in the world, unless you have teenage kids… then, it’s the worst thing in the world." Yep.

What happened?

When we first got computers there was not much human interaction. In the early days of modems and BBS, it was still hard to be anonymous, plus we truly wanted to connect with others who were like us. It was a small village. The Internet changed that. Social Media completely changed everything again. We believed that social media was all about this notion of a "conversation." In both of my business books (Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete), I write about why I love this kind of technology: it’s about real interactions between real human beings. The truth is, that it’s more about artificial interactions between human beings who are hiding behind technology. If we ever want to move things forward, we’ll need this technology to make us feel empathy within these interactions. It’s not dramatic. It’s a fact. So long as you can type something about something or someone and not have to look them in the eyes, this will never truly be "real." You may have seen the following clip of Louis C.K. being interviewed by Conan O’Brien about why he hates smartphones. It’s funny (so it’s worth it just for the laughs), but Louis touches on something very real and troublesome about the interconnected of our technology, and the vacuum that exists between humans when the vast majority of communication doesn’t require looking into someone’s eyes and feeling their reactions… that’s real empathy.

We need some digital empathy.

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.