Empathy in the 21st Century

In the article by Jean Decety entitled, Putting together phylogenetic and ontogenetic perspectives

on empathy, discusses the various evolutionary advantages of empathy that even holds true today. Aspects like parental care, the bond between an infant and its mother, as well as displaying attachment and interdependent have long been a part of facilitating our evolutionary history. While there is no doubt that empathy still exists in our society today, one thing that Decety mentioned has me wondering just how much empathy has changed in the 21st century. Decety mentions in his article that humans are now able to extend their reach of empathy farther than ever before. For example, due to modern technology, people are able to send money in the form of charity to provide relief to those affected in Haiti by the past earthquake. In this way, humans are able to display empathy to those thousands of miles away just with a simple click of a button. But it goes much farther than this. We are able to display empathy to one another in forms of social media, blogs, pinterest, email etc...The point is, technology has greatly broadened our ability to display empathy not only to those whom we know, but also those who we don't know. 

My concern is is this: Does the widening advance of technology really equip the human race to provide authentic empathy or does it provide people a type of "cop out" just to make themselves feel better. When people send money to strangers in Haiti via a text message, does this qualify as genuine empathy or is it just a matter of convenience to reassure ourselves that we are good people. It seems like displaying empathy in this way is much easier to do than physically and genuinely comforting someone who is in need of compassion. I argue that technology is limiting humanity's ability to convey authentic empathy because there is too much anonymity involved with social media sites and the like. The way that we display empathy is greatly changing and I believe that we as a human race need to be cautious that we do not lose our genuine sense of empathy that has for so long preserved our species and added to our evolutionary history. Decety is right when he says that empathy is crucial to our survival and increases the fitness of our offspring. It is up to us to make sure that we do not lose this unique feature of our existence for the sake of the next internet trend or text to charity.