Empathy

Understanding and sharing the emotions of others are crucial socioemotional skills, especially in adolescence. Therefore, understanding what influences the development of empathy is pivotal. While most often influences from parents and peers are considered, more recently the focus has also turned to media entertainment. Because empathy is strongly related to moral development, research has largely focused on the influence of violent and prosocial media content on empathy. These studies generally report a negative influence of violent media content and a positive influence of prosocial media content on empathy. However, because of a conceptual issue we have to consider that it may be more appropriate to conclude that sympathy rather than empathy is affected by both violent and prosocial media content. More recently, research has also considered new media effects and investigated the influence of social media use on the development of empathy in adolescents. While many concerns have been expressed that communicating online may hinder understanding and sharing emotions of others, only a very few studies have been conducted. These few studies, however, suggest that social media use may foster instead of curtail empathy in adolescents.