Communication Technologies and The Concept of Changing Empathy

Empathy is the ability to share someone else's emotions and can be considered one of the most important traits people show. Empathy is discovering what we share. The ability to empathize enables us to love, learn, communicate, collaborate, and live in a developed and successful society. Modern communication technologies make our daily work easier. People use empathy to highlight the changes needed to improve their own lives and communities. As in many other elements of contemporary culture, the rapid adoption of social and mobile technologies has changed the communication models of society and the concept of empathy has started to be shaken, especially with digital communication. Developing communication technologies may cause empathy gap. Although all the innovations and advances brought by communication technologies benefit society, the use of excessive technology can cause psychological problems such as apathy and anti-sociability, and weaken communication skills. The method of "document scanning - literature scanning" was used as a data collection method in the study. In this direction, the changes made by communication technologies on the concept of empathy were examined in the literature. It has been observed that communication technologies have a negative effect on people's ability to empathize, and empathy gap increases as people become more individualized.