LACK OF EMPATHY IS BECOMING THE NEW NORMAL

According to Google’s “Year in Search 2020 Indonesia” report, there are a few trends emerging from Indonesia’s pandemic crisis. Individual Matters is one of the trends, in which Indonesian consumers are beginning to pay greater attention to social issues. One of the current social issues is the degeneration of empathy. The collective level of empathy has declined by 20% from 1979 to 2009 (Konrath et al, 2011), indicating that this is a signifcant yet under-recognized issue in society.

Empathy is defned as an ability to understand and experience someone else’s feelings and to adopt someone else’s viewpoint (Colman, 2015). Children, as well as adults, suffer from a lack of empathy. There was a 70% increase in occurrences of social media bullying and abusive language from December 2019 to April 2020. Digitalization and a lack of social interaction are to blame. Because it poses a future threat to humanity, the degeneration of empathy must be addressed.

Empathy and gratitude are linked as they are processed in the same section of the brain, which is the medial prefrontal cortex. Empathy infuences gratitude (Lasota, Tomaszek, & Bosacki, 2020), and because empathy is a skill that can be learned, this study aims to develop an education kit to help children develop empathy and gratitude.