Goodbye, Moral Compass? Faster, Twittercat, Tweet Tweet!

Moral compass gone awry? No signs of ethical land ahead?

As with every other contemporary ailment, it seems social networking is to blame. Add to that the internet's most hasty and egregious offender, Twitter, and you've got a recipe for serious harm to young people's "emotional development".

But why you may ask? 

According to 'Scientists', the constant digital barrage of lightspeed news bulletins, pings, pokes, and variously-blogged status updates we experience across social networking sites like Twitter could "numb our sense of morality and make us indifferent to human suffering".

This web whirlwind could very well spin you so far outside of your ability to be compassionate that you could forget who you're following, who your friends really are, and why exactly it was that you needed to know the superfluous minutiae of thousands of complete strangers' lives in the first place.

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Dalai Lama | Photo 04

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Cuz let's face it, honey, the human brain ain't quick enough to comprehend its own emotions, let alone to be able to extend genuine compassion to those whose human existence is only ever encountered in its mostly mirage-like and ghostly-digital form.

But what happens when an entire platform of communication becomes an omnipresent "media culture in which violence and suffering becomes an endless show, be it in fiction or in infotainment"?

Does "indifference to the vision of human suffering gradually [set] in" or is there a way to counterbalance our empathy-empty selves and use social media to become more compassionate about our fellow human beings?

If, as the Buddha said, "What we think, we become" — can the same be said for one's Tweets?

Perhaps it's time to take stock of what we are saying, thinking, and doing online — to ensure that we don't forsake care and compassion and fall victim to the apathy and indifference of information overload.