Empathy Dwindling Among Students
College students just don’t care about other people like they once did. That’s the word from researchers who looked at scores of recent studies related to empathy. Those studies—72 in all, encompassing the thoughts of more than 14,000 youth—found that college students are on average 40 percent less empathetic than their forebears in the 1980s and ’90s. While the study didn’t give a reason for the drop in empathy, some speculate that the boom in social networking might have something to do with it. “You might spend your night posting on Facebook walls and sending out tweets to hundreds of your online friends,” says Michigan graduate student Edward O’Brian, who helped gather data for the study, “but by doing so, you’re also not spending time with real people and gaining valuable interpersonal experiences.” Experts also say the pressure to “get ahead” may play a role. “With so much time and effort devoted to yourself so you can succeed, who has time for others?” says O’Brian. (USA Today)

Girl’s Hopes of Round-World Trip Dashed
On Jan. 23, 2010, 16-year-old Abby Sunderland set sail from Marina del Rey, Calif., hoping to become the youngest person ever to circumnavigate the globe alone non-stop. Less than six months later, the girl’s fortunate to be alive. The mast of Sunderland’s yacht Wild Eyes was sheared off during a storm about 2,000 miles off the coast of Australia. A French fisherman rescued the girl, but her dreams of circling the world will have to wait for another day—and another year. The boat was abandoned at sea. “Crazy is the word that really describes everything that has happened,” Sunderland later blogged. (Boston Globe)

Tech Making Us Dumber?
Technology is rewiring our brains, scientists say; and the results can be pretty negative. Experts believe the stimulation we receive from our laptops and iPhones may be making us more forgetful and fragmented, with dozens of stimuli competing for our attention. While most multi-taskers insist they’re far more productive doing several things at once, research shows that multi-tasking actually is a terribly counterproductive waste of time. “We are exposing our brains to an environment and asking them to do things we weren’t necessarily evolved to do,” says Adam Gazzaley, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco. “We know already there are consequences.” (New York Times)

Bad Sport
A group of freshmen boys from Landon, a private elementary and high school in the Washington, D.C., area have gotten in trouble for crafting a strange game in which the boys would “draft” girls and receive points for any sexual encounters they scored with the girls. “They evidently got points for first, second and third base,” said one father, whose daughter was drafted. “They were going to have parties and tally up the points, and money was going to be exchanged at the end of the season. “This is the way we teach boys to treat women, young ladies?” the father added. “You have enough to worry about as a 14- or 15-year-old girl without having to worry about guys who are doing it as sport.” (New York Times)