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Nothing ever remains constant. This is such a cliché yet we know it is true. We also know that with time everything and everyone changes. Hence, it is best to accept the changes and simply go with the flow. To analyse the changes that has taken place in the past amongst students, a study was conducted. Scores of students were observed for their behaviour, many questionnaires were filled and so on.

Finally, when they came out with the results, it was a bit of a shocker. It seemed that the students of the present did not feel much for the people around them and their surroundings, like the students in the days of the yore did. Simply put, they aren’t empathetic enough.

Times have changed and things are bound to change. Take war for example; what we felt about it in the past has changed. We think of things differently. Therefore, change in the behaviour of the students is most expected. The study states aspects like empathy, sympathy over other people’s grief and concern, is not as much as it used to be. The students today lack the capacity both intellectually and emotionally to feel deeply for the others. They have different points of view and they are not afraid of stating it, yet they are not very open in accepting or looking at things from the point of view of the others. Some of them remain unperturbed even when they see others in trouble.

The scores for the empathic concern were the lowest; having decreased by almost the half while the acceptance of others’ perspective was down to a mere 34 percent. Students today are raised to be individuals first and therefore, this is one of the causes as to why they are not open to ideas from other people. While they students might readily agree and say, ‘yeah, I agree’ but they rarely do so in reality.

So why is this happening? Many thinkers feel that because the children are exposed to a lot at a very early stage they become numb to the things happening around them. Also it has a lot to do with the availability of things around us. There is so much of it that we are spoilt for choices. Plus it is all happening too rapidly. Therefore, their mind constantly has to accept and reject something. And that is why they cannot associate their emotions with it, simply because there is no time.

The implications of this are going to be worse in the coming years. If the deterioration is already down to such appalling numbers then it is bound to fall much lower in the next five years. There will probably come a time when students might not bother about anything.

This is a major cause of concern for everyone; parents, teachers, schools, colleges and the society as a whole. This would mean that we are heading towards a generation that will not feel anything towards anyone. Emotions, feelings like love, anger etc will just become mere words that don’t make anymore sense.