Is the internet killing empathy?

By Gary Small and Gigi Vorgan, Special to CNN

February 18, 2011 1:12 p.m. EST

When we race to watch others fail, are we losing our humane response?

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Gary Small and Gigi Vorgan say that video of reporter's on-air mental lapse went viral
• They say people sought out video like they gawk at car crashes
• They say young people learn, develop empathy; steady diet of lurid images may hinder this
• Writers: Human reason should work to override negative effect of video images on empathy

Editor's note: Gary Small, M.D., and Gigi Vorgan are the co-authors of iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind. Follow them on Twitter.

(CNN) -- A TV news reporter for a Los Angeles station was doing an on-camera report on the Grammy Awards Sunday night, and suddenly her speech became garbled. Was she having a stroke on the air?

The newscast quickly cut away when it became apparent that she was in trouble. But by the next morning, televised news reports were making it part of their Grammy coverage. (One AOL.com page featured the incident at the top of its five "memorable moments" from the Grammys.)

The video went viral on the internet. At the UK Telegraph website, where we caught up with the video showing her sudden slurred speech, 9,388 people noted they "liked" the video with a thumbs up signal and 6,027 recommended it to Facebook friends.

Doctor: Grammy reporter suffered migraine, is 'back to normal'

People couldn't turn away. They were drawn to it, watching the images over and over with the same kind of grim curiosity that compels drivers to slow down and gaze at a fatal car crash -- drawn often by a subconscious fear that the same thing could happen to us. By observing it in other people, we have our own experience of it, but at an emotional distance. The more we observe terrifying events happening to other people, the more they reinforce our sense of denial and detachment: It can't happen to us.

May 13th, 2011 10:19 AMET Share Comments (91 comments) Permalink Fit Friday: Cafeteria cams measure kids' calories Kids often toss the apple from their lunch trays and dive straight into the cookies. But, now cafeteria cameras can track what they’re really eating. Health officials are using a $2 million federal grant to install cameras that will track eating habits at five San Antonio, Texas elementary schools.  The camera program will analyze the food on the trays for kids whose parents give permission. Parents can get reports about what their kids ate in school. The cameras will record what the students put on their lunch tray.  A computer program analyzes the food to calculate the amount of food and calories.  Then it will also take an image of the students’ trays when they are done – this will enable calculation of the nutrition that the children consumed. "Let the picture tell us a thousand words about what they're eating,"  Dr. Roger Echon, who helped develop the initial computer program, told CNN affiliate KSAT. This could help officials measure the nutrition children are getting to better develop programs to prevent obesity and diabetes, San Antonio school and health officials told KSAT. Sound off below: Should we track what children eat to get a better sense of their overall nutrition, or is this nanny state gone amuck?

E.O.T.D.

Agility

E.O.T.D.

Lateral shuffle

The Benefits of Exercise and Sports Participation for Kids

Any child in America today that decides to participate in sports usually does so for one simple reason. FUN. Yeah, that pretty much covers it. The trouble-free innocence of youth can be fascinating, can't it? Now, if only the decision was that elementary for parents, who are often unsure of the impact that exercise and sports may have on their child's physical development and academic achievement. Fortunately for parents, as research can attest, exercise and sports are rare institutions that offer tremendous social relationships, physical challenges, and honest competition. There is even evidence that sports can increase a child's self-esteem and academic performance while decreasing the likelihood of disease and drug use. Then again, to a child, all of these attributes equal just one desirable characteristic - fun. While the desire for fun reigns supreme in a child's decision to participate in sports, the present day migration of young athletes into the professional arena has forever distorted the perceived innocence of gamesmanship. The dream to one day compete professionally, though ever-present in the minds of children, has taken an unprecedented grasp on the preparation and development of America's youth. In fact, the dream is now being realized at younger ages than ever before, leaving parents with tremendously difficult decisions. Only in recent times have parents been forced to decide, at ages as early as eight, if their child should specialize in one sport, join a club team, or attend specialty camps. At one end of the spectrum sits the possibility of enhancing their skills and athletic ability to the point of receiving a college scholarship or professional offer. At the other is the more likely scenario - that their athletic careers may end in high school (or before) and that specialization may, in addition to the stress of a lengthy time commitment and travel burdens, exact a hefty financial toll. Regardless of these uncertainties present in the amateur sports world, one thing is certain. Athletic participation and training for sports provide a myriad of benefits that few, if any, organizations can offer. As it turns out, the kids had it right all along. Focus on fun, and they excel in all facets of life.

May 4, 2011, 12:01 AM

How Sugar Affects the Body in Motion

By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS

Gary John Norman/Getty Images

Sugar is getting a bad reputation. A cover article in The New York Times Magazine several weeks ago persuasively reported that our national overindulgence in fructose and other sugars is driving the epidemics of obesity, diabetes and other illnesses. But that much-discussed article, by the writer Gary Taubes, focused on how sugars like fructose affect the body in general. It had little opportunity to examine the related issue of how sugar affects the body in motion. Do sweeteners like fructose — the sweetest of the simple sugars, found abundantly in fruits and honey — have the same effect on active people as on the slothful?

A cluster of new studies suggests that people who regularly work out don’t need to worry unduly about consuming fructose or other sugars. In certain circumstances, they may even find the sweet stuff beneficial.

The unique role that the various sugars play in exercise is well illustrated by anew study published in March in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. It involved a group of highly trained cyclists and their livers. For the experiment, Swiss and British researchers directed the cyclists, all men, to ride to exhaustion on several different occasions. After each ride, they swallowed drinks sweetened with fructose or glucose, another simple sugar often identified as dextrose on ingredient labels. (Some also drank a milk-sugar sweetener.)

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The liver is often overlooked when we consider organs integral to exercise, but it is an important reservoir of glycogen, the body’s stored form of glucose. All sugars, including sucrose, or table sugar, and high-fructose corn syrup, which usually consists of almost equal portions of glucose and fructose, are converted into glucose, and stored as glycogen, in the body. Strenuous exercise diminishes or exhausts this liver glycogen, and until those stores are replenished, the body isn’t fully ready for another exercise bout.

About Nutrition for Kids & Teens

Our goal with kids isn't to get them on the zone, but to get them to think and make good choices about what they eat. Our goal is to teach them very basic concepts, sugar is bad, protein is good and you need to eat some in every meal. Nuts and seeds are good fats. Eat them, don't avoid them. Pasta, white bread, and white rice are not that good for you, stuff that's red, yellow, green and found in the fruit and vegetable aisle is good for you. Eat a lot of it.


Look at your plate, make a fist, eat that much meat every meal; turn your hand over and fill it with nuts and seeds, eat that much good fat, fill the rest of your plate with stuff you found in the fruit and vegetable aisle. Fill your plate this way at every meal, don't eat more.