Empathy and imagination: Nurturing children’s and adolescent’s spiritual well-being in the digital environment

Abstract

Recently, there has been a flurry of publications on children and adolescents turning into “digital junkies”, those addicted are said to be using “electronic cocaine”, or being diagnosed with Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD) or Pathological Internet Use. This article discusses the emerging disorders in children and adolescents who spend too many hours online and how it may affect their spiritual well-being. This article makes a contribution by making a start on specifically looking at how the spiritual well-being of children and adolescents may be affected by too much screen time. Apart from the clinical side effects described by the recent research, it is imperative that the spiritual lives of “digital junkies” be carefully examined.

Why some religious individuals are not emotionally smart? The explanatory role of spirituality

“…This finding is consistent with the past studies, such as the ones by Lee Flores et al [54] and Miguel-Rojas et al [55]. One of the possible explanations for this result of the current study is that spirituality had found to be positively correlated with empathy, which is one of the main characteristics of EI [49,38,51,10]. Furthermore, past research also suggested that spiritual practices (e.g.…”

“…Besides that, de Souza [38] also suggested that spirituality is closely linked to empathy. It was said that spirituality, defined as having a deep connection with self and others, helps one to be able to identify and share the feelings of others [49,38]. Moreover, Tang, Hölzel, & Posner [50] reported that brain regions that regulate emotion changed structurally and functionally through spiritual practices like mindfulness meditation.…”

Post-locked down mental wellbeing among Malaysian adults: factors of life satisfaction in urban Malaysia

“…In line with that, Miguel-Rojas et al [55] suggested that spirituality is positively correlated with a positive understanding that others have sympathy and empathy towards oneself, which led to the sense of receiving support from others. Consistent with that, our previous study in the Malaysian context before the MCO suggested that spirituality significantly predicts one of the preconditions of PSS, which is emotional intelligence [56] and some previous studies also confirmed that spirituality predicts another precondition, social-connectedness [53], [54]. Accordingly, various studies from various settings reported a positive link between spirituality and PSS, such as among university students in Jordan [48], women with preeclampsia [57], burn survivors in Iran [58], African American women with breast cancer [59].…”

“…While spirituality might predict SWL [49]- [51], it did not show any significant interaction with the other variables. This phenomenon indicated that spirituality in our participants was not social-based; they being spiritual and non-spiritual was not affected by their mattering or PSS, because online social feedback relating to spirituality might have been less prevalent compared to the offline social feedback in ritual activities in worshipping houses and social gathering as studied previously [53], [58].…”

“…Defined as having a deep connection with self, divine being, and others, spirituality helps one to identify and share the feelings of others [53], [54]. In line with that, Miguel-Rojas et al [55] suggested that spirituality is positively correlated with a positive understanding that others have sympathy and empathy towards oneself, which led to the sense of receiving support from others.…”