Hakarat HaTov and the Social Media Morass

At Or Chaim, some of the most moving communal experiences are the tisches that come every few Fridays. The students join together in fervent song, and for thirty minutes they lose themselves in unified melody. After our most recent tisch one of the students wrote the following to members of the school administration:

I wanted to quickly express my hakaras hatov for the tisch today. The administration bent over backwards, implementing a modified schedule which required Ulpana to go along with it too, just so we could enjoy the tisch. The entire school truly appreciates when things like this happen.

In her essay “Hakarat Ha-Tov as a Pillar of Character Education in Co-curricular Programming”, Judy Sokolow explores the importance that active education about gratitude has in the lives of our students. The thank-you note sent by the student following the tisch beautifully captures the ideals and values Sokolow stresses when she comments that gratitude “requires us to set aside our feelings of power and control and realize that our successes are not due solely to our own accomplishments. It is a foil against arrogance and self-centeredness.”  In sending his note, the student took himself out of the center of the tisch experience and recognized that the beautiful communal moment was only made possible by faculty investing time in making it work, and in others sacrificing their own schedules for the sake of the students. It was a moment of deep reflection and maturity, and I told him how proud I was of his perspective.

Gratitude plays an important part in the lives and the liturgy of Jews: when we wake up in the morning and recite Modeh Ani we thank G-d for granting us another day; Joseph refuses Potiphar’s wife out of recognition of all the good his master has done for him (Bereshit 39:89); according to the Midrash, Moshe cannot strike the Nile or the dirt of Egypt out of hakarat hatov for their having kept him safe earlier in life (Shmot Rabba 9:10); Boaz praises Ruth for all that she did for Naomi without thought for herself (Ruth 2:12). There are many more examples, especially if we start to look through the Siddur and our myriad brachot, but it is clear that giving thanks for good in our lives and recognizing that what we have is largely due to others is embedded in Jewish identity. Tefillah and our traditional sources are replete with the “foil[s] against arrogance and self-centeredness” Sokolow praises as the hallmarks of hakarat hatov.

The opposite of the selfless, understanding, and sensitive approach championed in our sources is narcissism. Edgar Albert Guest, American poet and journalist, describes narcissism well in his poem “Selfishness”:

No man was ever truly great
Who sought to serve himself alone,
Who put himself above the state,
Above the friends about him thrown.
No man was ever truly glad
Who risked his joy on hoarded pelf,
And gave of nothing that he had
Through fear of needing it himself.

While teens have been associated with egoism since at least the time of Socrates, contemporary investigations indicate that the trend is worsening. The exacerbation of adolescent narcissism may be traced to the ubiquity of social media. In “Narcissism and Social Networking Sites: The Act of Taking Selfies” Taylor Wickel’s research demonstrates “the connection between taking selfies and the rise in narcissistic behaviors in the Millennial Generation,” and adds that the respondents’ “reasons for doing so lean toward the incessant need and desire to obtain attention and gratification from their audience.” Similarly, the researchers behind “Is Facebook Linked to Selfishness?  Investigating the Relationships among Social Media Use, Empathy, and Narcissism” explain that “commenting [on] and viewing photos was significantly related to narcissism”, as was “posting status updates and sharing links…”  Simon Sinek traces the roots of this egoistic behavior to a variety of factors, among them the institutional impatience and filtering of reality that are inexorably tied to social media and computer overuse. Because our children are able to carefully craft their own versions of themselves for the world to consume, and because they get instantaneous feedback on their output to the internet, they are more likely to see themselves as center of everything around them. This is the essence of narcissism. Without a solution, Sinek sees suicide, homicide, and depression reaching “epidemic” proportions.

We have all seen or heard about teenagers overwhelmed by social media demonstrating the traits Guest describes. Self-service, haughtiness, and hoarding are the essence of platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. These technologies, and others like them, exist so that we can share the perfectly filtered, framed, and nearly-fictional accounts of our day-to-day lives in the light that we think best represents us. Does your real-life selfie lack warmth and lighting?  Use Clarendon. Does your real-life anecdote lack punch? Shorten it to something pithy and throw a hashtag on it. Social media is all about presenting the best version of oneself to the world even if it is a lie, as long as you get the most “likes”. All of this fraudulent self-promotion cannot help but take its toll on developing minds and morals.

One of the fundamental underpinnings of any solution to the epidemic of egoism must be recognition of others beyond ourselves and our increasingly homogenous social networks; we must teach our children that we are a community of individuals, and that only by recognizing the roles of others can we be the best versions of ourselves. To fight the rising tide of self-centered attitudes encouraged by misuse of social media we need to follow Sokolow’s advice and the examples in our Jewish texts, and “set aside our feelings of power and control and realize that our successes are not due solely to our own accomplishments.” This will be accomplished by actively teaching and modeling gratitude. This will be achieved through hakarat hatov. Here are a few ideas to get the ball rolling:

1. Gracious behavior must be modelled for our children. We need to vocally and visibly thank those who make our successes possible.
2. Community responsibility and social action – committed time to give back to those around us – needs to be set aside for ourselves and our families, perhaps even together.
3. Earnest, heartfelt regular prayer is an excellent demonstration of gratitude to G-d for everything we have.
4. Gratitude journals have been proven to effect major changes in attitude and outlook.
5. Although it may seem old-fashioned, taking the time to write and deliver handwritten thank you notes sends a powerful message to both the author and the recipient about the importance of the other in our lives.

These few concepts are just the beginning of what can be a counterweight to a profoundly negative trend in child-development. By working together to encourage grateful, selfless attitudes we can fight for the centrality of Torah values in a world that is increasingly myopic and narcissistic. To practice what I preach, I would like to extend hakarat hatov to the unnamed student (who gave consent for his letter to be used here) for serving as a living example of what it means to be a mensch and a ben Torah. As I mentioned to the student himself, it is gracious and appreciative sentiments like his that make me want to be an educator, and I can only hope that his example inspires others to make the world a better place as well.