Thanks for the kind words and for your insights as well.

I must say I am happy to be incorrect. Even though the online social world has opened many opportunistic doors for many people/organizations, we should be mindful of both the virtual and physical worlds.

This reminds me of the Perez Hilton — will.i.am debaucle. Where has human decency and consideration for one another gone? If you can't offer immediate, physical assistance…CALL those that can, don't tweet or f'book or whatever it… We need to continually make sure to publish articles like this in order to keep people in the right mindset. I very much enjoyed this piece, thank you!

Why did an entire audience Twitter rather than help? Maybe it is because a phenomenon of he bystander effect is that the probability of help is thought to be inversely related to the number of bystanders. How many bystanders were there in the the audience? Maybe 300? Say 50 % sent out tweets. How many bystanders were there once those tweets had a chance to make the rounds? Tens of thousands?

What would have happened, I wonder, if the audience had been a group of professional leaders, say military officers, or CEOs, people used to making decisions and acting quickly?

How about a contextual change? Strong, hardbacked men (as we say in the Caribbean), mountaineers at the top of their game, innate calculators of risks and used to making life or death decisions abandoned Dr. Seaborn Weathers in a coma. Left for dead by his friends and climbing partners on Everest. After being out for twelve hours he climbed down into Camp 4 and lived. We can’t judge people in a situation like that, they have to judge themselves. Glad I’m not one of those guys.

Another contextual change: I wonder if a group CEOs walking down a sidewalk in NYC would have stopped to help Alfredo Tale-Yax? He was stabbed to death helping a woman who was being attacked. At least twenty people walked by while he lay died on the sidewalk.

Aw, but these were college kids, right? What if it was college kids fresh off of a NOLS course?

How about our grandparents? Would they have acted differently?

It takes stones to leap out of your audience chair and run up on stage to help someone. But that is one of the many characteristics of leadership, doing what you perceive to be the right thing, even if it goes against the crowd or you are – initially anyway – a bystander.

Would I have risked my life to haul Seaborn’s ass off of Everest? I climbed for years, that kind of situation at that extreme never came up. Maybe it was because I was a prudent climber, maybe it was because I am not as much of an “adventurer” as the guys on Everest that day. But I think of myself as one who would have hauled him down, even in the face of my buddies saying to leave him. I hope I would have had the stones to do it, anyway.

If I see someone snatch an old ladies purse? Man, that’d be like a tennis ball thrown into a lake to a dog. Yes, I’d run after him.

Do I do what I think is the right the right thing for the people I do my best to lead? Different ball, different lake, same dog.

Thanks for writing this post, such an important topic (way more worthwhile than another stat on how many companies are or aren't using Twitter).

I find myself in a similar situation cringing at some of the digital behaviors of our youth. As a digital marketing consultant, I've been praising the promise of these new technologies, but I also have been learning more and more about the negative side effects of our increasing use of digital.

The one thing I would add is that the bystander phenomena is not entirely new. "The greater the number of people present, the less likely people are to help a person in distress." however I wholeheartedly agree with the overall message of your post.

Recently I spoke to a group of high-school marketing educators about the current state of social media marketing. I learned from the teachers that their students have no problem using "social media" (they actually teach the teachers) but instead they need training on marketing principles and "real-world" social interaction.

Keep fighting the good fight, and I hope others are keeping an eye out for the negative effects of our children's digital use…

Thanks for your comment, which actually is similar to Del's observations. While there are many reasons for apathy – fear, anxiety, etc., there is actually a psychological term (big surprise) called "bystander syndrome" which could come into play as well. The theory behind bystander syndrome is that bystanders don't respond because they're certain that others will do so therefore obviating the need for personal involvement. While there are clearly many possible explanations for what happened, the new wrinkle in the equation is social media. The fact that people were immediately engaged virtually via social media had an impact on behavior. Again, I'm not saying that social media is responsible for what happened, but it was certainly a contributing factor. Thanks for adding to the discussion Becky.