A study has found that today's college generation lacks empathy compared with their counterparts of 20 and 30 years ago.

LiveScience. com reported on Friday that using a measure of empathy in a review of 72 studies of 14,000 U. S. college students between 1979 and 2009, today's students scored 40 percent lower than their elders.

Sara Konrath, a researcher at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research, said, "We found the biggest drop in empathy after the year 2000."

The study also said that current students are less likely than the older generation to agree with statements such as "I sometimes try to understand my friends better by imagining how things look from their perspective."

Konrath said, "Many people see the current group of college students, sometimes called 'Generation Me', as one of the most self-centered, narcissistic, competitive, confident and individualistic in recent history."

One researcher pointed to the rise of social media as a possible factor.

Edward O-Brien, a graduate student who assisted Konrath with the study, said, "The ease of having 'friends' online might make people more likely to just tune out when they don't feel like responding to others' problems, a behavior that could carry over offline." (With Inputs from Agencies)