>it also seems to me that this sort of thinking is almost always used as an excuse not to care about anything

Caring is overrated. Unless one does something about what they care for, it's not just useless but also harmful (e.g. stressful to the person caring with no effect towards solving the problem).

That’s fine, but be honest about it. Don’t use the fact that people care more about personal stories as an excuse.

How about we care AND do small things to help?

That doesn't fall into the "useless care" case. But that's also not 99% of caring for stuff in the news.

Caring is not overrated if it's shared between a group of people and that group of people realizes it's a group of people.

Well I'm not sure you can discard a point because people tend to use it wrong.

If somebody doesn't want to care about something the "reason" they give is likely not important, at the end of the day it's an emotional decision. If you want to make people care about something, I recommend offering them a situation where they can sleep better at night when they care.

That’s kind of my point. When you remind people that they’re caring more about the tragedy of one person than they care about the tragedy of millions, you’re not helping them to sleep better. You’re just shaming them, and the result is likely to be that they’ll care less about both, rather than more about the millions.