Morality Online

Much has been said about the perceived immorality of online culture. In the minds of many academics there is a growing concern that the internet is corrupting the morality of youths. This is a topic which concerns us "digital natives" as we seem to be the target of such criticisms. I find this claim to be a bit naive, especially coming from older generations who, by and large,do not share the same relationship with technology as we do. Andrew Keen in particular brings up all these horror stories of youths becoming addicted to online gambling, watching pornography, and developing extremist personalities through online forums. But what is there to suggest that these same people would not develop these same traits if the internet didn't exist? Keen brings up the example of a kid called Greg Hogan, now this kid was almost the perfect child, a musical prodigy, he excelled also academically, winning a scholarship to a prestigious Ohio college, as well as being the son of an Ohio Baptist Minister. However he became addicted to online gambling and robbed a bank at gunpoint. Keen goes on to point out that Hogan is not alone in this kind of behaviour with a further 1.6 million US college students gambling regularly. I agree that gambling is a major social problem but to demonize the internet over a claim like this is absurd, simply because for each of those 1.6 million students gambling there are far more that are not. Also, while the internet facilitates gambling, getting rid of internet gambling will not cure the gambling in reality, nor will it cure the online gamblers addiction to gambling. I feel these issues are not enough to negate the benefits of the internet, I think that while people tend to voice more extreme views on the internet people are relatively civil if you yourself are civil. In my experience it is usually better to behave as you would in reality online. Sure you may hit a few brick wall's but usually adopting a non-hostile attitude is better (interestingly, using correct grammar seems to play a major role in identifying civil discussion).

While i disagree that the internet is corrupting us I do think there is justification in the idea that we are becoming more immune to a lot of controversial information, not just things like porn and gambling but even to more mainstream information, stories and videos on news websites and the like. We have become so used to reading or seeing how bad things are I sometimes fear we do not appreciate the situation fully. However there are still that rare story that provokes far more reaction than others, and ones that just makes your skin crawl.

I see this fluctuation in responses as primarily a result of accessibility to far more information than we are capable of absorbing, it only makes sense that we gear ourselves towards more relevant news. Sorting data becomes an important skill one needs to negotiate such an environment, this is a skill digital natives have grown up with, one that is a lot harder for people with older generations to pick up.it's the reason we are so much more connected to technology then older generations.