Computers and Society the Internet

Computers and Society

The Internet has facilitated communication, commerce, and information dissemination. However, the downside to the Internet has become the topic of recent research due to the proliferation of digital media and the ways the computer has infiltrated human society. Well before the Internet flourished, computers replaced human beings in multiple job sectors, leading to loss of livelihood and corresponding loss of pride. Science fiction abounds with tales of man-machine interfaces and battles between human and cyborg. The Internet has also transformed the nature of human communications, depersonalizing them to the extent that individuals can easily hide behind pseudonyms. Anonymity and the isolation it can breed are among the possible deleterious effects of Internet use. Moreover, research shows that the effects the Internet has on young people may be profound including increased social anxiety and depression (Liu & Kuo 2007). Although the Internet fosters social interactions and networking, it may also lead to isolation and social disintegration. Online chatting, special-interest forums, and social networking sites like Facebook open up possibilities of constructive human interactions. However, absorption into the Internet as a substitute for face-to-face communications has a deleterious effect especially on the growing psyches of adolescents and young adults. When used as an escape from social anxiety, Internet addiction and its corresponding psychological and sociological problems disintegrates traditional social networks.

As Schmitt, Dayanim & Matthias (2008) point out, young people use their personal home pages, blogs or Facebook sites as a primary means of forging and expressing identities. The Internet can have a neutral if not positive effect on children, adolescents, and young adults when identity formation is encouraged. For example, the act of creating home pages assists self-mastery because of the skill sets involved in coding HTML, designing layouts that reflect personality, and searching the Web for links that reflect the individual's interests, hobbies, or beliefs (Schmitt & Dayanim 2008). The downsides of home pages and associated personal content used for self-expression include the following. First, young people might use their home pages or blogs to express alter egos, identities that are not their own but which are formed from imitating others. Healthy identity formation comes not from creating fantasy selves but from honesty and truthfulness in genuine self-expression.

Second, young people with malleable egos may also use the Internet to escape from the more difficult job of self-expression in a face-to-face social environment. The Internet offers a wealth of opportunity to avoid learning from the discomfort that social interactions provide. Those discomforts are an essential part of social learning and of psycho-social development during pre-adolescence and adolescence.

Third, young people can use their blogs or home pages to express ideas that would be censured in a face-to-face social setting including prejudices, racism, sexism, and hatred. Those views may have stemmed from their parents or from the media but regardless of where they come from can evolve as part of the young person's identity. Hiding behind the cloak of the Internet allows the avoidance of responsibility or accountability regarding prejudicial beliefs. Using the Internet as a sole means of self-expression and identity formation can therefore lead to thwarted moral development. Social disintegration is, moreover, related to moral stagnation. Lacking a sense of right vs. wrong, youth need their belief systems to be challenged in order to function in a diverse and multicultural world.

Another way of theorizing about the impact of the Internet on social disintegration is through Erik Erikson's theories of psycho-social developmental stages and through Lawrence Kohlberg's theory of moral development. Erikson noted that one of the major failings of Freudian psychoanalysis was its "preoccupation with interior mental life at the expense of understanding the individual as immersed in a wider world," (Poster 2007, p. 133). Nothing more aptly symbolizes the preoccupation with interior life than blogs and home pages. Both are self-centered opportunities to speak without having to listen. Thus, using blogs and home pages as a way of forming identities in youth subverts the very definition of communication as a two-way process of interacting. Speaking and listening are both essential features of effective communication. A young person does not listen to the audience he or she reaches through a blog or home page. Adults whose free time is spent blogging or on Internet forums practices a similar one-way and self-centered communication style that Erikson decried (Poster 2007).

Kohlberg proposed three stages of moral development: the pre-conventional, conventional, and post-conventional. Pre-conventional morality is based on self-centered obedience to rules. A child avoids hitting his brother only to avoid punishment or says "Thank you" only to receive praise. Conventional morality is more mature. At the stage of conventional morality a child is aware of and honors the importance of harmonious social interactions and social stability. However, moral reasoning at the conventional stage is deontological: based only on a strict set of rules determining right and wrong behaviors. Kohlberg's post-conventional morality represents the most advanced reasoning. The individual critiques social institutions that do not serve the needs of all citizens. Civil disobedience in the tradition of Gandhi and Martin Luther King is a prime example of post-conventional moral reasoning in action. Social integration depends on advanced moral reasoning and the dedication to universal principles of justice, kindness, and goodness (Crain 1985).

The Internet can, but often does not foster post-conventional moral reasoning. At its best, the Internet offers a forum on which to express multiple points-of-view including those subversive to mainstream social norms. Political points-of-view that differ from those promoted by the government or by popular culture can be voiced with ease online, allowing curious and open minds to challenge their deep-rooted beliefs. However, the Internet has become a compendium of opinions that signals fragmentation more than unity. Even though the Internet is a global meeting place for people from all over the world and even thought the Internet obliterates national and geographic boundaries, the Web does not offer many opportunities to put post-conventional morality into practice the way Gandhi did. Only taking action in the real world can create meaningful social changes. The Internet sometimes serves a networking function in linking together people of a like mind. Similarly, the Internet allows for activism such as through email newsletters, provocative blog entries, and other forms of self-expression. What the Internet can never accomplish is the hands-on action of reaching out to one's neighbor in a time of need or volunteering at a hospital in the Sudan. The Internet is simply the media with which to advertise and spread ideas related to social service.

The Internet can symbolize a universal mind: the confluence of ideas and the absence of artificial boundaries like nation or language. Wellman (2005) offers an optimistic view of the Internet and related computer mediated communications (CMCs) as reflecting he neighborhood and community mentalities that sustain human societies. Thus, the Internet might mean social integration, not dissolution. The many emblems of social integration the Internet sometimes promises include the following: increased levels of social interaction even for those who lack solid social skills or experience social anxiety; increased networking opportunities for individuals who relocate or who seek friendship and romance; increased opportunities for commerce and business. Many of these signs of social integration are promising if not outright "heartening," as Williams (2008) puts it. Research conducted by Schmitt, Dayanim & Matthias (2008) suggests that youths who create personal home pages would develop a more diverse network of friends because they would relate to people different from their friends in school. Schmitt et al. (2008) also found that the experimentation with multiple identities that online encounters enable is healthy for ego growth and identity formation. Therefore, the Internet may be able to refresh human communications.

Optimism about the function of the Internet in promoting human social integration must be tempered with realism and research. Empirical studies do show that Internet addiction has become a serious problem, especially among young people. A study by van den Eijnden, Meerkerk, Vermulst, Spijkerman & Engels (2008) links frequent instant messaging with both compulsive Internet use and with depression, a serious psychological condition. The Eijnden et al. (2008) study, carried out in the Netherlands, also linked Internet addiction with pervasive loneliness. A similar study was undertaken in Taiwan by Liu & Kuo (2007). The researchers linked causal factors such as the quality of the parent-child interaction with social anxiety and found that social anxiety and strained relationships with parents were both predictors of heavy Internet use. In other words, the Internet can become an escape mechanism not dissimilar from the way drugs become a way to run from problems.

Adolescents with poor parental ties may already be at risk for developing addictive behaviors, anxiety, depression, and other psychological problems and those problems may manifest also in anti-social behavior. Adolescents who become obsessed with the Internet may withdraw from friends, family members, and teachers and who only feel comfortable sharing their feelings in their online world. The Internet can easily become a substitute from genuine social interaction, a way for a child or teenager to feel connected to society. In fact, Eijnden at al (2008) found that shy or socially anxious youth did not use instant messaging to foster friendships and instead used the Internet and their computers mainly for games and other non-social activities.