The benefits of the Internet are obvious and indisputable.
The costs of the Internet, on the other hand, are far less obvious to many and, I would suspect, far more likely to be disputed.
I would imagine most would grant that at least one of the costs is the kind of dodgy activity and degrading content the web puts within all our reach, not least our children. Thanks to the Internet, for example, everyone of us is only a single mouse click away from exposure to content that is, if not illegal, at least morally degrading.
But there are other costs as well. Costs that come not from the content itself, but from the kind of medium the Internet is, and the kind of mental habits (or lack of them) it encourages and impedes.
An increasing number of thoughtful, technologically-saavy people are sounding this note. One is Nicholas Carr, in a forthcoming book, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains.
He’s expressed the gist of his cautions and concerns in a CNN article. Here are a few paragraphs:
As we rush around the web gathering little pieces of information, we seem to be training our brains to be quick but superficial.
Only a curmudgeon would deny the many benefits that our computers and electronic networks have brought us. The internet and related technologies have made it much easier to stay in touch with friends and family members, to discover interesting and useful information, to express ourselves, and to collaborate with others.
Since the World Wide Web was invented two decades ago, we have been celebrating these benefits — and rightly so. But we’ve been paying much less attention to the negative consequences of our online lives.
The time has come for us to take a more balanced view of the net, looking at its costs as well as its benefits. That’s particularly true when it comes to educating our children. Sticking a kid in front of a computer screen is probably not the best way encourage the development of a strong, creative, and supple mind.
Of course, there’s no going back to pre-Internet days. Nor, it must be said, would one want to – given all the benefits of the Internet. But precisely because of this we would do well as individuals and families and communities and a culture to reflect more soberly and critically on the negative impact of this double-edged sword.
A balanced view is what we need. For only then will we be able to use this tool with wisdom and thus to use it to promote rather than undermine human flourishing.
5 comments ↓
I find the internet to be perfect for my attention deficit disorder. I guess that’s the problem, eh.
You are right on Todd. I often tell people that the internet is like the wild wild west, few laws, fewer policemen, and an anything goes attitude.
It is time we bring in a parson and a judge and the sheriff. Civility needs to reign.
My dad is a LCSW (licensed clinical social worker). He’s seen many, many Christians and Christian families devastated by various internet vices, especially porn and gambling. It is both heartbreaking and pathetic at the same time to see a wife in tears and a family ripped apart because of a dad/father’s porn habit, but it is a real and increasingly common problem.
I suspect if you talked to other people who see the effects of internet abuse on a regular basis, they would agree that
a) few people appreciate how dangerous it can be or how easily you can get “hooked” on dangerous or even seemingly innocuous parts of the internet
b) few Christians realize how it is affecting many others right in their own church
c) that it disproportionately affects children and young people
I am not a luddite (hater of technology) by any means- I am a web developer by trade – but I would agree with you: the costs are not well understood or appreciated.
Todd, I think that you are right that there are two separate costs, and that we need to focus on them independently. The cost associated with the easy access to “dodgy activity and degrading content” (e.g., pornography and gambling) is perhaps the easiest to appreciate. For this type of activity, I believe that protecting competent individuals (i.e., adults, not minors) should be focused more on their hearts and minds, not accessibility. As a result, so long as children are protected from access to these vices, I don’t have the same concerns as many others.
Turning to the costs associated with the potential changing of the way that people think, to me this is the more interesting discussion. It seems to me that the studies indicate that the internet as a medium is in fact changing, to some extent, the way that people think. My question is, do we really know whether the change is good or bad? All of the reports that I have seen make the assumption that change is bad without any discussion whatsoever as to how their may be improvements also happening. I do not believe that the internet is the first technological advance that has changed the way that people think. For example, I imagine that writings, as opposed to an oral tradition, greatly affected the thinking of mankind. Do we know whether the change was good or bad?
I also am an Internet professional and appreciate the concerns about the Internet. I support the call for clear-thinking and balance.
One thought that I would build upon what Teddy shared and throw out for consideration is that this same need for balance and clear-thinking has been true of EVERY other technology advancement in the history of human communications.
Think of all the changes in communications throughout history: spoken languages, alphabets and written language, painting and the arts, the printing press, the camera and photography, telegraph, telephone, the movie camera and film, radio, television, video, wireless cell phones, satellite communications, the Internet and the web, digital publishing, social media, etc.
Thinking back to when the telephone was invented, it dramatically changed the way people interacted with each other. They spent less time traveling to physically visit each other face-to-face, which many at that time decried as being socially unhealthy and spiritually dangerous.
Before Gutenberg’s printing press, communication was basically aural, and the spoken word, artistic visual images and story-telling were extremely important. With the press came much good (the Bible and religious images available to many more people in their own languages), and much evil (greater dissemination of untruth, lies and deceptive, manipulative information, unhealthy visual images).
Let’s not forget that offset printing and photography were the first technologies used to create the modern pornography industry and all the addictions and ruination that comes from it! The Internet is basically turning a pre-existing industry into a world-wide plague.
In my opinion, there is little difference in nature between what the Internet is doing to us today, and what other technological changes have done to us in the past. Technology will continue to change everything, and we as humans will be faced with the same choices we always have. Will we embrace change and learn to use whatever the next technology is for good, or will we allow it to be used for evil? We face these questions as individuals, societies and nation/cultures.
The Internet has been with us now for over a decade. Based upon the compressing rate of change as seen in the simple historical list above, I expect that there will be other technologies that will change everything within our lifetime. We may be thinking that we have time to figure this Internet thing out… but in fact it is already “old” by today’s standards and will be modified, replaced or transformed before we know it.
That is the new reality we live in, and the world that Christians need to be prepared to think clearly about and find balance within.
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