Internet’s social impact

Blessing or curse?

Thanks to George Boole (Born in 1815 in Lincolnshire, England, died in 1864 in Ballintemple Cork, Ireland), a British philosopher, mathematician and logician who introduced the concept of digital logic and paved the way for the novel revolutionary invention in the form of a modern digital computer of our age.

Boole’s mathematical scientific contributions are well-acknowledged through his pioneering work in the field of differential equations, and popular Boolean algebra. Probably, he was not aware of the fact that a time would come when his innovative artwork will unify the whole world into a global village, bringing it to a dining table, today’s internet.  Unlike many other technologies such as the telephone, light bulb, rail engine, modern computer, the internet has no single inventor in practice. Thus, with a collective effort of many scientists (e.g., Ray Tomlinson introduces first network e-mail in 1972, Bob Metcalfe developedthe Ethernet idea in 1973, and Tim Berners Lee introduced HTML for the first time in 1990 and the World Wide Web in 1991), we enjoy the luxurious benefit of using internet in our daily life.

While internet is now recognized as part and parcel of the post-modern world, it is being used for almost everything, to the extent that one would not imagine a comprehensive life without it. Overall, the explosive growth of internet-oriented social media, smart phones and other digital devices are transforming our life and our kids’ lives on a daily basis at home.

Note that the current internet users in Pakistan are crossing over 30 million today, where 15 million are browsing the internet by their mobile phones, an obvious question therefore comes to mind: should we consider this a blessing or curse? The answer to this question probably lies, the way we use and apply this revolutionary product in practice.

While accepting that the internet is the most crucial technology of the world today, the usage and applications of internet are manifold. At a private level, the usage of internet varies from web based electronic shopping (e-Shopping) and electronic marketing to electronic booking and/or electronic ticketing resources. On the other side, information accessibility is far easier today through web based downloading/uploading – the dream for this millennial generation globally. Simultaneously, internet based private and public companies’ communicative infrastructure, and internet based research and development activities at intra-planet and inter planet level is well established facts that fairly adds to the beneficial usage of internet, which is deeply embedded in a society at large.

Generally speaking, a rich internet application (RIA) is a web based application itself where one enjoys the specific information placed somewhere else in the world.

Overall, the beneficial aspects of internet are defined in the form of blessing by a wealthy knowledge pool, information dissemination medium of instruction for school or college teachers, source of income for ordinary people, electronic commerce and electronic trading, marketing and advertisement, medium for data transfer and data storage, and telecommunication services. This novel internet invention further supports and provides means for some malicious spying and fraudulent activities, strengthening global terrorism, besides moral decadence and distraction. Furthermore, new forums of social interactions, and social relations through networking websites such as Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter have emerged recently that facilitate offline and online communication.All these beneficial advantages or disadvantages of internet come with a price of social impact or social consequences our society suffers from in everyday life.

The areas of social impact spread overall in economical, environmental, political, psychological, health and ergonomic fields and finally define cultural and religious values that may set new standard of livings.  For good or bad, internet has no filter and lacks peer review. Principally, anyone can publish any material of his choice on the internet.

Researchers fairly believe that important aspect of internet usage is to limit deep thinking skill that leads to true creativity of a human body and where the vast availability of informative wealth on the World Wide Web (WWW) overwhelms the brain capabilities and strongly hurts long-term human memory on the other side. Alternatively, the growing internet addiction can be a significant threat to human health and social well-being because it leads to anti-social behaviour dominance. Thus, people becomes less communicative with the real world by developing new attitude embedded in the human nature in daily life that allows with limited inter-personal communication. Note that the well-developed human social networks are more addictive than ordinary drugs. Overall, the usage of internet leads to growing isolation at the price of the downfall of human social networks at city or town level that causes unhealthy psychological impact that can confuse people on their true attitudes and identities in many ways.

Thanks to the internet invention and its impact on politics that helps organize political rallies, political campaigns on various social issues and hence social mobility at large in the international environment. A classical picture of internet political campaign has recently been witnessed in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and now in Syria that helped human mobility and brought regime change in some countries. However, this unquestionable political support of internet comes with a negative consequence of a real threat to state sovereignty.

Depending on the source of electricity and type of computers along with other support devices, overall computers emit around 40–80 grams of greenhouse gas emission per hour. More interestingly, simple Google search can lead to 1–10 grams of carbon dioxide (CO2) emission. With this environmental impact in mind, it is critical to know that computer usage is not a carbon-free hobby and hence it needs to be shut down when you are not using it.

Children are considered the most valuable asset of any family. A gradual progressive growth and development of children alternatively leads to the well-being of the family. So, very obvious questions come into mind if children’s development is affected by the vast use of internet. Do children become socially isolated particularly from their parents and family members or from their close associates (e.g., friends or relatives)? Do children become depressed by sitting in front of computer for longer periods of time and hence their school performance and academic excellence is affected in return? Do children suffer from unbalanced sleeping routines that lead to abnormality in a body? Do children manage to separate true facts from fiction? Depending on the amount of time consumed in front of the internet, the answer to these questions has been given in ‘Yes’ by vast majority of internet and social scientists.

Depending on how the usage of internet is defined (i.e. children’s age, family social group, urbanization level etc.), various research estimates vary from as high as several hours per day to as low as 2-4 hours per week. Note that the amount of time spent online is the time not spent anywhere else, thus limiting participation of children in social and religious activities, sports, shopping, and communication with family and friends. On the other extreme, the usage of internet supports Skype based communication with geographically distant relatives and friends, and thus makes it easier to interact frequently with those not very close by. So, the usage of internet defines a new standard of social environmental boundaries among our families that ultimately lead to a paradigm shift of human nature.

Another horrible consequence of internet is pornography, which shows an exponential rising trend, particularly among children and teens. It is a malaise spread worldwide and owing to easy access over the internet, basically through websites, peer-to-peer file sharing, and many diversified net-user groups. Note that there are both commercial and free internet sites for pornography accessible to everyone. Recent business reports indicate that the child pornography has become a multi-billion dollar business worldwide and has resulted in a massive increase in accessibility, availability and volume spread.

Many social activists and politicians have raised their concerns over the free accessibility of internet pornography. Since the internet is a worldwide communicative international network and there are currently no agreed universal international laws regulating and controlling pornography specifics, each country addresses internet pornography differently according to the boundaries defined by its cultural and legal domain. While homosexuality is a forbidden and punishable crime in the Muslim world, an alarming situation was addressed very recently in a media report that lists Pakistan at the top in Google based searches for sites involving homosexuality. To the best of writer’s knowledge, Pakistan has no law or legal mechanism to curb the child pornography, an issue that should be taken at the top in the parliament agenda to renounce this curse. Here, the role of PTA (Pakistan Telecommunication Authority) is very critical to block and put a blanket ban on those websites containing sensitive and explicit material.

To save our children and our future generations, this scribe is of the view that it’s right time to firstly educate our children at primary and secondary level about growing negative consequences of the use of internet at home and at school. A fundamental subject at school level education should be introduced illustrating the significance of internet social impact in our daily life. Admitting the fact that prime responsibility lies on our shoulder as a parent, social isolation of children at home should not go unchecked behind the curtain of internet blessings. Country wise internet cafés should thoroughly be checked and brought under legal control.  On the other side, it is the state’s responsibility to introduce a legal framework about how to protect our children and hence our nation from the negative impact of internet.

The writer is a senior scientist/ researcher at ABB Corporate Research. He can be reached at: [email protected]