Strictly From A Moral Stance Would Society Be Better Off Without The Internet?

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1inICXC said:
Undeniably so. Relationships and friendships have become meaningless and empty thanks to facebook- the whole 13-30yr old demographic can attest to this…
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I am 23 years old, and strongly disagree with this.

I am a very shy person, who has a very hard time making friends face to face. As I think about the friends I do have, and I’m talking friends in real life here, I am shocked to realize that I met most of them online, often through Facebook.

through Facebook, I receive invitations to parties and events which I know I would not be invited to were it not for Facebook.

Facebook helps me remember peoples names, because I am able to find them after I meet them; this certainly is helpful in friendship building.

I know where you are coming from when you say this, and with the higher standard of friendship required before Facebook, I would literally have no friends at all. Facebook has saved me from MUCH loneliness. there is no doubt in my mind of that.
 
JimG said:
“The pornography industry has larger revenues than Microsoft, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, Apple and Netflix combined. 2006 Worldwide Pornography Revenues ballooned to $97.06 billion. 2006 & 2005 U.S. Pornography Industry Revenue Statistics, 2006 Top Adult Search Requests, 2006 Search Engine Request Trends are some of the other statistics revealed here.”

internet-filter-review.toptenreviews.com/internet-pornography-statistics.html
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Since porn got a boost with every new technology (the printing press, film, etc.) why not go ahead and ban those retroactively while you’re at it?

It’s not the medium. It’s our fallen natures, which will never change no matter how many media we ‘ban.’
 
Sailor_Kenshin said:
Since porn got a boost with every new technology (the printing press, film, etc.) why not go ahead and ban those retroactively while you’re at it?

It’s not the medium. It’s our fallen natures, which will never change no matter how many media we ‘ban.’
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Indeed. Isn’t Kama Sutra about 1,000 years old? What “technology” was in use then???
 
I see what you are saying. The internet is a great tool (it helped me do my research for college and stuff). I am also learning a lot on CAF. I enjoy emailing my family that lives a very far away. However, we all existed fine before the internet. We went to the library and looked in books for information. We called our friends and family.

Overall, I think that the internet is sort of like the TV. It has good parts and uses. The problem is when it becomes the CENTER of the home. People don’t eat supper anymore together. Everybody has their own electronics and is doing their own thing. 😦 And then, the internet can allow horrible stuff into the home ie. porn, violence, etc. That is scary stuff and it is nearly impossible to block 100%. That is the saddest of all, I think. 😦
 
Sailor_Kenshin said:
Since porn got a boost with every new technology (the printing press, film, etc.) why not go ahead and ban those retroactively while you’re at it?

It’s not the medium. It’s our fallen natures, which will never change no matter how many media we ‘ban.’
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I agree we can’t blame the media. As others have noted, the Internet has also boosted the availability of Catholic sites such as CAF.

Still, a few decades ago, the only way a kid could get pornography was to visit a newsstand which carried on the back shelf some porn magazines. Now, all it takes is a few clicks. Parents have their work cut out for them.
 
Step back several hundred years and ask yourself the same question about the printing press.

Fundamentally the same pros and cons, IMO.

Advances in technology and science require corresponding advances in wisdom and responsibility. The fact that we lag in the latter category is not a reason to revert in the former.
 
The internet is strictly what we make it. There is never going to be a true answer. Oh, and we can’t really blame how kids are these days just on technology. It comes down to parenting and a lot of generalizations.
 
Still, a few decades ago, the only way a kid could get pornography was to visit a newsstand which carried on the back shelf some porn magazines. Now, all it takes is a few clicks. Parents have their work cut out for them.

Yes, but if the parents would take the time to check around they would find out it takes a few clicks in your router to control this stuff.
 
JimG said:
Still, a few decades ago, the only way a kid could get pornography was to visit a newsstand which carried on the back shelf some porn magazines. Now, all it takes is a few clicks. Parents have their work cut out for them.
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They always did, because your first premise is inaccurate.

The kids did not need to themselves visit the porn shop; they could get access to porn from older brothers, friends, etc. And many did.

Video may have killed the radio star, but Internet did not kill any sort of “youth purity” that existed before it. No such thing existed then.
ICXC NIKA.
 
GEddie said:
They always did, because your first premise is inaccurate.

The kids did not need to themselves visit the porn shop; they could get access to porn from older brothers, friends, etc. And many did.

Video may have killed the radio star, but Internet did not kill any sort of “youth purity” that existed before it. No such thing existed then.
Code: 
 ICXC NIKA.
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They would first have to know what porn is. And how would they learn it?

I agree it takes just a click or two----and sometimes that’s accidental. I remember looking up the origins of a certain cartoon, and past the first two hits, everything was porn. I thought, wait, WUT?
 
GEddie said:
They always did, because your first premise is inaccurate.

The kids did not need to themselves visit the porn shop; they could get access to porn from older brothers, friends, etc. And many did.

Video may have killed the radio star, but Internet did not kill any sort of “youth purity” that existed before it. No such thing existed then.
Code: 
 ICXC NIKA.
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I recall visiting a downtown newsstand with my younger brother when we were both much younger, and well before the advent of the Internet. It was a newsstand that I’d patronized for years because they carried the science fiction magazines I wanted, along with a wide assortment of major city newspapers.

The porn had started out as a couple of shelves in the back, but over the course of the years had expanded its way to the front where, by the time I took my younger brother there, it occupied a brazen front table. The rest of the shop still had a wide variety of material. We got the magazines I wanted and left. He told me years later that he had been absolutely scandalized by the place and wondered why his big brother would take him to such a place.

Now, any kid with a computer can have access to much worse in a matter of seconds in the privacy of his own home.

Human nature hasn’t changed, but there’s no doubt that porn was a lot less prevalent then.
 
JeremyK said:
Yes, but if the parents would take the time to check around they would find out it takes a few clicks in your router to control this stuff.
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I have relatives who have no idea how to control either a router or a computer. In fact, I know one family whose 20 year old son has installed a family filter on the computer in order to keep his parents from screwing things up! He’s the only one who can authorize most computer changes!
 
Society would probably be better off without the Internet, but the same could be said of many other things, TV included.

On the other hand, the Word can be spread via the Internet to more folks than would be reached by traditional missionary work.

But overall, I agree that society would be better off without the Internet, but I would add ten more things to that list. Even for discussion purposes, it is such a moot point, because we could ask if society would be better without firearms, too, and the fact is that there are firearms, and have been for centuries, or, would society be better off it it were the year 1510. In some ways yes, and in other ways no.

Very tough to say, definitively, because none of us have the Big Picture as to what is good or bad for society. Not in detail
 
The irony of all those who say yes, on an internet forum, is just too awesome to not point out. :cool:

Anyway…
I say NO - and the only reason I say that is because of the ability of Faithful Catholics to reach out and support each other, band together for support and prayers, and knowledge sharing, teaching, learning, and growing in the Faith. Only a short few years ago Catholics who were desperate for orthodoxy and Tradition were in small clusters around the world - isolated and alone. Now they can reach out to each other in a way never possible. There is strengh in numbers, and I believe this will only serve to strengthen and grow the Church in very good ways.

The rest of the garbage out there - well, there is garbage anywhere, so it’s no different than anything else in the world from that perspective. Just stay out of bad neighborhoods and you won’t get mugged.

~Liza
 
I’d probably vote yes on this one. We’d probably be morally better off without TV too.
 
I don’t propose that it would actually be a good thing to eliminate the Internet even if such were possible. The only societies that attempt it are totalitarian ones. The Internet makes possible a wide array of communication and information, both moral as well as immoral.

I like it that Catholic Answers and many Catholic blogs and Catholic information are available. I don’t like it that children can be robbed of their innocence so much more easily.

Aside from morals, privacy is a concern. I’ve noted in several recent trials that an accused’s search history was used against them. While it may aid in convictions, I worry about the implications.

In times past, someone might have gone to the library and used the card catalog to research nuclear weapons, plutonium critical masses, methods of murder or any number of things for moral or immoral purposes. There was never any record of such searches nor could there be. Until the advent of computers, there was not even a record of books checked out.

Now a person can go on the Internet and research nuclear weapons—as I have done on occasion—or any other matter. But if a terrorist should build or use such a weapon, any such record of searches might make me a suspect, because no search is now private. And I don’t particularly trust Google or the Justice Department not to infringe on privacy.

I suppose the Internet would feel like a safer place for a free people if companies like Google, for example had a policy of saving nothing, or of deleting all informatioin about searches within 24 hours. But they don’t. They save everything. So, for that matter, does your smart phone, which makes a better tracking device than used to be available to intelligence agencies. Big Brother welcomes you.
 
No,because it’s just a medium like tv or video games are. Like many unsigned bands publish mp3’s in hopes of making it big and stuff.
 
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