Over the last few years, journalists and commentators alike have speculated on the effect of constant exposure to the internet at an early age. A selection of recent headlines illustrates the growing concern:

 

 ‘Too much internet use 'can damage teenagers' brains'

Excessive internet use may cause parts of teenagers’ brains to waste away, a study reveals.

 

'We Have Abandoned our Children to the Internet'

Young people are addicted to a virtual world that is designed to keep them hooked with little care for collateral damage

 

'Online porn and kids: It worries one in three most'

Almost one in three children say pornography is what bothers them most on the internet, with young children the most likely to be troubled by sexual images online.

 

The media coverage paints an alarming image. Apparently our unfortunate teenagers are staggering traumatised from their computers sporting rotten brains and litany of sexual disorders, all before the age of fifteen. It's a scary image, but that's all it is- an image. Deciding if and how to respond to this new dynamic depends on understanding it properly. With that in mind, I'll try and depart from the sensation and focus on the diagnosis in this essay.   

 

Alarmist articles about the effect the internet is having on children are nothing new. Indeed, they have become a staple of the weekend newspapers, and the articles are most often written by baby boomers whose black-and-white portraits radiate parental concern. It would be easy to dismiss this unease as the product of wowserism and helicopter parenting, but the issue they point to is a very real one.

 

For the first time in human history, we have a generation of people who have been exposed to the internet from the beginning of their childhood. Taking into account the evolution of social media, there is a certain set of young people who have not experienced social interactions without the magnifying glass of constant peer scrutiny. Society might be evolving at a faster pace than our ability to cope. 

 

Wringing our hands at the abstract implications is neither original or productive. Instead, it's worth trying to specifically identify the effect that constant exposure to the internet can have on your personality.  

 

Despite the volumes of commentary, this is an uncertain field. In a sense, our current generation of digital natives are guinea-pigs in a world-wide experiment. In 1898, a German medical student by the name of Hermann Rottmann made the first recorded theoretical link between smoking tobacco and instances of lung cancer. Research continued, but It wasn't until 1956 that a 20-year survey based on the testimony and records of  over 40,000 British doctors that the link was irrefutably confirmed. What we can say for certain is that incessant exposure to instant communication is having a very noticeable effect on the generation that have grown up exposed to this sort of technology. The internet is young; in a worst-case scenario, the concerns we are developing now could be compared to those of young Hermann Rottman. The unprecedented lives of these digital natives could be the catalyst for a major evolution of our society. They could also represent the first cough of something far more damaging. A hundred years from now, society might be unrecognisable. It's worth examining the implications of this brave new world. 

 

So what exactly is the Internet doing to us? 

 

 

Desensitisation

 

 

Anybody who has spent some serious time exploring the depths of the internet will tell you that you can find pretty much anything you like on it. This is not a matter of careful investigation- a basic Google search will produce a variety of dismembered corpses in all their unwound splendour.

 

I remember when I first stumbled upon this part of the internet. In earlier days, this content was held within the depths of certain forbidden websites. Now, I have videos of people being stabbed to death in my Facebook news feed. Being exposed to all this horror and violence has undoubtedly had a desensitizing effect on me. Voyeurism has quietly triumphed over empathy in the way we consider these images.

 

A good example of this phenomenon is the ‘Fight Depot’, a particular facebook group whose gonzo-style videos of street violence have achieved stunning popularity. A recent post was entitled “Drunk girl attacks guy then bites his lip off”. That video received over 1,800 likes. Marty Grey (identity NOT protected) was inspired to write:

 

Marty Gray I'm not one for hitting chicks but I'd happily knock that cunt out

 

His co-subscribers clamored to agree with him:

 

Jack Anthony Hernandez There are a very times where a girl deserves to be hit

 

Of course, this sort of misogyny is nothing new on the internet. What makes it remarkable is that both commenters were happy to say these things under their own names. Apparently this outlook has become popular enough among certain digital natives that the even the mask of anonymity is no longer required.  

 

The effect of being exposed so consistently to violence is the deadening of our empathy response. Even if we feel no connection to the victim, the unspoken rules of society ask us to consider such acts abhorrent. It's a relatively universal social instinct to find random acts of violence objectionable (or at the very least not to be publicly encouraged). This is a matter of preserving the social fabric and protecting ourselves. After all, we wouldn't want to be the next victim of the lip-biting woman. Most of us would probably like to imagine that they would intervene if they saw something like that happening. Most of us, if asked, would probably say that they do not consider videos of real violence with real people getting hurt a form of light entertainment. But the view counts tell a different story. The likes tell a different story. 

 

Expressing shock and alarm at the desensitizing effect of violent media is a pastime as old as media itself. What makes the examples I am discussing particularly troubling is the distinction between reality and fiction appears to be blurring. Criticisms of violent films and games have often assumed that young people are unable to differentiate between fiction and reality. I've always disagreed with that- I was raised on a steady diet of violent computer games despite well-meaning interventions from my parents. One of the reasons that I could always tell the difference is that computer games are clearly fake, a diverting fantasy designed to be enjoyed. The difference between Grand Theft Auto and the material on the fight depot is reality. On the fight depot, real violence is the entertainment. It's edited, it's a click away, and it's exciting. Perhaps when both are being presented in equally appealing mediums, that line between illusion and reality is a little more blurry.  

 

It's worth noting that exposure to this media is becoming the norm rather than the exception. Obviously, this material has never been more available. Accessing it from time to time is only a demonstration of the power of curiosity. There are a few effects that being consistently exposed to electronic depictions of extreme violence could potentially have on developing minds.   

 

 

Empathy Burn-out

 

 

The audience of this type of media is significantly less likely to feel connected to victims of violence. One explination for this deadening phenomenon is the reality that the human psyche, presumably by design, is only capable of processing a certain amount of horror and tragedy. I can only speculate that after a certain point strong emotional reactions to death are suppressed because clear thinking is probably necessary for survival when you are surrounded by dismembered body parts. This is presumably an evolutionary response designed for self-preservation. This ability to disconnect switches on when confronted with the unimaginable, real or pixellated.  

 

Internet violence, by its nature, does not deal in consequences. Because watchers have not been exposed to the long-term effect of these actions, they will be less likely to view violent acts as inherently abhorrent. Instead of condemning the situation and participants, watchers will be more likely to reduce any violence to a gruesome display of dominance and speculate on who was in the ‘right’. We see this time and time again in the comments to these videos, including the ones above. Violence as public entertainment is nothing new, but rarely has it starred so many unwilling participants.  

 

 

Legitimising Voyeurism

 

 

I am going to make a direct moral statement here. I believe it is wrong to crowd around a fight and encourage the combatants to mutilate each other for your voyeuristic entertainment. The only real exception would be legitimate combat sports, which I believe lie on a very different moral spectrum. That aside, arguing against the bystander effect is neither controversial or new. Most people would probably agree with my earlier statement.In fact, standing by while somebody receives a beating and doing nothing can be associated with encouragement. The current montage of violence we are exposed could condition us to stand by and see what happens when we see violence taking place. A good example of this is our instinct to film and share these events. The fight depot could not exist without contributors. It's a platform for violence, not a producer. It is a sad reality that witnesses to violence often reach for their phones not to call the police and stop the attack, but to record it so it can be shared with the wider world. 

 

The Deviant Norm

 

No examination of the effects of the internet would be complete without an investigation of pornography. It is inevitable that young teenagers will develop a healthy sexual curiosity as they reach maturity. Never before, however, have they had such a fertile landscape for their imaginations to explore. 

 

 

When I was a young teenager, I remember clandestinely trading penthouse magazines with my classmates. Although it was scandalous at the time, the material seems blasé in comparison to most internet porn. Those days are gone, and it's no longer realistic to presume innocence when an internet connection is available. 

 

Sexual curiosity is perfectly natural and the search for titillation equally inevitable. However, the effect of the ‘anything now’ nature of the internet is that the weird and wild fringes of human sexuality have been brought firmly to the center. Differentiating between the acceptable and deviant is a difficult task for somebody whose sexuality is still in a formative stage.

 

Some view this disintegration of society’s squeamishness as a form of progress. They might argue that for too long, humanity has shuttered important parts of their psychological make-up. Truly embracing every area of sexual desire leads to a more fulfilled and liberated person. Sex is different now. In an age of reliable contraception (something that has existed for less than 100 years) the full realisation of our personality should involve the full exploration of our sexual desires. Our taboos are rooted in a world where sex is a high-stakes exchange with very real implications for the larger community. The world has evolved, and our attitudes to sex need to catch up. The buffet of hard-core pornography online is just evidence of the revolution. 

 

There's a lot of merit to this argument. There are also some serious problems with it when you consider developing sexualities. Assuming the person engaging with the pornography has a mature perspective on what it offers is naive. For instance, reflecting on a BDSM scene, a mature adult might realize that the power discrepancy is designed as a simulacrum of a titillating fantasy for all involved. However, for an immature mind the message might be completely misinterpreted.

 

As I mentioned previously, distinguishing between reality and illusion can be difficult for anyone. The internet has an interesting way of blurring those lines. Sexual excitement can be confuse reason even further. It's very possible that a young person might interpret that BDSM scene very differently. A real, rather than simulated power imbalance could easily become the source of sexual excitement. From there it might be a few short steps to emulating that domination and violence as they pursue sexual satisfaction in their own lives. The wider context of simulation as titillation could be easilybe replaced by a more predatory mode of satisfaction. It can be very difficult for mature adults to differentiate between what is real and what is fake in pornography. This is often the source of excitement itself- the realer the porn, the more exciting it is. Asking our young people to make this complex distinction alone could be very dangerous.    

 

It's worth noting the inevitability of this realisation. This is not a what-if scenario, and there's really nothing you can do to prevent a digital native from accessing pornography on the internet. Curiosity is incredibly powerful, particularly when you are young. With that in mind, some sort of guidance to decoding the powerful messages of pornography is important. What form this guidance takes is worthy of discussion at the highest level.   

 

Pornography, even in its more extreme forms, is not by nature misogynistic. It is, however, easily misinterpreted. The digital native could be lead to believe that because the entire tapestry of human sexuality is available online, it should also be available in the real world. This is not mutating fiction into reality. Porn is not reality, but it's not fiction either. This leaves our digital natives in a very confusing landscape.

 

 

What Next?

 

 

This is certainly not an argument for censorship or withdrawal. It's worth finishing on a positive note. The next generation of humanity will be the most literate and educated in all of human history. If anyone can cope with these problems, it will be them. Never before have so many known so much. Evolution is accelerating at unprecedented speed, and history has taught us that social evolution can overcome most barriers. It's easy to view the information age as an untarnished achievement. We should celebrate; it's remarkable how technology has changed us.

 

But it's also worth considering the effect of the internet on a developing psyche that is constantly submerged in this environment. It is possible that in the future the internet will be seen as much of a cause of social decay as it is a force for progress. It's also possible that the sort of commentary represented in the headlines above will become comparable to the most laughable examples of Victorian prudery. The weight of history is almost impossible to define when you inhabit the moment as we do. In the future, the terms that we use to discuss the internet revolution might be defined by our response to the problems I have described here.  

 

 

 

 

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