The Internet and Who We Have Become: A Look at Homointerneticus

On Thursday the 18th of February, 2010, BBC posted a documentary on their website tagged “The Virtual Revolution 4: Homointerneticus”. Homointerneticus is a term coined to describe a current shift in human behaviour of learning and growing from natural experience, to a state of learning that is very much dependent on the Internet. Dr. Aleks Krotoski, the presenter takes the viewer into an exploratory journey on the internet’s true role and purpose in human society.

Over the past few years, there has been a growing fear that the internet is fast taking over the minds of people. People are spending hours doing more on the web than they would any other activity in their daily lives. They surf the net constantly, watching movies, reading gossip, chatting with friends, doing shopping, sending e-mails, you name it; their dependency on it growing more with time.

According to Dr. Aleks Krotoski, the web’s revolutionary effects on humans can be found in South Korea, considered to be the world’s most wired nation on earth. Children over there as young as three years of age can be found using the internet. Reports of internet addiction are prevalent amongst South Korea’s youth. Dr. Krotoski reveals that according to research, 62% of the population’s 3-5 years olds are on the internet roughly 8 hours every week, twice the exposure by British five year olds. The South Korean government figures on the other hand show that close to 210,000 children are affected by the internet’s pull, many of which spend 18 hours online each day. 80% of those afflicted in this group need medication to treat their addiction while 20% need to be hospitalized.

Internet addicts can be described as people who spend an unhealthy time on the internet, either for productive or unproductive purposes. In the documentary, Dr. Krotoski highlights the effects of the internet on South Korea’s young, but these kids are not the only ones affected in general. According to The Center for Internet Addiction (2010), surveys reveal that some employees have lost their jobs because they spend too much time on the internet for non-job related issues. 1 in 5 of these employees view online pornography at work and 70% of adult web sites are hit between the hours of 9-5. Not only do employees surf sex sites but they also visit sport sites, bid on eBay, trade stocks, shop online, and send jokes to co-workers. This type of misuse not only hurts employee job performance but increases threats to information security and drains valuable network resources.

From the net’s addictive nature, Krotoski explores the manner in which the internet affects the way people think in the long run. According to a Neuroscientist Susan Greenfield of Oxford University, the internet may be distorting children’s sense of reality, discouraging them from learning between action and consequence. Kids may stay in a “fantasized” state where there are no rights or wrongs, just actions. On the internet, one can do anything, say anything and get away with it, but that is not true in real life situations. However, because of the illusion provided by the internet, most young people think they can do the same in real life situations and go scot-free. This in the long run will contribute to the rise in the number of delinquents.

In the same vain, Dr. Krotoski examines the internet’s negative ability to make people become lazy thinkers. The web's design which is based on the foundation of “associative thinking”, in this case use of hyperlinks, encourage internet users to move through web pages barely skimping through or internalizing the information they are exposed to. Nowadays people hardly read books because this “hyperlinked-network” provides an easy way to access information even when this information is not provided to the fullest as would in a book. This is overall damaging to the development of the human brain which is designed for more rigorous activity.

In conclusion, the internet can be referred to as man’s leading invention in the 21st century. It is a powerful tool in advancing human knowledge and capacity. However, if used wrongly, it could be the very thing that damages the very essence that created it in the first place, the human mind.

References:

The Center for Internet Addiction Recovery
http://www.netaddiction.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=91&Itemid=105 [ 28 February 2010]

BBC (2010) “The Virtual Revolution 4: Homointerneticus” [online]’available from’ http://bbc.co.uk/virtualrevolution [28 February 2010]