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The Individualistic Environment of the Internet

The digital creates an environment in which individuals are able to ignore forms of challenge to their views and create their own cult of individual. Today, individuals can remove ideas that disagree with their own from the public forum via a range of techniques. Internet users can seclude themselves from the outside world and become immersed in a world that reflects their opinions rather than truth and fact, as their ideas are legitimised and facts decried as "fake news". But how does the internet do this, and is the internet entirely to blame for this?

How we use the Internet

In Western civilisation, a social shift is taking place, the results of which are too vast to truly comprehend, especially within one sentence. The arrival of the internet as a staple of everyday life has changed the way people communicate, organise their days, entertain themselves and more. The internet is used to bring power to homes, find people new jobs and even to discover potential soulmates. It has become not only a staple of daily life, but integral to it, with users who are disconnected from it for long periods of time feeling disconnected from the world itself.

The Importance of Debate

Debate is vital to democracy. Debate is also vital to co-existence and co-operation with others, even when you find you might disagree with them. The internet does allow this. With so many people connected, people are able to share their different experiences and both the joys and hardships that they face. Anonymity may make a user less trustworthy, but it may also protect them and allow for their voice, that would normally be censored, to be heard around the world. That is why the #MeToo movement was able to thrive on social media, as well as suppressed voices in the recent Hong Kong protests to be heard on the other side of the world. Barnidge (2018) argues that political disagreement on social media is not so different to political disagreement in face-to-face conversation. However, whilst this may be true of more typical conversational debate, it ignores the taboo subjects that are rarely discussed outside of the internet, due to the need for anonymity. The internet allows for more honest debate in which people are able to speak freely without damaging their public face.

Why Are We So Open Online?

Whilst all internet users reside within cyberspace (Jordan, 1999), it is important to remember that beyond certain examples (such as Skype or FaceTime), we are unable to directly see one another within said cyberspace. We are instead represented by our avatars, sometimes pictures of us, or the things that we like and with pictures of ourselves or again, something we enjoy, these avatars are our personalities condensed into an image and a name. What they are not is human. Because of this, when we interact with one another, through our avatars, within cyberspace, we do not see another person, only another avatar. This can lead to something of a dehumanising effect and we become less aware of the person we are communicating within behind the avatar. As John Gilmore notes: "On the internet, nobody knows you at all, on the Internet nobody knows what your race is or your sex." (This was later popularised by the internet meme On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog, a cartoon by Peter Steiner of the New Yorker). Because of this, we become less inclined to see that person as someone within the real world. As proven by Milgram (1963), when we are unaware of the individual, we are less likely to care about inflicting pain on to them. Perhaps then this is why harassment online runs so rampant and we are so quick to attack those with whom we disagree. This has led to a perceived break down in discourse as people become disenfranchised from debate. The internet age has come to be seen as a time in which debate in inescapable and constant when they do not want to constantly defend their own opinions or attack the opinions of others, instead wishing to simply share their viewpoint with like-minded individuals.

Block Buttons

Most social media platforms have a system in place that allows for the blocking of other users. Although it is dependent on the website as to what exactly the block function entails, the block feature normally allows for one user to prevent the content uploaded by another user from appearing on their profile. Social media companies do not comment on when and how the block feature should be used but instead appear to allow the user base to determine for themselves what would constitute a reason for using the block feature. What these companies do comment on is their ability to block an individual’s access to their site, usually through the report function.

The reason given by social media companies tends to remain the same, whether it be Facebook who claim they block individuals from the platform to: “Combat harmful conduct, and protect and support our community” or Twitter who state they remove content on grounds of: "copyright or trademark violations, impersonation, unlawful conduct, or harassment.” Perhaps then users should be using these parameters to determine what they block on the platform. Perhaps the largest issue with these guidelines however is the use of “harmful” in Facebook’s case and “harassment” in the case of Twitter as both of these terms and what is required of them is subjective. Whilst there are obvious cases of harassment such as death threats, it is up to the user to determine whether or not something like name calling is to be considered harassment. Because of this, what we unfortunately find now is that the block function is used by individuals, not just to block those who harass them, but more simply to block those who they disagree with.

Discourse is beginning to break down and this is a danger to Western society’s foundational material. As Mutz (2006) tells us: "Political disagreement is an important concept to democratic theory because it is believed to promote tolerance of the other side." So, the question arises: does the block function, in its ability to close off debate without resolution or compromise, pose a threat to democracy? Already the US court system has had to make a legal decision regarding the block function on social media regarding President Donald Trump and his personal Twitter account. Judge Naomi Budgewald ruled in a lawsuit against President Trump that it was unconstitutional for the sitting president to block Twitter users who were critical of his presidency as it violated the first amendment to the US Constitution. The First Amendment exists to protect the liberties of free expression that were important to the young democracy and remain important to democracies around the world today. Yet the block function was viewed by the court as a threat to this basic democratic function. We now have a situation whereby people are closing down debate, in part because it is so constant, and instead choosing to create echo-chambers in which their viewpoints are never challenged and instead regularly validated.

Echo-Chambers

An echo-chamber is the name given to a space, cyber or physical, in which the views of an individual are to be shared without critique and instead praised by like-minded individuals who are saying similar things. These occur when social media users create accounts and interact with other accounts, providing they agree entirely with what the other accounts say. This leads to users no longer reading what they disagree with or what challenges them and instead reading only validation for their beliefs. Therefore, when an individual encounters a text with which they disagree, they refuse to see its merits and instead use the validation they received from the echo chamber to disregard the challenging text (this is partially what has allowed the phrase “fake news” to become more widely circulated even when the text is objectively factual).

Deplatforming

Deplatforming is the process in which a large group of social media users come together and pressure the platform provider to remove another user from the platform. This can take place across the media (such as TV and Physical Publishing) but is particularly found within social media. Because so many people are willing to discuss their opinions more freely, as previously discussed, they are more likely to anger other users who may come to disagree with them. The offended users may sometimes believe that the topic this user is discussing is one that is too harmful to continue on the platform and so will protest the platform, asking it to remove the offender. What this often leads to however is further division as users begin to take sides between either the offender or the offended, leading to more aggressive and uncomfortable debate then began. If the offended group are successful in deplatforming the offending user, a further issue may occur: the idea may go underground. This tends to occur when ideas are considered taboo by larger society. Individuals who agree with this view but feel that they are not safe in discussing it within certain parts of the internet, will instead begin to discuss it elsewhere (usually on less monitored websites such as 4chan). Here echo-chambers form and grow, allowing the taboo idea to be more widely circulated and validated.

The Seclusion of the Internet

Perhaps the biggest fear to have grown out of the internet and its continued involvement in our lives is the fear of addiction. Internet addiction is not currently a recognised health problem by the World Health Organisation, yet it continues to be considered an issue, particularly in the media. According to Rees, Wilridge et al. (2019), "PSU (Problematic Smartphone Use) was reported in approximately one in every four CYP (Children and Young People) and accompanied by an increased odds of poorer mental health." The study further went on to argue that this was leading to an unhealthy mental health and decrease in social skills. The internet secluded us from the physical world, but it also has the ability to seclude us in the virtual world...

The internet, in its vastness, has created a series of pathways for every individual who uses it and that are each unique to them. Whilst we are all connected, and our paths might cross more easily, so too has our individual life paths never appeared so obvious. No two people interact on the same sites, in the same order for the length of their individual lives. We have become more secluded on our individual pathways, sharing less time together in the same places. This has only furthered emphasised our individualistic nature, as we become more engrossed in our own interests and care less for those around us (both physically and virtually). Some people may determine that the people around them are worthless and become so attached to just a few of their beliefs, that they will do anything to protect them.

The Dangers of Seclusion

Arguably the most frightening aspect of the internet is its ability, not just to connect us to individuals, but to connect us to the most dangerous individuals in our society. Extremist groups have easier access to their next recruits. YouTube is the most common place for propaganda to be found, with the site having to regularly undertake new methods to take down such material (thereby raising a free speech debate around extremist material and its similarity with hate speech). Pedophilia is also able to run more rampant online. Children often have access to the internet unsupervised and the seclusion they feel (particularly teenagers who already tend to feel secluded) is an easy target for pedophiles who look to give their targets validation before exploiting their trust and naivety.

The Seclusion of the Novel

But the idea of young people spending long periods of time engrossed in something, not pertaining to the real world, is not a new phenomenon. Novels have long had a similar effect and the child and teenage audiences have led to the creation of book markets specifically targeted towards them. Books, like the internet, transport people to another dimension, where they are able to explore another world. This transportation sees readers become, typically, more secluded as they search for somewhere quiet to read and choose to stay away from family members and friends for a few hours to enjoy their imaginary world.

Furthermore, whilst the words read in a novel may be identical, what we envision is not. A novelist is only able to go so far in transplanting their vision into their reader's head. What we therefore get is a system like the internet in which we live in an alternate world, for purposes of escapism, for long periods of time. Veltkamp even argues that this transportation increases our empathy saying: “fiction influences empathy of the reader, but only under the condition of low or high emotional transportation into the story.”

The idea of cyberspace is really not so different from the imaginary worlds we create when reading so why would the effects on children's brains, and their ability to emerge themselves into it, be so different? In fact, is it not more likely that the positive effects of fiction are also to be found due to the emotional transportation of the internet?

Of course, with a novel, children are unable to communicate with individuals who might exploit them, but they also miss out on communicating with friends and developing physical world bonds outside of their family. Though it should also be remembered that if children have a healthy amount of screen or reading time, then they should also have opportunities to explore relationships in the physical world be it in school-time, or other events aimed towards children.

Can it really be said that the seclusion created by the internet is so different from the seclusion created previously by the novel? Humanity has always strived to escape to somewhere different, the internet is arguably a new way to attain this.

Internet Gaming

Perhaps the most immersive form of entertainment through the internet is gaming and particularly the game Fortnite. Fortnite belongs to a fairly new genre in gaming known as the Battle Royale genre of games in which players (usually 100) are dropped into an environment and must pick up items on the island in order to survive, all the while fighting to become the last player alive. Fortnite is the most popular of this genre with an install base of over 250 million users across the seven platforms it is available on and at a recent World Championships, the 16-year-old winner took home $3 million. However, the game's popularity has led to countless reports claiming it causes violent behaviour in the children that play it, as well as other anti-social behaviours that come from long periods of seclusion. Is the game's main mode, in which players must defend themselves from other users for risk of losing, a rather helpful analogy in discussing how secluded people can become on the internet? Quite possibly. Even the game's modes in which players can fight alongside other players encourages tribalism as they still must fight over players in order to stay in the game.

Alternatively, however, Fortnite should perhaps be commended. After all, the game also encourages creativity (especially with its unique building aspect), co-operation (with regards to its co-op team-based modes) and puzzle solving. Furthermore, the game allows for new friendships, has created a new form of employment for several of the game's best players (several of whom have played the game as part of charity fundraisers) and created an exciting new brand for kids and even parents to bond over (with some parents even playing together once their children have gone to bed). Just like many entertainment franchises, Fortnite creates something well known that encourages people to create and share their ideas with others, creating and reinforcing friendships.

Not all internet gaming revolves around conflict either. Many games such as the Animal Crossing and Pokémon series have online elements that encourage players to work alongside each other. Whether this be building towns in Animal Crossing, capturing the various eponymous creatures in Pokémon or simply exploring the worlds of both games, these games, as well as others, offer players the chance to co-operate and succeed together.

The Information Superhighway

The internet is one of the defining inventions of the 20th Century and has had a transformative effect on Western society in the 21st Century. Communication and the spread of information has become available, quite literally, at the speed of light and on a global scale, especially among the Western World. These individualistic cultures are more connected and understanding between them has become easier.

This has created a cultural monotony as the various Western societies share their values more freely than ever. The internet is a connecting service that allows for quick and easy access to information. It is worth bearing in mind that the internet is not a unique entity or a metaphysical reality but simply a tool that, whilst advanced, still requires human input.

Collectivist Culture and the Internet

Whilst Western civilisation is seen as an individualistic culture, other cultures have been identified as collectivist. These cultures typically involve a larger community aspect and see success not as the product of the individual, but of the larger community. The question now is: has the internet made these communities more individualistic? Unfortunately, the answer is inconclusive as many of these traditional communities tend to be more rural and therefore less connected to the internet, whilst the urbanised communities have already become westernised due to the need to adapt to the global market. Still, we can see that even the rural, traditional communities in second world and some third world countries have gained new access to the internet and use it in much the same way those in rural first world communities use it (that is to say, largely on an individualistic basis). The internet is allowing the movement of ideas more quickly than ever, much as empires did in the 19th and 20th centuries and with this comes a colonisation not of land and resources, but of thought as ideology can spread faster than ever (somewhat like Christianity did in 19th century Africa due to British missionaries). This colonisation can be seen, at least in part, when examining the growth of western social media companies within emerging nations. Already Facebook has over 139 million users within Africa and many of the issues the internet issues that are said to threaten Western civilisation, are said to be doing the same within Africa. There are fears that Facebook is “undermining democracy in Africa” as “fake news” starts to become more prevalent

The Arab Spring

In 2011, the Arab Spring occurred across the Middle East. Uprisings in nations such as Tunisia, Libya and Egypt began that saw to alter the regimes that had taken hold there. These nations have all in the past been described as more collectivist communities than Western society and yet social media was highly influential in the genesis of these revolutions. Several groups used social media to come together and organise larger protests with a strategic purpose. With the aid of social media, revolutionaries were able to garner support from first world nations, leading to a NATO response in Libya, as well as aid in several other North African and Middle Eastern countries. The impact of social media in this situation cannot be underestimated as several videos of demonstrations and atrocities led to the eyes of the world turning towards situations they had long previously abandoned. What should also be noted however is the fall out that followed the demonstrations. Today three countries, or one fifth of countries involved in the Arab Spring, remain locked in Civil War, in part because whilst groups were able to use social media to overthrow the larger governments, none held a majority or even a sizeable minority within the national populace. The divisions that were always there between people have become more obvious, just as they political divisions in Western democracies have grown in the past ten years, a trend that has been largely put down to social media’s influence.

The Individual Behind the Avatar

The internet is arguably the largest collaboration of human work in existence and has seen billions of people contribute to it, despite its young age. When we discuss the internet, we have to remember that the people behind it are ordinary people. The infrastructure of the internet may be held by the Silicon Valley elite, but those who use it and populate the internet with content are the user base. This user base uses the internet as an extension of their pre-internet society and whilst becoming more integrated within the internet, the line between these two societies has become more blurred.

A Distrust of New Things

The distrust of the internet can be likened to the distrust of the written word observed in Ancient Greece. Socrates argued that the written word would "create forgetfulness in the learner's souls." A similar argument that can be found today regarding the internet, due to its ability to recall information at a moment's notice (and has previously been made by Daniel M. Wegner and Adrian F. Ward). Yet perhaps it would be fair to say that these individuals feel threatened by the changing world as it challenges a society in which they were the most powerful. Whilst the written word did ultimately change our society, it largely began what we now call civilisation. Perhaps the internet will be just as revolutionary for our society and therefore, like the written word before it, just as unfairly distrusted. Perhaps we are on the precipice of a new age that shall see humanity and its existence transform in a new way that as of yet is unknown. Or perhaps this is just a fluke and we shall abandon the internet as we collectively determine it to be too dangerous to continue. A new form of communication is a rare phenomenon for humanity, it is up to us to decide whether to embrace or destroy it.

Is it all the Internet's Fault?

It would be easy to say that the internet has created a more divisive, vitriol filled social climate, but to say so would be to scapegoat the human condition. In truth, we do not like to read what we disagree with and we have a dislike of things that are too different to ourselves. When we disagreed with newspapers, we changed the newspaper we read. When we did not like the change, a novel had made to a character, we put the book down and we told others that we did not enjoy it. The digital is not a new creation that has made us dislike one another, it has simply amplified and sped up the rate at which we hear things, both contrary to and supporting our opinions. It is true then, the digital creates an environment in which individuals are able to ignore forms of challenge to their views and create their own cult of individual, but no more so than any other environment. When an environment is created in which people of different ideas come together, there is always a way for people to walk away from debate and look for those who reaffirm their beliefs. Neo-Nazism in Post-War America and Europe and Islamic extremism grew without the aid of the internet. They grew, as any extremism does, by targeting those without cause and giving it to them. The internet simply allows this to be done on a faster and larger scale today. In truth, the internet simply speeds up the terrible things that humanity are willing to say and do to one another. In other words: the digital is not the problem, humans are.

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