People’s morality and behaviors as well as their personalities have been negatively influenced by the introduction of cyberspace and Internet communication technology. This is mainly due to the non-strictness of the rules that have been set to govern the use of cyberspace. It has been noted that most of the instances which have directly or indirectly influenced negatively the behaviour of a virtual community member have been due to non-conformity to already pre-set ethics while in the cyber world.
Through Impersonification while communicating through the Internet, people have changed or temporarily assumed other people’s personalities and behaviors virtually. In cyberspace, you do not need to live with a person to learn his or her behavior or personality, despite the possibility of getting to know this “unknown person” very well. A person gets to know the personality of the colleague on the space by analyzing the way he or she communicates and argues his or her opinions (Hoven 1996).
In Internet communication, there are requirements to describe yourself by entering your personal data. A person’s education level, hobbies, profession, heroes and role models, and dressing style really talk about how the person’s personality is. In most cases, there are no mechanisms for ensuring that the correct information is entered. This is where the issue of impersonification arises.
This is because the information given here could be defining a person’s true personality or could just be their own created imagination. Several, different incidences of impersonification have been reported of people trying to appear as to be having a different personality in the virtual world while the natural person’s true personality is a direct contrast to his or her image created in cyberspace.
Millions of people have used the Internet as a center of expressing their ‘madness’ in the way they perceive things. Some can use it to post attacking articles to organizations or to renowned personalities (Turkle 1999). People have been molested by unknown cyber environment members who could in the real environment be either known or known or unknown to them. Such attacks of words or molestations are on a bitter note, accessible to millions of innocent cyber world community members.
Opinions posted here can influence the attitudes of people. At times, people violating the pre-set ethics and laws governing the use of the Internet and cyberspace may be banished and their identity revealed to the public as a form of punishment by shaming them. Sometimes, they could do this by illegally or secretly stealing the passwords of their colleagues who are genuine participants in online meetings and forums. Using faked or stolen passwords to participate in a forum makes people post whatever they may wish regardless of what it may cost because they know the impacts of their actions will not come directly to them (Hugh 1995).
The rest of the registered members of the forums understand the ideas posted by this illegal member as those of the good member. They may start wondering how abrupt he may have changed his personality or attitude towards various issues. When this is unbelievable to many, they may request a confirmation from the member, as to whether he actually posted such materials. This is how most intruders in online meetings have been captured.
A person may possess as many personalities as the number of meetings and conferences he may be registered in or participated in the cyber discussions (Wolbert 2001). In a given religious meeting with pastors, a person may be perceived to be very religious and respectful from the way he argues his points with support from the religious scriptures. You can adopt a civilized mode of communicating your ideas considering that other virtual members present in the virtual environment meeting are knowledgeable religious leaders. The in the following forum, let us say it about sex education and peer opinion sharing about the issue, the kind of personality a person is likely to create is quite different.
He or she may choose to use vulgar language in describing may be the sex position he or she like best, why you like fat chicks or guys and not the slim ones, the sex experience that one will live to remember, and things of this sort which the youth in the forum would like to hear. This person’s ideas make him be perceived to be having a sexy lifestyle and a sex-monger personality. His behavior appears to be always in pursuit of love makers.
His testimonies on how he has been doing sex or what he did after smoking bhang create a bad boy personality. Interestingly, the person is highly likely not to have been involved in any sexual activity for the last two or so years, never have gone to any theology college but has just read the opinions from various publications. What is important to realize is that whether he is knowledgeable of not, his or her ideas and the two contrasting personalities in the virtual environment about one person in the natural environment, this person has contributed to the promotion of moralities in the first forum while the same person has contributed to the promotion of immorality in the second youth sex information sharing forum.
Every day, millions of people access the Internet. It is therefore worthy to know that what you are posting on the Internet, several million eyes are watching it. An idea that appears to be convincing about an immoral thing can result in altering the way people have been perceiving immoral things. This should be thought of from the perspective of the number of people who are likely to be reached in a single day and the number of people whose personality, way of thinking, and behaviors are influenced within that same day.
Statistics hold that over seven hundred million people do access the Internet every day and such a convincing argument is likely to be read by over fifty million people in a single day (Turkle 1999). Taking the example of the debate on the use of opium, if a youth who is a medical doctor explicitly explains the benefits of taking the substance mentioning things like painkilling effects, more youth who initially viewed the smoking of this drug as immoral are likely to change their attitude and turn to the behavior of taking the drug. This is in contrast to the universal truth known about this substance in that although it has these few benefits, it does more harm than the benefits obtained and should in any case be avoided.
Each community learns the culture its ancestors have passed on to new generations. There are defined ways of carrying out friendships, courtships, and marriage rituals. Any negative outcomes of these activities are solved in well-defined procedures. But the introduction of modern methods of communication through the use of the Internet and cyberspace meetings have led to the perversion of the ways of doing these cultural activities.
Cyber hooking may be an easy thing to do, but its complexity comes when complications arise from this mode of socialization. It becomes very difficult to solve problems arising from cyber hooking because, for one, it is not possible to get the exact physical person to talk with and negotiate. One can frustrate a partner in the virtual world. Those who have disregarded the moral teaching of their culture on dating and marriage and adopted other people’s cultures have suffered this problem.
Cybersex can easily influence the behavior of the perpetrator of this act. Psychologically, the behavior of a person or what a person talks about is what he thinks and is directly influenced by what he sees, hears, and feels (Ward, Rogerson 1996). On logging in to a cyber sex website, the material a person watches and hears has a direct impact on his or her behavior. Cybersex can be perpetrated through the exchange of sex stimulating ideas or by the use of graphics designed to act as a virtual sex partner.
Persuading people to purchase sex toys online is also a way of enhancing Internet sex. Clicking a supposedly erogenous spot of this graphic makes its animation response as if it was a real person. The graphic movement is likely to send you wild and an instant feeling of doing sex with a real person. Furthermore, it is possible to alter the physical looks of your cyber partner to exactly fit those of your most adored chick or the guy whom you have done sex with before or you have been wishing you could date. After virtually doing this sex with your virtual partner, one may proceed to the physical partner.
The way he or she persuades the partner is a reflection of his personality, which may not be true, but just an influence of what he or she has just been watching. The physical partner may wonder how your personality changed abruptly from the kind of person he used to know. This is just what the provisions of cyberspace can cause in the real world. It has been to the opinion of many that this cybersex can lead to actual satisfaction to the real person, thus bringing a feeling of relief of sex urge. This has been argued to be a possible way of driving people to sexual abstinence, and thus a viable tool for controlling the current world threat to humanity by the impact of HIV/AIDS (Robin 1996).
However, psychologists argue that the act of performing cybersex only leads to sexual arousal of the person doing it, and in most cases, it leads a person to do the actual sex. The possibilities are endless with the virtual sex partner in the cyber world. If the virtual graphic partner looks better to you when it is on fur or smooth skin or oily, you switch it to your preferred appearance. If a person has annoyed you, you may decide to murder him virtually and find a way of letting the person know about the murder. This person may respond by changing the behavior which led him or her to do an act that could cost his or her life, or could be apologetic, or could adopt a lifestyle that will avoid this potential rapist or murderer or enemy in the actual physical environment (Walker 1999).
Secret cyber dating of people who are already in relationships without the knowledge of their partners has led to broken marriages and friendships, especially these virtual friends have reached the step of meeting physically and maybe making love to one another (Hugh 1995). Online shopping for phonographic material has led to the violation of one community’s culture by another. For example, material posted on the net is accessible by everybody. Assuming consumption of phonographs is allowed by one culture but is unthinkable by another, then availing this material to people whose culture forbids it is a violation of that culture’s values ( Howard 2001). People’s behaviors are likely to be influenced negatively.
Being a partner in the cyber world can on the other hand lead to personal uplifting. Since there are millions of people watching and commending what others are posting, faulty facts have been challenged, lies have been recovered before they have negatively influenced people’s personalities. Ideas from people of bad intend are corrected on the net. People’s moralities, behaviors, and personalities have been built through accessing sessions of Internet counseling, relationships meetings, sex abstinence, dangers of drug use, abortions, family life, diet and proper nutrition, spiritualism, and other moral teachings (Hugh 1995).
Conclusion
One can benefit or lose by when joining the virtual world community. In most cases, members of this community obtain both effects. Generally, the negatives outweigh the positives. Internet obscenity should be checked to reduce the negatives. Strict laws should be put to check this violation of moral ethics. The materials that lead to a conflict of cultures should be filtered and never be let loose otherwise it will be promoting disparity among the world virtual and physical world single community subgroups.
References
Hoven, M., 1996, Cyberspace Ethics for Morality: Information Science Journal, ETHICOMP96 proceedings, Complutense Univ. Press, pp. 444 – 453.
Howard,R., 2001, The virtual community, Prentice H, NJ.
Hugh, M, 1995, Self presentation in the electronic life, Trent University, Nottingham.
Robin, H., 1996, Graphic construction: On-line fantasy , John Wiley, New York.
Turkle, S., 1999, Cultural identity, CUP, Cambridge.
Walker, P., 1999, “Critical concepts in Cultural Modernity” Modernity, London, Routledge. vol. II P. 95- 109.
Ward, T. & Rogerson, S., 1996, Global Information Ethics, Opragon Press, NY.
Wolbert A., 2001, Life on screen: Age of the Internet, McGraw Hill, New York.