Our ancestors said: “There is a medicine in a drop, but poison in a spoon”, and were absolutely right. Even the most positive phenomenon of our life risks to turn to the negative one if there is too much of it. Modern people have so many temptations. The usual bad habits are smoking and alcohol, but one of the most exotic addictions is dependence on the Internet.
The Internet has taken an improper place in our houses. It monopolized and unified our spiritual life. In the ancient times a home hearth was the center of the family. Then it was replaced by the table, gathering all members of the family after a working day. At present, this place is occupied by a computer and the Internet. However, it does not unite, on the contrary, it separates the family members. Everyone is captivated by own virtual world.
The Internet created a new kind of people - homo mediums - people, exhausted from a continuous social networking, like from a continuous drunkenness, people, who cannot put borders and the filter of the external information; they acquire it in a crude kind - without any critics, any differentiation, just by mechanical memory. Thus, semantic memory becomes dull, creative powers become weakened.
People think by means of words; people are called “verbal beings” in patrology. The Internet learns to think by sensual images, brings up absent-mindedness and impressionability. The soul becomes coddled, sensual and hysterical.
The Internet becomes the concentration of passions; the passion is inseparable from the sensual images. An ascetic struggle against passion is a clarification of soul from the imaginations and representations. The passion is shaped in seductive pictures.
The Internet gives a set of the forms for sensuality. It weakens the intellectual forces of people. Mind should practice, search, overcome obstacles like an athlete trains the muscles.
There are the following awful consequences of the Internet:
A fall of visual acuity;
The Internet causes psychological dependence, the so-called “psychological addiction”;
The regular hobby for pornography in the worldwide networks, which has gained the increasing popularity among young men, can lead to the sexual problems;
From 5 to 10 % of the Internet users suffer from a pathological addiction to the Internet. They are tightened by the network activity so much that it affects their education, work and private life. Often they abstain from food and drink for a long time.
Internet offers the same food to tens millions of people. Therefore, people become very much alike, similar not in the unity of spiritual love, but in the unity of monotony; people lose the interest to each other.
Internet hypnotizes. The streams of images, bright and sated passions, both visual, and acoustical enslave mentality; the consciousness becomes impeded, the person turns to the Internet medium, perceiving its hypnosis.
However, there is the way out. A famous sociologist Wendy Griswold says in her book “Cultures and Societies in Changing World” that the “cultural diamond” can help to resist the negative impact of the Internet:
“Cultural diamond” is as an analytical device for investigating the …