This article was published in The Citizen Newspaper on March 18, 2025
Shimbo Pastory
While the digital facility enabled by the internet has been of great impact in social and life dynamics globally, it has come with its own setbacks. Many of these are unnoticeable to those who have never lived without the internet, particularly worth of mention are the Gen Zs, Gen Alpha, and Gen Beta whose debut year is this 2025.
Abuse of the internet can be in a diverse spectrum, diversified into consumption as well feeding of the internet with materials. In terms of consumption, it can be considered an abuse of the internet when its potentials are not put to full use, or are redirected into the opposite of the good it can achieve.
For example, using the internet to polish one’s criminal behaviour is an abuse of a good resource that can be used to sharpen one’s understanding in positive things. This is classified as an abusive consumption. Alongside it is the use of internet to spread violent materials, pornography, targeting, harassing people, and cyberstalking.
It is also considered abusive consumption to expose oneself to deep cycles of fake news, misinformation, extremist ideologies and conspiracies which can negatively influence people, especially the youth as it feeds one’s ignorance, and ignites it even more, and triggers fear and social unrest.
On the other hand each of us can unknowingly be contributing abusively to the internet. There are of course many people whose project is just that, as they profit from it. We can however learn how to minimize this negative contribution to the internet as regular people.
Using the internet to deliberately propagate falsehood and false news and seeking to manipulate public opinion, pushing hate and divisive agenda, fuelling violence and discrimination are all abusive contributions which in return cause panic, violence and instability. Phishing, scams, frauds, etc. are also a negative contribution of the facility of the internet.
Creation of unethical and sexual content is a crucial matter of concern in this regard, as people device newer ways of making and distributing pornography, and obscene pictures in an unimaginable variety. The trend is growing locally, the verbalization of which is as well normalized as days go by. The chain reaction of course continues pornography is not an end in itself, but a prostitution marketplace. Eventually these circles become epicentres of sexually transmitted diseases and infections especially in our cities.
At the end of all these we discover that though the internet can achieve all these, it was not meant for such use. There are consequences to these decisions to consume from or feed abusively to the internet.
There is a rise today in physical and mental health issues, especially among young people which arise from or are groomed by abusive consumption of the internet and social media. To mention a few: depressions, anxiety, psychological distress, poor quality sleep, emotional vulnerabilities, as well as suicidal tendencies.
Many young people have already developed an attachment to the internet such that regular life is punctuated by unregulated peeking into the internet and social media, regardless of the seriousness of the business at hand.
Think of people who peek on the social media in classrooms, workplaces, places of worship, etc. just because they feel left behind in their internet usage and social media presence for the moment they spend doing those serious things. We can say they are affected by the ‘Fear of Missing Out’ (FOMO), using the conceptualization of Patrick McGinnis (2004).
Think of young people who have made social media a world, a lifestyle, and an escape way far from here-and-now reality. They would dumbscroll uncontrollably – without intention and without thought – even during shared meals, family time together, or conversations, making the internet a social hindrance to productive communication. To remedy this reality we must acknowledge it as a problem.
The impact of these abuses of the internet are far reaching and of impact to everyone. It is predictable, based on current exposure, that a good portion of the society in a decade ahead will be extremely misinformed, many adults will be extremely deformed morally, socially and psychologically, because of addictions, unrealistic desires and thinking frameworks, and normalized harmful consumption which with time kills one’s sense of ethics, values and shame.
Young people who are supposed to be at their best in using the internet to learn and for studies are damaged by its addictive use and end up having low attention span. The rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) though objectively good, adds salt to the wound, as it has become a saviour of lazy and purposeless students who would rather earn the grades than the knowledge.
In return, as we know, despite these weaknesses, the ‘system’ is unfairly blamed for producing misfits, or distorted fits, or ill-suited and completely mismatched workforce, whose learning is substandard or incongruent to the demands of the services that institutions out there offer. While the system of education has its own areas to improve it is not completely bad or poor; part of the problem is the holistic formation of the beneficiaries themselves.
It is time we wake up and learn to turn the internet into a force for good. It is hard to imagine how education was 100 years ago when every book has to be accessed in hard copy, every word checked in a dictionary, and every class attended physically. It is a sign of gratitude and respect when young people use these modern developments for good and for common good. We nonetheless need more digital literacy empowerment among our young people, showing them more and more the positive side thereof and motivating them to maximize it for good.
Shimbo Pastory is a Tanzanian advocate for positive social transformation. He is a student of Loyola School of Theology, Ateneo de Manila University, Manila, Philippines. Website: www.shimbopastory.com
