Shashwat Chaturvedi

Shyam Asher (name changed) suffers from a disease that he is unable to pronounce. Asher works as a manager at one of the major media groups in the country, and can be found online most of the time. For years, he had been suffering from a nagging backache, and almost gave up after trying out quite many doctors and remedies. One fine day, he decided to give Internet a chance to play doctor, he poured out all his ills to the Google search box and indeed the doctor quickly diagnosed his illness as ankylosing spondylitis.

Now, Asher leads an austere life as defined by Dr. Google, recently, he has given up eating wheat and does not have dairy products, also his food should be cooked in olive oil, much to the chagrin of his mother. Don’t they say, too much of something is a bad thing, and the Internet can be at times be that too much.

Over the last few years more and more people have come to depend on the Internet for everything right from buying stuff to finding succor for loneliness. And this dependency could create a lot of issues. The Internet is a great medium for everything and like any other medium has its pros and cons. Most of us are aware of the pros, lets take a look at the cons.

The macro and the micro

Broadly, Internet related problems could be bracketed under two headings, macro and micro. Cyber wars, where hackers from one country deface websites from another, for instance during the Kargil conflict, a lot of Indian websites were defaced. Or cyber crimes like phishing, wherein people’s banks accounts are attacked. There is also, the DOS (denial of service) attacks by hackers, where specific websites are targeted.

These are the broader threats that one faces on the Internet. On the other end of the spectrum, are micro issues, or people problems. Issues like addiction or overt dependency fall under this header.

Cyber wars and other

Internet poses a potential threat of the breakout of information warfare. Some countries have applied the Internet into military operations, have conducted mock attacks against other countries' networks, or have fabricated deceptive information harmful to other countries' military forces. At a time when the information networks have become an important infrastructure of the nation and the military, the information warfare will be a war without the explosives, a war with a high invisibility, low cost, international, and multi-area (political, military, economic, social and material resources) approach.

There had been a recent controversy with the Google Earth satellite images, which are being argued posing threat for the defense of India. Zoom-in at the Bangalore airport on Google Earth, and you will find the type of fighter jets India has parked there. Korean government had already banned the images of the defense areas of the country on the Google Earth.

Speaking from the Indian perspective, the New-Gen is distinctly different from the old one. Over time, attitudes seem to be undergoing drastic changes due to the impact of the online medium. The “I know all” attitude has come into being, as information is at hand. This arrogance is quite at display at the numerous schools and colleges in the metros.

Not only that, most of the college-goers today rely on the Internet for all their assignments; good old understanding and hard work has taken a beating. Students tend to ‘google’ rather than work their way out of academic problems. The effects could be quite bad. In this case, most faculty feel the CTRL-A, CTRL-C and CTRL-V attitude of the students would not help them in the long run.

Then there are the health issues like obesity and insomnia or sleeplessness. With most of the people getting online, working for long sitting down they tend to gain more weight over a period of time.

Impact on children

Frequent and prolonged Internet sessions may pose physical health risks for children. The most frequently cited are visual strain, harmful effects of radiation, and posture and skeletal problems. But apart from them, psychological issues can be quite dangerous. The availability of porn and the threat from strangers is on the rise, take the recent case of an Ahmedabad girl, who was lured to a private place through chat room by a man, who, along with his friends, attempted to molest her. Thankfully, she was saved. But imagine so many youngsters are at risk from such lecherous individuals.

According to a study conducted in Beijing, Internet corrupts people's minds, influences and changes moral perspectives and ethical values. Driven by the profits in the numbers of hundreds of millions of dollars, the pornography merchants across the globe have opened adult websites, massively producing various kinds of sex information. This development has led the Commerce Committee of the U.S. Senate to propose the "1995 Communications Act for Good Behavior" to prohibit sex crimes committed on the Internet.

Personally speaking

Are you hooked to the Net? Do you feel the compulsive need to check your e-mail every 15 minutes? If yes, it could just be the start of an addiction to the Internet. In the West, there have been many cases of families getting disrupted through virtual relationships developed on World Wide Web.

“While not yet defined as a true addiction, many are suffering the consequences of obsession with the online world, unable to control their use. From gaming to sexual and emotional relationships, the Internet is taking over lives. More and more people will be confronted with consequences such as divorce and physical symptoms which will force them to seek both medical and psychological treatment,” comments Diane Wieland, a clinical specialist based in the US.

In the US and Europe, cyber porn and online gambling and gaming are some of the factors that drive addiction. Recently, in Scotland, there was a case where a man was arrested for siphoning off a million pounds into his personal account to feed his uncontrollable online gambling habit. Experts say that Cyberaddiction is a condition akin to pathological gambling or compulsive shopping.

In India, Net addiction has not reached such alarming rates. But the proliferation of computers and the way in which email has replaced snail mail, has changed the way we communicate.

Some of the physical symptoms of addiction are dry eyes, sleep deprivation, carpal tunnel syndrome and headaches. Internet addicts may also get the "cyber shakes" when off line, exhibiting agitation and typing motions of the fingers when not at the computer.

Coming back to Asher, his family is still trying to cope up with his net addiction -- hoping, someday he will emerge out of Dr. Google’s care.

(With Priya Padmanabhan, Bhaskar Hazarika and R Jai Krishna)

© CyberMedia News