Title: Is technology bad for us? | Internet | The Guardian
Headings: Is technology bad for us?
The Eva Wiseman column Internet
Is technology bad for us?
Eva Wiseman

Content: she asks: " What exactly is the internet and what is it doing to our children?", a question that reeks of reactionary apocalypse. But in walking through the internet narratives we're almost immune to – the problem with boys and porn, gay teenagers finding love, the devastating suicide of a bullied child – and by interviewing the people (including Julian Assange and Jimmy Wales) who build and comment on it, she comes to some bleak but nuanced conclusions, ones that lead to more questions – about freedom, addiction, anonymity, cash. And it made me think about our options, aside from just turning our screens black. Real life doesn't just happen when you're looking into someone's eyes. It happens in a series of open tabs, at a speed of clicks. It happens (as in the new short film Noah, set entirely on a teenager's computer) on screen. To dismiss this half of our world as "unreal" leads to people believing their actions there, behind a cartoon avatar and cartoon name, have no repercussions. That a racist insult typed out on a laptop has less weight than one shouted across a carpark.