Morality or Ethical thinking has a huge impact on any given society that one wanders into from time to time. This thinking actually develops the norms and culture of a society and can, therefore, be credited with the creation of basic fundamentals for any living society that exists or has existed over the years. Moral thinking or morality, as it is more commonly known, develops the inner instincts of a person and directs him toward the values and norms that exist within society. Morality also gives an individual from any society to value the cultures of other societies and understand them as much as he needs to respect them. Such deep philosophical needs are driven by morality and can often be depicted by morality as well. With that said, it is extremely worrying as to see what morality the modern individual develops after he interacts with the digital life that has taken over the world so quietly yet so quickly and convincingly. It is absurd to think how negativity of moral and ethical issues have gained the upper hand over positive morality and ethical values in this new life that the digital world has breathed into younger mind sets and newly developed adults. To concentrate more on how these issues have transformed and reigned over one another with time and the argument of how pictures and its various negative effects have developed, on Facebook, is what will be discussed briefly in this essay .
The first perspective that needs to be looked upon is how Facebook came into being and how it evolved the mind sets of newly developed adults and youngsters into a creating a completely different morality for themselves. People from the previous decades would have morality issues that were not as concerning as the ones we view from Facebook users. People would keep the ethical issue of privacy at bay by valuing each other, not just for the sake of it but because they actually viewed it as a personal right of living. However, in the modern era, people have begun to disallow privacy at all and this is a reliable concern when the fact emerges about government agencies using such social media platforms to investigate and listen in on the conversations that two people have at times of day, night and any other given moment. They even see photos that are being shared as well as looking through other personal information that the user has put on Facebook. This coupled with the fact that the Facebook user does this knowingly is all the more frightening as to their care for morality and ethical issues that are so highly destabilized. People would feel horror in previous decades if someone listened to their conversations and as much as looked at a photo that belonged to them or was of certain importance to them. Such acts were seen as an invasion attack and detrimental in all sorts of norms that exist. Cultures did not merge as quickly or fanatically as they have begun to ever since the dawn of Facebook itself. These sudden changed in morality and ethical issues of young Facebook users is also alarming as they don’t care who sees what they post. Colleagues sharing pictures that are meant for a number of people are viewed by whoever can access them, such as bosses, parents and even strangers. This would not be the case if there was no Facebook. These moral issues would be valued at a much higher degree than it is valued at now if young users had not become so easy with handling privacy. Even third party users have access to all photos and posts that a user shares on Facebook. This means anyone can view these photos on the internet as long as the third party users and Facebook administration itself allows them to do so. Another reason of concern is the ethical boundary that is surpassed in the digital world, in Facebook particularly. This boundary is one of ethnic discrimination and violence. People attack cultures, insult like warmongers and dehumanize other cultures, their values and norms, without thinking of any consequences. What is worse is that there really are no consequences to be withheld. Such utterly despicable Facebook has become for youngsters that it allows the users to destroy their own existing norms and cultures as well as the values that these cultures take with them by going against them in any way possible without knowing what they’re actually doing. This stops moral establishment for young Facebook users as well as destroys any hopes of redeveloping the old norms and values for different cultures. This can be seen on an everyday basis whenever one logs in to Facebook and sees their wall post. Indecent photos are published publicly for everyone to view, comment on in any way they want to, view it in any negative way they want to as well as post about what they hate or want to do in bed. It has become an outrageous act that no one seems to care about anymore. This proves that morality and ethical boundaries have vanished from the mind sets of Facebook users and they are literally not at fault .
Another way that Facebook as affected the morality of the young generation is through adherence to conflicted methods and the pleasure of troubling others. This argument withholds its crisis in morality thinking and ethnic boundaries as it is unwise to spread pictures about a person that you don’t know. Similarly, it is also unpleasant to spread pictures of a person you do know but he doesn’t have any knowledge of such picture distributions. It is unwise and in real societies, this act is direct disobedience to the norms and cultures of such societies. This becomes even more horrifying when colleagues and elders such as bosses view explicit photos of a person and he doesn’t know about these photos at all. The person who distributes such photos can be brought to justice but since it is Facebook and every ethical boundary can be surpasses, no one goes to jail but only humiliation is served to the victim instead. In contrast to this approach, it is clearly stagnant to note that there are cultures such as those of the Middle Eastern societies that don’t allow pictures of women to be shown to anyone, let alone the real women themselves. It is a culture that has been carried out for centuries but Facebook has witnessed Middle Eastern women taking selfies and posting them in their profiles on Facebook. In reality, they would have been punished for breaking norms and values but on Facebook, they have the luxury of changing their morality in a negative way and keeping it enlightened with the disruption of societal culture and values..
The final major impact that Facebook has on young adults and mind sets of teenagers when it comes to morality is their sense of responsibility. It has decreased as such people don’t know what their responsibilities are anymore. These people view Facebook as their prime source of entertainment rather than a distraction and this very thought drives them away from their worldly responsibilities. Looking at pictures of others that they really don’t know about is just one of many numerous causes that can brutally savage entire morality thinking principles beyond a casual concept. Looking and taking pleasure in someone else without them knowing is also similar to breaking a law in normal cultures and this would never be happening in the first place if there was no Facebook. This perspective develops highly when people actually realise that ones that don’t interact with Facebook have a highly matured mind set where they realize their everyday duties and responsibilities. These responsibilities are also held actively and given attention to which is really not the case when it comes to the regular, addicted users of Facebook. People begin to wonder what they could do online rather than think that should they do their homework or complete their task given from the office. This difference speaks for itself and defines the morality issues that have risen ever since Facebook was invented and motivated. Morality has also shrunk in its sensibility as people start using Facebook for recruiting new and manipulated kids for terrorism and other acts of violence. This has become an alarming case and even though it would be unreal for this kind of scenario to take place in a real society where meeting strangers and discussing violent acts is morally intolerable, Facebook allows such meetings to happen without the consent of any norm or value whatsoever. This leads people to talk with strangers without any fear and leads them to do acts that would, otherwise, never emerge as a possibility .
Regarding all the views that have been highlighted above, it is pretty clear that social media platforms like Facebook are destroying the world’s societal culture, values and norms as they are. This is also visible as people seem to forget what morality is all about. People also tend to forget the ethical boundaries that their culture maintains so readily and with high awareness. With such despicable and intolerable deductions occurring in terms of morality and ethical boundaries, it is fair to say that Facebook holds a whole lot more dangerous ventures which are negative in entirety and that Facebook has no hope of bringing positivity to the world. Moreover, it is adamant on destroying any moral or ethical establishment that societies have been dedicating themselves to build for years to come .
References
Flores, A. & James, C., 2012. Morality and ethics behind the screen: Young people’s perspectives on digital life, s.l.: Sage publications.
Gershon, I., 2011. Anthropological Quarterly. Un-Friend My Heart: Facebook, Promiscuity, and Heartbreak in a Neoliberal Age, pp. 865-894.
Holmevik, J. R., 2012. Inter/vention. Ludic Ethics, pp. 137-152.
Turow, J. & Tsui, L., 2008. The Hyperlinked Society. Hyperlinks and the Organization of Attention, pp. 18-22.
Werbin, K. C., 2012. Journal of Canadian Studies. The Social Media Contract: On the Paradoxes of Digital Property in This Digital Land, pp. 245-262.
