q threats related to the security of data stored on the Internet;
q fake likes and cookies containing malware;
q fake websites and phishing;
q social media hacker attacks;
q tabnabbing (sites impersonating genuine websites);
q clickjacking (tricking a user into clicking on a link provided by the criminal);
q threats to mobile systems (Bębas, 2018, pp. 36–44).
Many threats cause “[...] blurring of the authenticity of one’s identity and its virtual multiplication in cyberspace. In everyday life or in the mass media, originators have a specific identity. We know, or we can learn, much about them, because they are identified by a particular worldview and the socio-professional role they play. This identity is shaped by body language, gestures, timbre and pace of speech, and behaviour in direct, indirect, audiovisual and, to a lesser extent, audio contact. The Internet, on the other hand, by lifting space and time constraints, creates enormous opportunities to hide, manipulate and self-create identities” (Gajda, 2006, p. 16).
It seems that the Internet brings about two possibilities: on the one hand, it allows the user to shape an imaginary or desired identity (for example in social media, on an institution’s website, in correspondence or on the user’s own website). On the other hand, online presence, and information created on the Internet, make it possible to carry out an analysis which provides much more complete and precise knowledge about the creator, who is also the recipient of information and comments left by others. Undoubtedly, however, this replacement of direct by mediated contact – which is so frequent and common – has its social, personal and educational consequences.
Contemporary generations, unlike their predecessors, grow up surrounded by many media. Such an environment leaves deep and lasting traces in the mind of a child, because media are not only transmitters of information, but they also trigger emotions, shaping the sphere of imagination, and create dreams and desires, muddling up
hierarchies of values and making it possible to obtain goals only partially in line with the expectations of parents, educators and teachers. Issues related to manipulation, propaganda, lobbying or lying arise, and new definitions of reality, the process and the result of cognition, truth and wisdom, are created (Postman, 2005, pp. 20–21). These, in turn, require a diagnosis, but also preventive and therapeutic measures. The new layer of culture created with electronic media changes and expands our senses and the reality we perceive. It affects the human mind, psyche and attitude towards the world (Kerckhove, 1997).
Social networking sites have made it possible for anyone with web access to publish materials. These are traces of human thought and creativity, but also evidence of naivety, aggression and criminal behaviour.
Universal connectivity has given people’s activity – their greatness and goodness, as well as their baseness and evilness – powerful support tools. There is a folk saying that “a word may start off as a sparrow and come back as an ox”. The web has increased not only the number of such “oxen”, but also their strength and impact.
Although IT networks connect institutions and people, disparities between countries which invest in ICT infrastructure and those which cannot afford it are becoming more apparent. Power over information systems is associated with the monopolisation of culture and political influence. On the one hand, cultural homogenisation processes are in full swing, but on the other, great efforts are undertaken to record the sound of languages and specific features of ethnic cultures. It is difficult to determine at present whether the 21st century will be dominated by the fatalistic paradigm of the annihilation of global cultural and linguistic diversity, its hybridisation and the extinction of languages, linguistic groups and many local cultures, or whether digital tools of information and communication technologies will prove their usefulness in maintaining the authentic pluralism and originality of languages and cultures (Mayor, 2001, pp. 355–373), thus supporting the paradigm of survival and development, or – put simply – saving the treasures of cultural heritage.
The web can also be a weapon of war. It is worth noting that the free global flow of images and words facilitates criminal activity. Criminal groups are supranational and ruthlessly use differences in the laws of various countries to their advantage.
The lack of universal media education has very undesirable effects and this applies to all user spheres: personal, social, cultural, political
and economic. For years, academics and educators alike have been unsuccessfully calling for its incorporation into teacher training and school curricula. Just as it is necessary to develop an appropriate legislative framework for safe navigation of the Internet, Polish education at the turn of the 21st century needs universal information and media training. Today – more than ever – this is essential.
Media regulations in Poland encompass a unified system for classifying television programmes and the European system for assessing computer games known as PEGI (Pan European Game Information). The latter is undoubtedly one of the best video game content rating systems, but not the only one. There are other solutions such as the Japanese CERO, the American-Canadian ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board), British ELSPA (Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association), as well as USK (Unterhaltungssoftware Selbstkontrolle), created by a German organisation which evaluates computer games and broadly understood entertainment software in terms of safety for children and young people, and OFLC (Office of Film and Literature Classification) of the Australian Classification Board.
Can, however, existing tools for protecting children against the negative consequences of computer games and web access be treated as sufficient and ultimate solutions? It has to be emphasised here that no classification alone is capable of increasing knowledge and awareness. The label on a product is only an indication whose interpretation depends on one’s knowledge – and the indication is not the product itself. There are many works available dealing with the dangerous effects of cyberspace and media use. Digital Dementia by Manfred Spitzer and Homo Videns by Giovanni Sartori are just two examples. The human species may have been described differently over time (Homo sapiens, Homo volens, Homo creator, Homo faber, Homo sedes), but the stage of “numb man” is certainly not something we should be striving to reach.
Given the level of recorded threats and flagged social needs, coordination of efforts is required to ensure that children are safe in cyberspace. It is necessary to take comprehensive social action in the field of universal media education and preventive education programmes. Legislative action in this respect is also imperative. The need to create a national strategy in this area is becoming increasingly apparent, especially in the context of the bold and impressive initiative
of the Polish National Education Network1, which intends to bring broadband to all schools in Poland.
Figure 1. Personal, social and cultural threats resulting from the development of cyberspace according to Maciej Tanaś
PERSONAL THREATS
1 The Polish National Education Network initiative aims to give schools universal and equal access to high-speed (at least 100 Mb/s), safe and free Internet. According to the project’s underlying assumptions, all primary and secondary schools are to be connected to the Polish National Educational Network by 2021. Cf. M. Bochenek. Rok pilotażu OSE [One-year pilot programme of the Polish National Educational Network]. In: Akademia NASK, O OSE [NASK Academy, on the Polish National Educational Network]; bit.ly/2yBDGbx [access: 17.07.2018]. The Act on the Polish National Education Network was signed by the President of the Republic of Poland and published in the Journal of Laws on 28 November 2017 (Journal of Laws 2017, item 2184, vol. 1).
Anyone building a system would like it to be compact, finite and coherent. Figure 1 does not represent such a full system. It is a systematoid at best, as many phenomena related to the development of information and communication technologies have not yet been studied, described or explained.
Let us begin with pointing out certain personal threats. Some of them are associated with the physical development of children and adolescents and concern the skeletal, nervous, cardiovascular and metabolic systems. The following seem particularly dangerous:
q underdevelopment of the musculoskeletal system;
q postural defects, including scoliosis and abolition of lordosis in the cervical spine, carpal tunnel syndrome, shoulder and neck disorders, as well as degenerative changes;
q decrease in physical fitness and a general weakness of the body;
q obesity, bowel disease;
q eye defects, conjunctival disorders, keratitis;
q allergies;
q consequences of the harmful effects of the electrostatic and electromagnetic field (especially frequencies from 10 to 300 kHz)2. Many of those threats were already warned against during the development of microcomputers and CRT monitors (Tanaś, 1993, pp.
127–132). However, issues of child and youth safety in the space created by web-connected computers – which combined features of several media, were increasingly poly-sensory and interactive, and thus attractive to users – were not identified (or were downplayed) at the time. Neither was it comprehended that the Internet would soon become not just a place of creativity, but also an economic, ideological and political battlefield. A space where dreams could come true and human organs could be trafficked. A global economic market and a place of baseness.
While physical space has been legally codified for centuries, cyberspace, under the false pretext of unlimited freedom, has become open to criminal activity and to controlling people and entire communities.
2 In particular, reports of inhibited bone growth, accelerated spread of leukemia and other forms of cancer, and abnormal prenatal development require further analysis and evidence as lack of awareness and false beliefs can generate undesirable social reactions in this area.
Another group of threats which requires analysis and serious reflection is associated with human intellectual development. Research points to many risks in this area, for example:
q cognitive impairment (disturbed perception, decreased fluidity of attention, limited or non-existent ability to think logically, obsessive or intrusive thoughts);
q intellectual passivity;
q memory impairment (resulting from lack of memory training and from the misconception that since all information can be found on the Internet, memorizing has become redundant);
q false or fragmentary picture of the world (perception of the world as a series of video clips, rather than as interrelated and interdependent phenomena), intellectual immaturity (treating the created world as real);
q underdevelopment of systematic learning skills;
q poor verbal and writing skills, thoughtless imitation, dominance of concrete/pictorial thinking over abstract thinking, reduced ability to synthesise and generalise as well as to analyse and perceive relationships, and – as a consequence – reduced ability to reason and understand;
q inability to construct full, logical and coherent statements, inability to use language creatively, reliance on Internet jargon and ignorance of stylistic variations of spoken and written language.
Many personal threats are also related to the emotional development of children and young people:
q seeing friendship, love, care or responsibility through the distorting prism of, for example, video games (the same applies to the relationship between good and evil in the simplified world of a player), emotional immaturity;
q development of inappropriate emotions regarding love and sex, treating virtual relationships as real;
q creation of negative ways of expressing emotions, escalation of uncontrolled emotions on the web;
q priming towards content, behaviours and attitudes which are undesirable, as well as cognitive and emotional desensitisation;
q Internet addiction disorder (Internet addiction syndrome), altered states of consciousness, which are reminiscent of alcohol
or pharmacological intoxication, fear of missing out (FOMO) and gaming disorders (gambling behaviour), including addiction to programmes containing elements of psycho-manipulation, persuasion techniques and subliminal stimuli (video clips, advertisements, techno music), and possibly also based on neurolinguistic programming procedures, mind control techniques or biological neural manipulation techniques;
q psychological discomfort associated with the “withdrawal syndrome”;
q compulsive behaviour, neuroses.
Furthermore, personal threats can be associated with moral development and include, in particular, a disturbed hierarchy of values and their relativisation, as well as disregard for ethical principles (they do not apply in some video games).
When analysing potential dangers associated with the development of information and communication technologies, we cannot ignore threats to the development of social competences in children and youth, such as:
q social alienation and weakening of family ties, escape from the real world;
q access to pornographic and racist materials as well as to pathological and “toxic” cult groups;
q treatment of aggression and violence as desirable social behaviour, xenophobia, copying pathological and destructive behaviour (social consequences of cognitive priming towards educationally undesirable content), social desensitisation;
q brutality of behaviour and expression resulting from a sense of “anonymity” and “impunity”, unjustified individual or collective aggression and self-aggression;
q relativisation of social relationships, world image disintegration.
Many of the above dangers were observed already at the initial stages of the deployment and spread of the Internet in Poland (Tanaś, 2005, pp. 25–40). The diagnoses made at the time have, unfortunately, been proven to be correct.
The developmental dangers mentioned above are undoubtedly closely associated with a large group of socially dangerous impacts, such as:
q digital illiteracy and social exclusion – these issues usually affect poor, disadvantaged or unemployed people, deprived of access to the web, mobile devices or smartphones, as well as numerous groups of people with disabilities and people without IT, technological and media competences. Threats of this kind are faced, in particular, by inhabitants of villages and small towns where schools operate without broadband Internet, proper infrastructure and Wi-Fi access – i.e. localities with no web communication, lack of or difficult access to open educational resources, open science and other online sources of knowledge and culture;
q risky behaviours – these involve undertaking risky actions which are described and/or recorded with sound and/or image and intentionally made available to children and young people.
Adolescence is a particularly critical period in this respect.
Susceptibility to risky behaviour is caused by psychobiological and evolutionary factors (Romer, 2010; Steingerg, 2007). On the one hand, information and communication technologies fascinate teenagers and satisfy some of their major emotional and communication needs, which are important during adolescence (Dolev-Cohen, Barak, 2013; Valkenburg, Peter, 2011), yet, on the other hand, they provide an outlet for manifestations of many risky behaviours. The Internet facilitates participation in situations which increase the likelihood of such negative consequences as emotional stress, victimisation or deterioration of social, school or academic life (Valcke, De Wever, Van Keer, Schellens, 2011). The most frequently reported problem related to online behaviour has been cyberbullying (Livingstone, Smith 2014; Young, de Abreu, 2011). In recent years, increasingly more attention has been paid to the tendency to use the Internet to contact strangers, social groups or institutions, unions and organisations (Valcke et al., 2011). Research (Gámez-Guadix, Borrajo, Almendros, 2016) has also pointed to the importance of impulsiveness, which is characteristic of adolescence (irresponsibility as a possible mechanism explaining risky behaviour). Loss of control over
Internet consumption, as well as excessive cognitive engagement with using it – even despite negative consequences – are becoming increasingly widespread (Caplan, 2010). This problem is sometimes referred to as “compulsive Internet use” (Meerkerk, van den Eijnden, Franken, Garretsen, 2010) or “Internet addiction”
(Smahel, Brown, Blinka, 2012);
q potential rise in unemployment as a result of disappearance, in several years, of many existing professions, practiced by millions of people around the world. Individuals and entire enterprises base their activities on those professions or rely on persons who perform them. The process of many types of jobs being wiped out is real and is already underway (“The Guardian”, 2017).
Research conducted by the University of Oxford and many other academic centres, as cited by Alux.com (2016/2017), suggests that in the next 20 years there will be a significant reduction in employment in 15 commonly practiced professions, such as farmer, driver, supermarket cashier, travel agent, factory worker, dispatcher, bartender, waiter, bank cashier, military pilot, soldier, fast food chain worker, telemarketer, accountant, stock trader and construction worker. In spite of existing problems, further activities undertaken in the realms of academia and education should be based on appropriate decisions regarding both current fields of education and further training and retraining of persons employed in these professions. There is an urgent need for serious reflection in the field of social sciences and engagement in intentional and wise educational action, otherwise we risk political, economic and social crises and, above all, human tragedies;
q uncontrolled personal data trading and unethical use of data – the advancement of information and communication technologies is ahead of both awareness of the consequences it entails and legislative regulation. The huge amounts of data, obtained as a result of media digitisation, software development and widespread connectivity, have not only a high volume and velocity, but also a high variety and veracity. Data sets whose size or type makes it impossible for them to be captured, managed and processed by traditional algorithms and relational databases are known as “big data”. Their analysis makes it possible to carry
out previously unavailable decision-making processes in many areas. This undoubtedly opens up completely new cognitive perspectives, but also raises the possibility of unethical and even criminal use of such information;
q criminal and civil offences – these include, for example, terrorism, mafia activities, dissemination and sharing of manuals regarding, for instance, suicide, murder, rape, weapon or bomb construction, and drug production, dissemination of criminal or socially undesirable phenomena (religious sectarianism or hostility towards ethnic groups or nations, or social groups with a different sports club affinity), threats to the security of institutions, violence with the use of digital tools, harassment, identity theft and impersonation for material benefits, misinformation and media manipulation, dissemination of pathological content, as well as initiation and creation of anti-social groups;
q terrorism – attacks on institutions, direct meddling with the internal affairs of a country, political terrorism, threat to the information security of a state, possibility of training in virtual worlds, and attacks aimed at mastering the skills of reconnaissance, surveillance, group cooperation and analysis of the possible media response.
Another group of dangers are socially perceived and manifested cultural threats such as:
q spreading of macaronic language (Volapük) and incorrect linguistic structures;
q disappearance of the territorial diversity of language (homogenisation);
q transferring models of behaviour, rituals and celebrations stripped of their cultural context to another cultural area, uniformisation of culture and clothing;
q absorption of cultural and linguistic minorities by larger cultures;
q intensification of cultural conflicts;
q threat to cultural identity (social stress caused to some groups);
q cultural manipulation – influencing views and attitudes through culture.
The most important law of medical ethics is primum non nocere (“first, do no harm”). After centuries, it has also become the guiding
principle of ethical research and social activity. This principle is of great importance for those educators and teachers who enter the sphere of computers, mobile telephony and the Internet, trying to understand the fate of children and young people in the electronic cave of the world of digital media.
An aspect of the web which is particularly dangerous to children’s safety is its information and propaganda function which – although providing considerable learning possibilities – prevents the recipients from making proper independent judgements and makes it difficult for them to find the right place in reality. Furthermore, because of the speed of communication and the multitude of channels operating in parallel, it deprives the content consumer of the time
An aspect of the web which is particularly dangerous to children’s safety is its information and propaganda function which – although providing considerable learning possibilities – prevents the recipients from making proper independent judgements and makes it difficult for them to find the right place in reality. Furthermore, because of the speed of communication and the multitude of channels operating in parallel, it deprives the content consumer of the time