Over the Internet Because the Internet is used as a public forum, relationships develop through the direct use of e-mail, chat rooms, and newsgroups. These relationships can be positive, however, many negative relationships can develop as well. On the positive side, the Journal of Communication performed a study to reveal that computer-related communication (CMC), enhanced relationships by overcoming country and race barriers (Journal of Communication, Winter 1996, 80).
For example, my best friend's mother developed a relationship over the Internet with a man from Germany. They now currently date through visiting one another via overseas flights. Distance does not matter with a relationship or discussion on the Internet. Also, a person cannot see whom one is talking to on the Internet, so race no longer becomes an issue.
However, making friends in Cyberspace does not mean that those friends are a sound and positive influence upon one's life. Race might be overcome faster through the Internet, yet that does not mean that ideas and actions will not be spread over the Internet in a more feasible fashion. Ideas and beliefs can pass just as easily through a relationship over the Internet as they do through personal contact. A pervert, racist, cult member, or any other person with negative influence could befriend anyone on the Internet, especially a young child who is curious about the world, and eager to learn.
For example, the case where Pastor William Cabell used the Internet to attempt to lure under-aged boys into meeting with him for sex (Newsweek, Aug. 28, 2000, 42). He was apprehended and arrested for crossing state lines to have sex with a teenage boy. These negative influences breed ideas and actions that pass on their ideas of hate, sexually deviance, or other negative beliefs or actions to easily influenced minds.
Newsgroups harbor communities of people who have the same thought processes -- making ideas and negative behavior seem normal. The Internet makes it easier for negative communities and/or cults to pass on their ideas in a seemingly normal environment. A group can consist of 500 scattered members across the globe and flourish like the cult of the Solar Temple. Instead of being restrained to one particular area with a small range of influence, the Internet provides cults or other groups, such as the Solar Temple, to flourish without any geographic restrictions. Without these restrictions, any person who is looking to belong, or trying to find an "in" to society might wind up in a group that harbors negative behavior. Cults Cults are becoming one of the growing communities in the modern era. With the world becoming "smaller" because of technology, it has become easier for ideas to spread or harness groups of people to a particular belief. Since the 1970's and the infamous Jim Jones, cults have been on the rise in the United States. More recently, the impact of the Internet has become a feature on the rise of cults throughout the world. Because of the Internet's growth hitting the main populous in the last ten years, the number of cults has risen. The Internet is, "persuasive, far reaching, and clandestine...freeing the imagination from the everyday world." (Time, April 7, 1997, 45).
Going further, two specific cults that have developed, which focus upon negative behavior to the extent of suicide, are the order of the Solar Temple and Heaven's Gate. Members of these two groups have in the past few years committed mass suicide. Heaven's Gate was more of a one-shot suicide attempt as the year 2000 approached and 39 members committed suicide (Time, 46). In the years between 1995 and 1997, Solar Temple has committed 74 suicide/murders upon members. There are still approximately 500 members left of the Solar Temple worldwide.
Today, a cult that can have just 500 members scattered across the globe, yet remain a functioning community due to the technology of the Internet. The boundaries of geography no longer pose a problem. Heaven's Gate still sends out information and videotaped sessions of their religion, via the Internet and video/audio technology. More information can be gained on these two cults as well as the whole phenomena of cults at Religious Tolerance Organization. and Information about Cults and Psychological Manipulation. Cults continue today and are growing. It is no coincidence that the recent growth of the cults parallels the exponential growth of the Internet.
Pornography Because the Internet is a place for people to meet and mate, as well as find discerning ideas, it also means the Internet holds prolific and explicit material. Pornography has found a large haven on the Internet. Located in just about every corner of Cyberspace, porn has found a large business in the access to pornographic material, such as film and photographs.
Not only does is economic issue (see Economy and Government on this Web site) come up for porn, but the accessibility to the industry. Anyone can punch in a keyword or skiff through any non-related porn material, cars for instance, and find a Web site dedicated to releasing and providing pornographic material such as Chicks and Cars. I even went through a quick search on Yahoo and Netscape Navigator which revealed hundreds of sites, many of which held free downloads of pornographic pictures. A quick search on any search engine would reveal the same material. In addition to this astounding evidence found, a true fact comes up that cannot be ignored; most convicted child molesters are heavy consumers of pornography (Forbes, June 3, 1996, 11). With the accessibility to pornography, the Internet provides a "positive" environment for a pervert and/or sex offender.
Taking this information to a feasible extreme, the negative environment created on the Internet can become the catalyst for a person to act upon the negative material. One real example was explained in Newsweek's Aug. 28, 2000 issue. A security guard, Kevin, who met his wife on the Internet, also found a darker side of the Internet, pornography. Kevin said it was "a substitute that kept me from feeling lonely." which soon turned into an addiction. Kevin was surfing the Web, and looking at pornography during his eight-hour night shift at a hospital. Addiction can be is the catalyst for sexual molestation or even just peering at sexual material. Pornography on the Internet is now a positive reinforcement for negative behavior.
