The ethical impact that the creation of the internet has had on American society is astounding. Twenty years ago, if some would have showed you a video of a car accident where someone had died, or a video of someone getting beat senseless, you would think that person was masochistic. But now American society uploads videos such as these to YouTube for entertainment purposes and then forwards these videos to everyone on there email list. What has become of our society?  

The Internet was created to make us all be able to communicate with one another, no matter the distance that divides us. It is suppose to be a tool to facilitate us at work, help us gain valuable knowledge that was once out of our reach, and to make it easier to perform certain tasks like shopping, mailing, and staying connected with friends and family. I am a technology kid and I spend a majority of my day on the computer and would be lost without, however, I do think that with the continually expansion of once-restricted material on internet, we are losing a since of morals and good-nature.

I think that we as human beings have become very desensitized to many things because of the exponential growth of media such as the internet. All the graphic images we are exposed to everyday we sign onto the world wide web, has made our hearts calloused. It's as if we have trained our brains to think that because we are seeing these horrible things through a piece of glass, it's not real. But the truth is that when someone views a man physically assaulting a woman on the computer, and they brush it off as entertainment, they are losing some of the values and morals that once made this country very safe and respectable. The constant desensitizing that goes on in the minds of all Americans, may somewhat be responsible for many of the horrific crimes that happen everyday in the US. Decades ago, events such as the ones we see and hear about daily were more isolated and few and far between. Today, it is commonplace. It's so sad, but true.

Of Course, the ethical ramifications of the internet are not only isolated to violent crimes and death desensitizing. But we as Americans have become more lazy post Internet. Prior to the birth of the information super highway, when we needed to know something, we had to research it, whether that meant breaking out the old encyclopedias, or going to the library to reading some books. Either way, we had to invest the time and effort. Now all the effort that is required is typing in a few words into a search engine such as Google and we have an almost limitless library of resources at our fingertips. That is awesome, don't get me wrong, but it has made us lazy. And in some cases, it can help us become cheaters. I know there are many people out there that have used the internet to look up answers to questions on tests, help them figure out math problems, and there are even sites out there that have written essays that people can buy and then pass off as their own work! Were is the moral code in that? It's as if people on this side of the piece of glass feel there is a since of anonymity , thus they will never get caught. That is the mindset.

As the development of the Internet and all it entails grows and grows, I foresee the ethical standard will dwindle and diminish. The infamous "Where's the line?" question we have all heard and seen, used in any literature that talks about ethical behavior has been crossed time and I fear will continue to be crossed and pushed further and further away from the moral standard that once governed this great country.