Digital decency

SHERRY Turkle, the American sociologist, once said: “Technology doesn’t just change what we do; it changes who we are. Online, without empathy and respect, we risk treating people as objects rather than as human beings.”

- By Buddika Harshadewa

She said this more than a decade ago, during the golden era of Motorola, Nokia, and Sony Ericsson. Soon after, between 2010 and 2013, the analog lifestyle began to fade. The COVID-19 pandemic, with its lockdowns and social distancing, accelerated this shift. The digital revolution brought us fully online, from emails and social media to automation and AI. More than ever before, we began to socialise, share, comment, like, and dislike in a screen-mediated world.

Moral reasoning in a screen-mediated world

As noted in the textbook ‘An Introduction to Child Development’ (Keenan, Evans & Crowley, 2016), young people’s behaviour in digital spaces often reflects the responsibility and accountability they develop as they mature. As independence grows, their sense of right and wrong increasingly guides how they use their digital spaces. However, Flores and James (2013) found that moral reasoning is less connected to conduct when mediated by screens. An integrative review in 2025 echoed this concern, noting that online behaviour frequently violates widely accepted moral standards.

What is moral reasoning? It is the capacity to think critically about right and wrong, guided by principles like fairness, justice, care, and well-being for others. As Thomas Hobbes warned: without moral reasoning and order, “life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Is this what happens when we interact through digital screens? Are we drifting toward a society marked by diminished moral reasoning?

Cyberbullying and technology-facilitated violence