Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Pope says internet users risk 'solitude'

Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday warned that the Internet does not make people more humane but instead risks increasing a "sense of solitude and disorientation" among "numbed" young people.

"A large number of young people... establish forms of communication that to do not increase humaneness but instead risk increasing a sense of solitude and disorientation," Benedict told a Vatican conference on culture.

He also said that young people were being "numbed" by the Internet, adding that the technology was creating an "educational emergency -- a challenge that we can and must respond to with creative intelligence."

Benedict last month said the growing use of new technologies should set off "an alarm bell" as it was blurring the boundary between truth and illusion.

SIC: AFP/INT'L