Pope Francis has condemned the use of social media by the youths claiming that its them into ‘hermits’, and creating ‘spirals of hatred’.
In his message during the World Day of Social Communications Pope Francis claimed online discussion to be ‘too often based on opposition to the other, the person outside the group: we define ourselves starting with what divides us rather than with what unites us’.
He further added saying that young people might find themselves tricked into thinking that the web can completely satisfy all their relational needs.
The Pope is currently on an official visit to Panama for the global World Youth Day where he also took the opportunity to draw attention to the fact that one in four young people are involved in cyberbullying.
He said that people should no longer need an adversary to define themselves, because ‘as Christians, we all recognize ourselves as members of the one body whose head is Christ.
‘This helps us not to see people as potential competitors, but to consider even our enemies as persons.’
He further touched on spreading fake news and misinformation propagated online.
The internet brings with it ‘risks that threaten the search for, and sharing of, authentic information on a global scale,’ he said.
‘If the Internet represents an extraordinary possibility of access to knowledge, it is also true that it has proven to be one of the areas most exposed to disinformation and to the conscious and targeted distortion of facts and interpersonal relationships’.