Don’t mess with Benedict XVI – guy is all up on this internet business like ain’t never been seen. Dude has his own YouTube channel. Heavy. But the internet is serious business, and Benedict wants us to remember as such, issuing a warning to web-goers the world over last week.
His Popage cautioned internet users that the web has “numbed” young people, creating an “educational emergency – a challenge that we can and must respond to with creative intelligence.”
According to AFP, the Pope claims 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.” Makes sense. As a guy who checks his Facebook every eight minutes, I’m hella disoriented. I wouldn’t say that I’ve been ‘numbed’, per se, but then again, I’m not getting a third-person perspective – and I’m not even sure I still count as ‘young’.
“New technologies and the progress they bring,” Emperor Palpatine Benedict continues, “can make it impossible to distinguish truth from illusion and can lead to confusion between reality and virtual reality.”
Anyone else see the irony in that statement? No? I’ll let you sit and think about it for a few minutes.
Pope Benedict Wants Internet Users To Get a Life

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Hahaha! I like that last question… 😉
I want Pope Benedict to get a life.
I can see his concern. Internet usage might let the tens of thousands of people abused knowingly under the Catholic church to get together and communicate.
Given the number of law suits currently against the Holy Sea, this is a major cause for concern.
Joking aside, he’s not the only to wonder what the effect of always-on Internet access and use is having on the digital natives. Dig around and you’ll find lots of questions from educators as well.
Or maybe the pope is worried about the 70% of the internet that’s porn and the 20% that’s fun but pointless, and the good things (socializing, news, etc.) which are done in a shallower way. I love my internet, believe me (4558 bookmarks!/), but he’s got a point. And no, I’m not Catholic, nor defending everything they do.