ABSTRACT
Recently, I posed a question to a group of students in my final-year class on social psychology and communication. I asked half of the group to think about the positive aspects of computer-mediated communication (CMC) such as email and the internet, and I asked the other half to think about the negative aspects. We then spent some time discussing the students’ responses. While everyone agreed that email and the internet made life much easier-indeed most of the students could not remember a time when they did not exist-everyone in the class agreed that there was a “dark side” to using the internet. Many students recalled colorful incidents of harassment, being ignored, being abused, having their financial details stolen, and were clearly upset at recalling these unsavory events. However, what intrigued me the most was that everyone had an interesting tale to tell, suggesting just how widespread these experiences are.
