Engl. transl.: BIOETHICAL ASPECTS OF INTERNET

We live in so called »IT« society in which the rapid development of digital technology and access to the global Internet network have influenced the life of contemporary humans. Providing many opportunities: new ways of cognition, information, management, communication, socializing and entertaining , the habitual patterns have moved to imaginary cyberspace. It provokes many questions which are coincidencing with actual bioethical dilemmas of internet connotation: creation of new psychological space, modified perception of verity, virtualization of reality, fragmentation of personality, simulated identity, alienated nature of interpersonal communication and the new modes of expression which tends to raise an individualistic alienation and to develop an egocentrism. Access to the internet content can produce positive and negative effects on spiritual, moral and social development of persons which are exposed to the Internet’s ethical hazard. Particularly vulnerable group consists of children and adolescents, to whom the Internet has become the most popular, unavoidable media source of entertainment in the consumption of leisure time. Internet has an opportunity to enrich their lives, but can also induce them by the inadequate ethical contents to the inappropriate behavior, drag them to the consumerism, push them to the isolation of internet addiction and make them vulnerable to the new shapes of internet violence/cybercriminal. That was the reason for conducting research on the »Internet addiction of adolescents«, whose goal is to determine the existing difference of ethical and moral standards of receiving and sending inappropriate Internet content among adolescents. According to the significant statistical relevance, it became necessary to point on protective bioethical guidelines of responsible approach and the use of Internet content. It is therefore necessary to follow the informatical technology by developing the ethics of media and by creating a critical relation to the Internet’s transmitted contents to preserve the dignity of the human being.

"Female respondents use the internet for school or work purposes (14% of them), significantly more than male respondents (5%). However, when the analysis of the relationship between gender and purpose of using the Internet separates for respondents from individual countries, conclusions are not identical. For respondents from Croatia, this statistically significant correlation exists (χ2 = 15,854 df = 1 N = 371 p <0.001), while for respondents from Germany statistically there is no significant correlation (χ2 = 2.088 df = 1 N = 163 p = 0.148)." Vuletić et al, 2014, 542 "Adolescents with certain types of unethical content on the Internet are most often meet rarely. However, this basic conclusion can be supplemented by the explanation that some forms of unethical content appear more often than others. Relatively more often there are: –Pornographic contents (in 36% of Croatian respondents and in 39% of German); - various types of social movements, calls for riots and other types of destruction activities (19% of respondents from Croatia and 36% of respondents from Germany); - various types of diets, exercises and similar activities (26% of respondents from Croatia and at 29% of respondents from Germany)." Vuletić et al, 2014, 545 "Adolescent respondents from Germany are statistically significantly more exposed to unethical content on the internet in relation to adolescents from Croatia." Vuletić et al, 2014, 545 (translated by the coder)