I recently watched a scholar who broadened my perspective on the sin of lying. In the video, he say, “let me take a sip of water, my lips are dry,” and brought the water to his mouth. After taking two sips he continued with these words:  

“I said let me take one sip, but I took two, I wonder if that becomes a lie too. It is a sensitive issue because everything that comes out of the mouth is being recorded. We say ‘a sip’ as a figure of speech to imply that we will not drink much; but why speak in figures of speech when you can speak truth with clarity? Perhaps the correct form should have been to say ‘let me take one or two sips.’ That indicates a few sips.”¹  

This sensitivity over a sip of water should in fact be a subject of deep thought for all of us. If such sensitivity is needed for such a small action, how more careful should we be for more major things in our lives?

Starting from this matter of a sip of water, I reviewed our daily life and unfortunately realized how common these seemingly insignificant lies are in the virtual world. This virtual world is very colorful, attractive, and just as entertaining. It brings many things to our feet, lets us shop with one click, gives us access to far more than what people once learned through months of travel with a single touch in the blink of an eye, allows us to see and speak with our loved ones far away as if they were right beside us, and lets us complete our work from our homes. A long list of benefits stands before us. But together with this potential for good, who knows how many times each day we also use it for harm. Sadly, the virtual world has become a world of lies. It seems to have melted away our moral values and all the beauty we possess. If you want examples, the examples are so many that even mentioning a few here may make us all hold up the mirror to ourselves, do some reflection, and act more carefully from now on.

It is very clear that this is not only an individual problem but also a reflection of a global collapse of mindset. The following words of Noam Chomsky shed light on this very situation: “I don’t know what word in the English language – I can’t find one – that applies to people who are willing to sacrifice the literal existence of organized human life, not in the distant future, so they can put a few more dollars into highly overstuffed pockets. The word ‘evil’ doesn’t begin to approach it.”²

This statement expresses in a deep way the selfishness and indifference behind the recklessness of the digital world.

After all this, let us look together at some mistakes that many people make knowingly or unknowingly and search for solutions.

Deceptions in the virtual world

User agreements

When buying anything or installing an application or program, the user agreements that appear before us include many risks and lies for both those who provide them to us and those who say I have read and approve. These texts, consciously written in pages of tiny font, contain so many misleading pieces of information that we would not like, harming our privacy, full of verbiage and slippery expressions and word tricks, that it is impossible for many people to read them, understand them, or willingly accept them. Unfortunately, the number of users who actually read these texts is almost non-existent, but the number of those who approve them is very high, and perhaps none of us refrains from approving. In this situation, we may try to justify ourselves by saying “but I need to use this, I do not want to pay money, I have no choice but to accept”; this does not change the fact that we slip into lying by accepting texts with an “I have read” statement without reading them, nor does it change the fact that we are too lazy to learn our rights as users and too unwilling to demand that companies stop wrongful practices when necessary.

Likewise, the behavior of producers who, out of greed, violate the rights of users, manipulate default settings to their own advantage and to the detriment of consumers, and exploit people’s weaknesses and legal loopholes is also among the unacceptable actions.

Fake identities and digital courage

In the virtual realm, hiding behind fake identities to present oneself differently in order to seek a job or spouse, to pick fights and provoke people, to spit hatred toward individuals or groups of different beliefs, cultures, or statuses, and to shout from behind a screen like a warrior, things one cannot do or say face to face are among the most common painful scenes. There may be some objections on this matter. For example, those living under oppressive regimes or those who fear discrimination may be excused to some extent and may be exceptions, but even there, caution is needed and one must not depart from truth and justice.

Digital lies in work and livelihood

Another problematic area is the lies used due to livelihood needs, job searches, or sometimes out of greed. Using fake experience or information is the most striking example of this. Entering jobs that we do not deserve through different names, photos, experience claims, and the like is unfortunately an open wound and the first step toward unethical earnings, which is a very dangerous path. Using artificial intelligence in interviews or exams to cheat, having someone else take an exam in one’s place, or obtaining answers illegally are behaviors that are both morally and legally wrong and unfortunately increasingly widespread.

We also sadly witness situations where remote work possibilities are exploited. People working in developed countries for higher salaries hire individuals from countries with fewer opportunities and much lower wages to work in their place and pocket the difference without doing any work themselves, gaining unjust profit. In addition, in hourly paid work, failing to do one’s tasks and instead engaging in personal chores, or using provided resources for personal matters, are also mistakes seen at a significant rate.

As a general principle, both the employee and the employer must adhere to the initial agreement and respect each other’s rights. The employer must not prevent the employee from fulfilling obligatory religious duties, and if he does, one should not work in that job. However, the employee must also be very careful and must not forget that even optional worship cannot be performed at work without the employer’s permission. On the other hand, employers taking overly restrictive measures, such as constantly monitoring and recording the employee and violating privacy, or making them work longer hours than agreed, are also wrong.

Comment manipulations, bots, and fake crowds

Fake reviews written for products, thousands of automated likes, and praise or criticism campaigns carried out with fake accounts mislead social media users. Some companies employ people to write good reviews, delete negative ones, or give the product for free in exchange for fabricated praise. The presence of tens of thousands of comments on some products often reflects not genuine user interest but systematic manipulation.

Rage bait and the exploitation of human emotions

Rage bait, chosen as Oxford’s word of the year for 2025, shows how widespread the trend of gathering engagement through anger has become. These contents provoke people through extreme expressions, and as the argument grows, the content becomes more visible. Thus, the most sensitive points of society are turned into tools of conflict, hatred, and hostility, becoming mere engagement material.

Clickbait, deliberate mistakes, and price tricks

Clickbait titles mislead users with irrelevant content. Some accounts deliberately make spelling and punctuation mistakes to cause people to comment corrections. Hiding the price of a product and saying message for price is another common tactic used to increase engagement. Showing a large carpet in a photo but listing the price for the smallest doormat model, then showing the real numbers after someone clicks, is among the new forms of deception in digital spaces.

Troll networks and state supported digital manipulations

Troll networks working with thousands of fake accounts to spread certain ideas, silence opponents, and shape public perception are among the most dangerous elements of social media today. The fact that some of them are supported by powerful companies or authoritarian states exposes the global dimension of the issue. Societies are manipulated in this way, and grounds are laid for wars, conflicts, and isolation.

The vicious cycle fed by algorithms

It is also clearly seen that technology companies directly feed this unethical situation. Because these companies use algorithms that promote content by click value and push forward high engagement posts automatically. These algorithms rank content only by superficial metrics such as clicks, comments, and shares, without looking at what is true, false, harmful, or beneficial. As a result, content based on truth, calmness, and constructive dialogue becomes invisible, while provocative, conflict raising, anger inducing, or deceptive material is constantly pushed forward.

This system rewards wrongdoers, increases their visibility, and gives them material profit. Those who behave correctly remain in the background and become less visible. Consequently, people receive a subconscious message saying, “I earn more by doing wrong” and increase their unethical behaviors. Companies also feel no need to change the system because they profit from this increase through advertising revenue. In the end, the user, the producer, and the technology company become parts of a cycle that feeds one another.

As long as this cycle is not broken, social media will continue to be a mechanism that suppresses truth, magnifies lies, and accelerates moral collapse.

What can be done?

It is not enough to mention problems only. Both individual and social steps are needed to keep the digital world on a moral foundation. In summary:

Reporting harmful content: Provocative, hateful, manipulative, or deceptive content must be reported when encountered. As report numbers rise, the algorithm will push such content back.

Not giving engagement through comments or shares: Liking, commenting, or sharing makes a post more visible. Not engaging with wrong content is the most effective response.

Establishing a culture of blocking: Blocking accounts that cross moral boundaries protects personal peace and prevents their behavior from being rewarded.

Creating public pressure on technology companies: Societies must demand more transparent algorithms, clearer user policies, and privacy protecting settings. Feedback is effective. Symbols similar to those used in films may be used to warn users about the reliability of content or its elements, and problematic users may be banned from systems.

Encouraging legal regulations: Demands must be delivered to lawmakers and decision makers. Clearer laws and regulations should be introduced in digital ethics, data security, and combating manipulation.

Digital awareness and ethics education: Children, youth, and adults must be taught digital literacy, source checking, truth distinction, information verification, and digital ethics. This strengthens the social fabric.

The role of opinion leaders: Religious scholars, academics, artists, scientists, and public figures must raise awareness on this issue. Social change continues only with the contribution of broad groups.

Conclusion

The world is changing very rapidly. As a result, new problems emerge in societies, and there is an urgent need for appropriate solutions. For these solutions, it is essential for experts from fields such as law, theology, sociology, psychology, technology, etc. to come together quickly and produce practical and applicable solutions suited to the conditions of this era and the issues deeply affecting society. Otherwise, problems will become gangrenous and major wrongs will be normalized. Instead of artificial rating boosting fruitless debates that distract society, it is unavoidable for our valuable scholarly community to focus on these issues.

What falls upon us is not to depart from truth. Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, said “Always seek truth. Even if you see your destruction in truth, your salvation lies in it.” This is why the message he brought always upholds the truth, be it in the context of the employee and the employer relations, or whether it is a real or virtual world context.

Amazon Fresh, Uber Eats, Grubhub, Doordash, Instacart, self-checkouts and social media. In today’s world, living without an iota of real interaction with anyone else is becoming the norm. With new trends like remote work and ongoing fears about large gatherings still prevalent in many parts of the world, the pandemic has only exacerbated this isolation.

I recently reread Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, and the similarities between Gregor Samsa’s life and modern life are uncanny. After his transformation into an Ungeziefer (monstrous insect), Gregor is confined to his room – his sister brings him food and cleans once a day. He doesn’t talk to anyone in his family. By the end of the novella, we find Gregor lounging in piles of dust and his own filth, as he watches his family from his doorway. His bedroom has become a repository of all sorts of garbage, and his only connection to anyone else is a framed picture of a woman, clipped from a magazine, that he spends his days staring at.

All things considered, is this really so different than what most of us experience today?

We, much like Gregor, disregard the small moments of human connection and kindness that were previously mainstays of daily existence – whether it be chatting with a neighbor, exchanging pleasantries with a cashier, or even thanking a store worker that helped you find what you were looking for. Social media has begun wiping out even the more prominent “social” scene – instead of meeting with a friend in person, or hearing their voice over the phone, you can just text them – in fact, you don’t even have to text them; when you like the photo they just posted, or swipe up on their story, you get an instant connection, don’t you?

Not exactly.

Theproblemrunsevendeeper – Gregor’sunhealthycommitmenttohisworkis,formany of us, like looking into a mirror.As a society more focused than ever on achievement and the “hustle” and “grind” mindsets, we live our lives in a haze of hyper-obsession. The simple joys of leisureandhumanconnectionarebeing neglectedinfavorofpersonalsuccess.

The constant push to acquire more, often at the expense of our well-being (let alone that of others), has come to define our culture and has led to a mass movement away from meaningful interpersonal connections in both leisure and workplace settings.

In reality, it’s the tiny moments of true connection—being drawn into a circle of human kindness and empathy—that truly matter. Empathy is like a muscle, and without use, it deteriorates. As showing empathy becomes less a part of our daily lives, we become less proficient at expressing it.

This decreased empathy leads not only to negative psychological symptoms, but to everything from party polarization to violent crime.

However, the most detrimental thing about this self-contained existence may be that it’s now lauded as beneficial. Massive companies like the aforementioned Amazon tout a new era of efficiency and convenience for their customers. Social media tells us we’re getting more interaction than ever – making more friends, learning more, and producing more.

Still, the fact remains: human beings are essentially social creatures, and without real connection, we wither. Just as Gregor in The Metamorphosis suffered the consequences of first neglecting his “circle of humanity,” and then being cast out by it, so will we suffer if we don’t remedy this isolation and empathy deficit. In the end, this is what Kafka’s Metamorphosis is all about: the importance of social connection for the preservation of our humanity. While we may not suffer Gregor Samsa’s insectile fate, without social connection, we certainly run the risk of becoming a society that is less understanding, sensitive, empathetic, and ultimately less happy.

Facebook was the first big social media site. It’s been followed by Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, Snapchat, and so on. There are more than 60 social media platforms today, and all have added different layers and functions to our social media interactions.

Although other platforms have reached hundreds of millions of users, Facebook is the most popular: it is closing in on 2 billion users, as of 2017. In 2012, researchers in Norway published a psychological scale to measure Facebook addiction, and their findings confirm that social networking is a “modern” addiction. Here, I will focus on the case of Facebook and I want to examine the psychological consequences and implications of extensive social media use.

Facebook is the largest online entity with the capacity to have direct access to the most extensive and in-depth information about its members. Imagine a state that has the capacity to know what an ordinary person ate on a certain day; with whom he or she has recently become friends; what his or her likes and dislikes are; and what his or her views are on a wide spectrum of issues. A state with that much knowledge would be terrifying.

With the degree and content of data that Facebook has access to, it is awfully similar to this theoretical authoritarian “state.” Through a systematic analysis of this large amount of data, one could professionally identify a member’s emotional and cognitive world and behavioral patterns, thereby gaining predictive leverage over his future preferences, reactions, and attitudes. All of these could be utilized by companies to access more information on their customers’ needs and desires, which could then translate to better advertisement and innovation. This could also be advantageous for security institutions, as such personal information including networks and relationships at the global level, these institutions believe, could help authorities contain and prevent violent terrorist activities. The implications – and potential implications – of widespread Facebook use on security, commerce, individuality, and privacy, are manifold.

Facebook is profoundly shaping our perception of reality. Since someone’s Facebook profile keeps track of his or her “post” history, it provides others with easy access to a brief “personal history.” Many of us develop first impressions about a person from their Facebook profile.

Human beings generally use cognitive shortcuts to figure out what a person is like; our first impressions are very unlikely to change. If someone has been put into a certain box or coded as having a certain type of personality by others, that rash and incomplete image is difficult to change without strong sensual information to the contrary. Even then, this opposing information may fail to change our mind: our brains tend to categorize such information as an exception, according to therapist Noah Rubenstein. The nature of Facebook use – the fact that people often choose to share what they want their friends to know about them (which happens to be the best parts of their lives) – also contributes to the construction of incomplete and distorted images of other people.

As the cliché goes, human psychology is very complicated and every human being is a different world of ideas, feelings, experiences, fears, and hopes. The prevailing practice of getting to know someone through a short visit on his or her Facebook profile results in the consumption of people’s individuality in a way similar to how a commercial good gets consumed. Human beings are not and should not be treated as aggregated pieces of information. It is not healthy nor fair to form ideas and opinions about someone’s personality without observing how that individual’s behaviors and attitudes change under different conditions and with different individuals. As an overarching principle, saying and posting should not be weighted equally with actual doing. One should rather prefer to observe an individual’s behavioral patterns (repetitive actions) before forming any opinions about them. And this can only be achieved with a philosophy that views individuals as aggregates of behaviors rather than as aggregates of pieces of information.

Secondly, intense Facebook use (average time spent on Facebook by a user is 50 minutes a day) might cause one’s impulse to do things to be replaced by the desire to update his or her profile, informing one’s crowd of friends, on Facebook, about what is going on in their life. This deep urge to share the moment indeed harms our ability to live the moment. The logic of sharing on Facebook also fosters a set of standards in regards to potential reactions. For example, if someone’s posts are being liked by 30-40 people on average, this would automatically create a threshold for the acceptable level of appreciation and lead to the feelings of frustration when this level of appreciation is not constantly achieved. This greed for appreciation and affirmation often contributes to the development of a habit of trying to look like the person that our general crowd of friends on Facebook unconsciously and indirectly wants us to become through displaying differing reactions towards our posts on Facebook. By intentionally not being ourselves, or by becoming afraid of appearing as ourselves on Facebook, we are allowing our Facebook identity to be shaped on the basis of the likes and dislikes of an online community and sacrificing our individual differences. This is like being a celebrity and being subjected to the pressure coming from presenting yourself in a way that is acceptable to the larger community. But the difference is that in this situation, the burden of being a celebrity is carried by ordinary people who don’t have access to the economic benefits of celebrity.

Thirdly, Facebook is changing the nature of our fundamental social interactions. For example, celebrating someone’s birthday turns out to be as simple as posting a happy birthday message on that person’s Facebook profile, as opposed to celebrating in a face to face interaction or making a phone call. Sharing someone’s grief is being reduced to adding an “I am really sorry” comment on that person’s Facebook post expressing grief for their loss.

According to Forbes magazine, only 7% of communication is based on the verbal word. That means that over 90% of communication is based on nonverbal cues such as body language, eye contact, and tone of voice.  Social media interactions are not conducive to the exchange of these nonverbal cues that are essential for healthy communication.

Fourthly, active Facebook users occasionally suffer from an informational obesity as they constantly get exposed to unnecessary loads of information about their friends’ private and public lives. From an opposite angle, this leads to a situation where the modern individual who attaches a great level of importance on privacy and autonomy willingly becomes the provider of a great level of visual and verbal information on his or her private life to a mixed audience (people whom he or she just met a minute ago and people who are closest to him or her). This indicates the stark contradiction between the intentions and actions of the modern individual.

Finally, Facebook increases the risk of getting named and shamed in front of an online community if we change or contradict our previous behaviors or beliefs.

Tell us how you survive difficult times. Give us your best advice. Share your greatest life lesson. For details, go to our website: www.fountainmagazine.com/essaycontest.

As a highly competitive and commodified industry, sport is not only a weekend, sit-on-the-couch pastime, but is also a political arena where ideologies fight. The recent “take a knee” protest in the US is not a standalone incident. From the ancient Olympic Games to modern-day World Cups, sports have been a means of national pride, and the athletes are considered heroes. Their lifestyles, opinions, and choices are always newsworthy, even if these choices mainly relate to their home countries thousands of miles away.  

One striking recent case is that of Enes Kanter, NBA’s Turkish star, who is at odds with the current Turkish government. Kanter (25) has been an open critic of the government’s corruption. After the July 2016 coup attempt, he started speaking up even more loudly to protest the government’s persecution of tens of thousands of innocent citizens. Justin Pahl talked with Kanter on his life as a devout Muslim in the NBA and on his struggle as an advocate for the oppressed in his home country.

As a follow-up to the story of Abraham (pbuh) in the previous issue, here comes the story of Joseph (pbuh). Two authors, one Muslim and the other Christian, shares their respective scripture’s narratives about the fantastic life of one of the most well-known figures of human history. Joseph (pbuh) is not only a common name in the Abrahamic traditions; his story is filled with many morals to reflect upon, even if they are not Muslim, Christian, or Jewish.

Air, water, bread, and yes, social media – these are some of life’s essentials. No one seems to be unhappy because they are able to tweet or post on Facebook. But, Sage Chen thinks social media is no different than an authoritarian state. With all the data we freely share on social media, we are allowing the platforms we use to have access to an extraordinary amount of our personal information, much of which we would not normally share with others. Chen discusses the many implications of widespread social media use on security, commerce, and privacy.