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.

Centuries ago, Shakespeare saw this coming. Macbeth, one of his most renowned creations, lampooned his sick wife’s physician with the terse phrase, “throw the physician to the dogs,” because the doctor could not cure his wife of her strange mental malaise. If the world is not yet ready with their own retorts to our physicians, they should prepare quickly, for surely this emerging disease will render our physicians impotent. And our psychologists should begin preparing for what will be one of their greatest challenges.

The world is undergoing a most unfortunate paradigm shift. The area that is worst hit by this trend is the very area that is central to our sense of human existence. It is the world of reality, the native home of man; the very real world where personal encounters between humans are made possible without any form of mediation, be it from the internet or other online portals. Mankind is hastily vacating this world of reality and all of its meanings for the virtual world of the internet, mediated by all forms of codes and mechanisms. Today, a great majority of human relationships have been transferred from the world of reality, where they involve personal encounters between humans, to the virtual world of the internet and other online platforms where personal encounters between humans are either ruled out or vastly different.

What this means is that there is hardly any human activity that cannot be accomplished with or without the physical presence of the parties involved. Do you want commerce or other business transactions? Online shops are there to take care of that. We have online dating, just like we have e-banking. Colleges now offer many courses online; whole degrees can be earned without ever stepping foot into a classroom. Facebook pages, 2go, Twitter, Badoo, and many other sites have created an entirely new cultural paradigm by transforming the nature of human relationships. Heck, even church activities can be observed through online fellowship.

Whether this transformation is for better or for worse is not so much the issue as is the fact that we have built a world we can no longer do without. There is a kind of surrogate culture settling in to take the place of traditional human forms of communication, a culture where technology acts as an improviso for man. Man now relates more with technical equipment than with his fellow human. In fact, there are so many proxies and technical bureaucracies making real life encounters between humans very difficult. And this is where the problem lies.

The real world is fast losing its appeal as the virtual world seems all the more handy for every human venture. Many people now find it hard to live in the real world. Consider the following incident. I began dating a woman I met over Facebook. For over six months or so, we were in contact with each other through chatting, calling, and sending emails or text messages, but never once set eyes on each other.

Then one day, something funny happened. My internet girlfriend of six months made a startling statement: she told me that she wanted to know me. My reaction was to say, “What do you mean? Do you mean that you don’t know me after six months of friendship?”

What happened when we finally met in person was an eye opener for me about the greatest problem facing mankind. Over the 20 minutes or so that our meeting lasted, the once enchanting, intelligent, and romantic girl of my virtual world became shy, timid, and uninteresting in the real world. I doubt if our eyes ever caught each other, since she could not bear to look me straight in the eye. She was shy in the most painful way and kept blushing like one brought out of darkness and thrust into the light.

I don’t mean to claim that I was completely relaxed with the whole thing. In fact, both of us were so uncomfortable that no sooner had we met than we started longing for our virtual world, where our friendship is mediated by software, hardware, codes, and other mechanisms. The irony of the whole thing is that we were most at home and ready to spend hours with each other in the virtual world.

It would not be difficult to refute this experience with a contrary story, as many friendships that begin on the internet also work out in person. But there are plenty that don’t, and many of these are because of the fact that the internet provides mediums where people can portray themselves differently than they actually are. It’s easier to lie about one’s achievements or physical capabilities on the internet than in person.

The internet can also, unfortunately, be a place for predators to stalk their victims. The late Cynthia Osokogu, of Lagos Nigeria, is an unfortunate example of someone who sought refuge in an internet relationship, only to end up the victim of violence when that relationship was brought into the real world. The virtual world provides cover for people looking to “be somebody else”. Unfortunately, beneath that cover, sometimes the “real” person is completely different – or even worse. .

Whether we like it or not, the virtual world has come to stay. In fact, it has become so indispensible that the world can no longer do without it. It has enlarged our sense of human possibilities; human life has become something of a seamless continuum, stretching from the limitations of the natural world of reality to the limitless world of the internet.

Yet some believe that we are losing our ability to live and thrive in that real world – the one of actual limits. And this is where psychologists must watch out. The greatest challenge that will face psychologists in the near future is that of getting man to accept and feel comfortable in the world of reality. Giving the immediacy of cyber-communication and its breathtaking speed, how many people are willing to travel the long distance necessary to visit a friend? All we ever need is to just dial some digits or sign on to Skype and we are connected with the person immediately. Though we are immediately “connected” with people through technology, no moment in human history has been so disconnected.

I often remember what happened the last time I went home from school to see my mother. After the initial embrace and greeting, she still held me tight and was unwilling to let me go. Though we’d been in touch with each other via phone calls, it was that moment of embrace that helped me to understand how much I missed her. Such intimacy was not possible during our online communications.

Not only are we missing this kind of physical intimacy online – but the virtual world is causing us to miss out on new connections in the real world. Maybe your neighbour on the bus would like to chat with you about the book you’re reading, but he’s too busy chatting with a distant friend on his phone. We’re becoming more isolated and estranged due to our reliance on our technical devices.

This situation brings many dangers. Not only are we more likely to feel lonely, but we’re less likely to look at our fellow men and women with empathy and altruism. We’ve become hardened to violence because it’s easy to be exposed to it online. When was the last time you shed tears for the tragedy and misfortune that befell a friend – or has the world become destitute of tragedy? Of course not! Tragedy is still feeding fat on humanity. We’re just more removed from it due to our technology. Tragedy has lost its human element.

The thrust of this whole article is to call attention to what mankind is losing. I hope to possibly challenge one and all to reclaim our basic human elements. I want seeing your mother, father, brother, sister, wife, husband or friend to suddenly jump to the top of your to-do-list. And I don’t mean phoning or sending messages, but seeing them – so you can hug, kiss, or embrace them. You’ve to go the long distance; to come out of your utopian world of online connection; to see things as they are and not as they appear (apologies to Kant).

We’re human beings. We need to be able to look into the eyes of those we love. We need to feel the rhythm of their heart so we can savour its unexpressed music. We need to see the lines on their face and their smile when they see us again. Though we’ve filled our mind with information we’ve found online, we’ve forgotten about this information – the information we learn from another human body. Don’t wait until death begins to knock at their door. Just get up and be on your way. Don’t wait any longer to get back to this old way of life.