“Submerging in the informational, virtual world bears a danger of lacking real human communication. It is easy to imagine such a picture: young people sit in one room looking at their tablet computers. No one communicates with each other, if someone asks a question, it is dismissed. And what do they do? They communicate in social nets,” the patriarch said at the opening ceremony of the 1st International Forum of Orthodox Youth in Moscow.
According to the primate, when real communication is substituted with virtual one, a person is deprived of experience of communicating with a real person.
“Nothing gives us such experience as personal communication with people. We know that we sometimes lack such experience in settling the questions connected with arranging family life. There is nothing to hide: we often link our life with people who are nor worthy of it, we lack experience, we lack knowledge, we don’t feel fluids, can’t see what is in person’s eyes,” he said.
The patriarch believes that personal communication bears not only rational, but also emotional and spiritual message.
“Certain energy goes from a person. Sometimes you look in person’s eyes and see clear, peaceful look, clean soul, and sometimes it is a demonic fire. But will you feel this clean soul in Internet even if your interlocutor speaks about clean soul? And will you see this demonic fire if you see only a photo and a text?” he wonders.
Patriarch Kirill stresses that he doesn’t urge to give up social nets, but he warns against submerging in them so deep as not to see other possibilities of looking at the world.
