Högskolan i Skövde

In this chapter, we discuss the ethics of choosing not to use the Internet, despite both having full access and being fully competent to do so. Our investigation consists of a comparative case study of the current situations in Slovakia and Sweden, two European Union (EU) countries that inhabit opposite ends on a European spectrum of societal digitalisation. We begin by grounding our discussion in the weight that the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) ascribe to education and healthcare, as a means of establishing the inherent ethical value of universal access to these two sectors. Next, we elucidate three ethical arguments that all support the general choice to not use the Internet. Then, we provide a brief overview of the state of digitalisation in Slovak and Swedish education and healthcare, respectively, before applying the three arguments to these specific, real-world cases. We end by concluding with some general ethical reflections on the various sorts of everyday situations that increasingly require individuals to use the Internet, regardless whether they prefer not to.