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'Digital Deadly Sins': The Morality Of Our Digital Obsessions

A new interactive asks us to take a break from our endless stream of tweets and comments to examine who we are — morally — in the 21st century.
Courtesy of NFB Canada
A new interactive asks us to take a break from our endless stream of tweets and comments to examine who we are — morally — in the 21st century.

One running thread here at All Tech is smartphone distraction, and whether our increasing dependence on connecting through our devices is bringing us together — or tearing us apart. Whether it's smartphones and social media, or Internet dating, or outsourcing your life with various apps like Uber and Postmates, there's no question we are more digitally dependent than ever, and that means we're confronted with a set of moral questions and dilemmas.

A new interactive from The Guardian and the National Film Board of Canada is taking a closer look at these behaviors by clustering them into "7 Digital Deadly Sins" — sloth, envy, greed and the rest of the gang.

We've embedded the trailer for this project, which features some of its conceits. Questions like: Is it OK to download that movie for free? Are we a little too pleased with ourselves on Facebook? Since when did Twitter become so much more interesting than that flesh-and-blood, right-there-across-the-table-from-you boyfriend?

It's an interactive, so users are asked to absolve or condemn various digital "sins" of the day, like wishing friends a happy birthday on Facebook rather than calling. Is that a sin or not? You can also read first-person stories, deeper-dive reporting and mini-documentaries on the various topics.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Elise Hu is a host-at-large based at NPR West in Culver City, Calif. Previously, she explored the future with her video series, Future You with Elise Hu, and served as the founding bureau chief and International Correspondent for NPR's Seoul office. She was based in Seoul for nearly four years, responsible for the network's coverage of both Koreas and Japan, and filed from a dozen countries across Asia.