Are There Some People Who Need Internet In Their Lives? [#14856]

August 24, 2021

QUESTION:

The Rav has spoken a lot recently about the tumah of the Internet and that even if a person learns Torah from it, he will still become far from the Creator by using Internet. Is this always true? I am a baal teshuvah and I’m in high school. Most of my time spent on the Internet is to listen to Torah shiurim. I can understand that tzaddikim and people who were always frum shouldn’t go on to the Internet, and it’s easy to see how Internet damages those who were never exposed to it beforehand. But what about for someone who, at his current stage of life, feels a need to use Internet for Torah learning purposes? How can the Internet still be considered evil in such a situation? And it’s only because of the Internet that I found the Rav and other Rabbonim that I gain from!
I understand well that everyone needs to learn how to limit their Internet use and not be so involved with social media, but aren’t there certain people who need the Internet, at least for some time in their life, in order to learn Torah and become stronger in their Yiddishkeit? Doesn’t the Rav agree that there is something good that comes out of modern technology…?

ANSWER:

The Internet is something which purifies the impure and which contaminates the pure. Therefore, for kiruv purposes, it has a place. But the one using the internet for purposes of being mekarev (drawing close) others to Torah is running the high risk of being ruined by the Internet, and for that reason, a kiruv website should be run by goyim [under his auspices], because the mekarev himself often becomes further from his own Yiddishkeit, even further from Yiddishkeit than those non-observant whom he was trying to draw closer…