The main contribution of this paper is a survey of attitudes of Hong Kong middle school students toward social and moral issues raised by information and communication technology (ICT). The authors explore how gender and socioeconomic status correlate with attitudes toward uses of ICT that have moral implications. As with many previous studies, the authors find that male students are more likely to violate moral norms than female students. They also found that students from lower socioeconomic groups are more likely to violate moral norms than those from more affluent groups. These results and data may be useful to other researchers in the field.

Unfortunately, the authors situate this new data within a theoretical framework that seems unconnected. They give some advice and admonition about how we ought to approach moral instruction of adolescents, but their ideas seem to be totally unconnected to their data and analysis. Two other mistakes mar the quality of the paper. First, in the introduction, the authors attempt to describe meta-ethics, stating that “there are three views of ethics: cultural relativism, subjectivism, [and] supernaturalism.” This is a significant misrepresentation of the current state of meta-ethics. Second, the authors identify “Internet stickiness” as an immoral act. While the authors attempt to justify the decision by claiming a link between these behaviors and neglect of other obligations, I found the justification to be insufficient.

In sum, the core of the paper contains some data that might be of use to researchers interested in the prevalence and demographic breakdown of certain kinds of unethical behaviors, but the authors attempt to make more out of the data than is justified.