DY, regardless whether it is “dangerous” or not, it is improper for people to reply to him in the manner that they did.
Now, for all of you who are saying that self control either doesn’t work, or isn’t the right way of doing things:
I think that anyone who says self control doesn’t work was either brainwashed (or frightened) into thinking that, or, doesn’t have the self control himself, and therefore thinks that no one does. But the truth is, it is definitely possible to have self control in this. The way to go about doing that is by understanding WHY seeing certain things or reading certain things isn’t good for us. There are books on this. I’ve read many of them. Simply saying “Well, it’s a huge aveira and you’ll go to Hell” won’t work for the vast majority of people. There are very good reasons WHY these things are not good for us. If we can understand the reasons, we can easily have the self control to not see or read these things.
I think this can all be compared to the following: Suppose you live in a forest, and there happen to be lots of thieves around. You can do a few things now: Either move out of the forest, build a fence around your house, or learn how to defend yourself against thieves.
Now, moving out it clearly not the best way of dealing with this. It means the thieves won. And you’ll keep having to move around, because there are thieves everywhere. Not ideal, then.
Building a fence is better, since it lets you continue to live there. But then again, you are completely relying on the fence. If the thieves break through, or the fence falls, or you happen to be in an area without your fence, that’s it. You’re finished.
Or, you do the third thing, and learn how to defend yourself against thieves. Then, no matter where you are, no matter what, you’ll be able to make sure that the thieves can never harm you or steal.
Out of the three, it’s clear that the third option is best. But of course, there may be times when you are weak, or tired, and defending yourself against thieves may be difficult for you. So then, building a fence can help.
The first option, moving out, is banning the internet entirely. Clearly, that isn’t practical.
The second option, only building a fence, is having a filter. That is good, but you are relying on something else to protect you, and when it isn’t there, you’re done.
The third option, learning how to defend ourselves, is educating ourselves as to WHY certain things are detrimental to us, and being in control ourselves, without depending on other things to protect us.
If there are times when our self control IS weak, for whatever reason, then it’s good to have that extra protection of a fence, or filter. But a fence without the self defense is NOT ideal.
I think the main reason why people don’t think of it this way is because they think it’s impossible to have that self control. Well, guess what: With PROPER education, and understanding why certain things are not good, it is not difficult to have that self control. And as I said earlier, I think people who don’t believe this were either brainwashed into it, or just don’t have that self control themselves, and therefore assume no one does.