Psychology Behind Cyber Ethical behavior among Digital Natives: The Case of Higher Education Students in a State University in the Philippines

Abstract

As technology progresses, the outlook of students toward its utilization also changes. The digital natives’ ethical considerations on the use of computers are threatening. In this case, this study measured the perspective of the students in decision making in computing. The 450 respondents from the nine (9) colleges were randomly selected. The rationale behind the selection of these colleges from a state university is that each university provides different higher educational degrees and has suitable computer laboratories and set-ups are used by students for various purposes. A questionnaire adapted from the “Ten Commandments of Computer Ethics” and “Unethical Computer Using Behavior Scale (UECUBS)” in order to determine if there is a significant difference among the students of different colleges’ perspective of ethical decision making. Based from T-Test and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), there is a significant difference among the responses of respondents with respect to institution where they belong. Furthermore, there is also a significant difference on ethical decision making of the respondents who are using the social networking sites, and those who do not. In addition, a difference in ethical decision making was also marked on students who are using the computer for gaming purposes and those who do not. Thus, the university needs to offer computer ethics as part of the curriculum and a proper orientation on the ethical use of computer in social networking sites and games.