Nine months of internet exposure has had a negative impact on the Marubo people.
An indigenous tribe in the Amazon rainforest have developed an addiction to pornography, just months after being given high speed internet access thanks to Elon Musk’s Starlink.
Last September, a representative for Musk’s company gifted 20 internet satellites to the two thousand strong community of the Marubo people who have lived for centuries in the wild depths of Brazil’s jungle.
Until recently, the Marubo community lived in small huts scattered along the Itui River and had very little contact with the outside world.
In mid 2023, Allyson Reneau, a leading American philanthropist and graduate of the NASA-sponsored International Space University, travelled into the centre of the rainforest to help set up the Starlink devices.
In recent months, she has returned to see how the villagers have adapted to life on the web, and shared images and videos of her experience on Instagram.
While much of Reneau’s reports from her visits to the tribe have been positive and told of the benefits of the introduction of internet to the indigenous people, Alfredo Marubo, leader of a Marubo association of villages, has instead described much less desirable consequences.
Speaking to the New York Times, Marubo has claimed that tribe members have become “lazy”, reclining in hammocks all day glued to their phones to gossip on WhatsApp or chat to strangers on Instagram.
And, even more concerning, there have been many reports of young tribesmen engaging in aggressive sexual behaviour after excessive exposure to pornography.
The leader of the clan claims that young men have been sharing explicit videos with one another in group chats, and Alfredo also warned that members of the tribe have stopped speaking to their own families since they have gained access to the internet.
Considering kissing in public was something that wasn’t done within the community previously, the new trends in overtly sexual behaviour could only be attributed to the exposure to graphic and explicit content online.
While the initial hope was that internet access would help villagers gain more knowledge and broaden their minds, it has instead filled them with toxic habits and impacted their relationships with family and fellow villagers.
Tsainama Marubo, a 73-year-old tribe elder, said that while everyone was initially happy when the internet arrived, “now things have got worse”.
“Young people have gotten lazy because of the internet,” she said, adding: “They’re learning the ways of the white people.”
Measures had been taken to try to right the wrongs that the internet has caused thus far.
Tribe leaders, who have said that impact of the technology on routine in the village has been “detrimental”, have had to outline a set of rules limiting the hours during which the web could be accessed.
Members can now browse the internet for two hours in the morning and five hours in the afternoon and all day on Sundays.
Musk’s Starlink owns around 60 per cent of the roughly 7,500 satellites orbiting Earth and has helped bring connectivity to some of the trickiest places in the world.
While the Marubo tribe is one of the more remote locations that Starlink has provided internet access to, there are several other communities around the Amazon basin that have had their culture disturbed by the interference of internet.
In many jungle towns in the region, indigenous people are now routinely binging on Hollywood action films, Mexican telenovelas and Premier League football, as well as playing first-person shooter video games and losing the little money they have on online gambling.
The tribe leaders of Marubo will be hoping their new restrictions can stop their community from suffering the same fate.
One positive of the Starlink satellites is that tribe members can now call for immediate medical help, rather than rely on the rigmarole of sending radio signals between villages to reach the authorities.
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