There is a rising "culture of negativity" in the way Singaporeans relate to each other online, according to Member of Parliament Seah Kian Peng.

At the Budget debate on Wednesday (Feb. 24), the Marine Parade GRC MP spoke at length, among other things, about how Singaporeans can afford to be "more considerate" before demanding others to be so, and also to "cut everyone some 'slack' especially when they get it right most of the time".

Such negativity manifests in a type of online persona where cynicism and anti-establishment sentiment "is a shorthand for intellectualism and political sophistication", he said.

The result, he added, is that this "general negativity toward all things Singaporean" is taken as a proxy for moral courage, especially if it includes disdain and disrespect for public institutions.

Have Singaporeans gone too far in their complaints?

Seah noted that complaints form a vital component of public life, and also acknowledged that with respect to Singapore's political landscape, "there is indeed much to fix, and improve on".

"But I ask today for us to consider whether we have gone too far in the other direction — to feel every pin prick as a broken bone, to raise our voices and abuse our fellow countrymen, especially those in the public services, and in the front line, as if they are in our debt."

He spoke of a sense of entitlement, citing the example of a resident living nice S$6 million house" demanding to know why she was ineligible to receive the Self-Employed Person Income Relief Scheme (SIRS) payout.

As such, a good online culture must be developed, Seah argued.

Traits like grace, civility, integrity and "simple good manners" are things that the government cannot "tax into oblivion or incentivise into existence", he said.

Rather, they must be cultivated through mutual agreement and collective effort to form the culture of Singapore's public life.

More must be done to increase digital literacy among Singaporeans

Separately, Seah called for more to be done to provide greater digital literacy to Singaporeans.

He noted a "missing piece" in the government's policy to protect Singaporeans against scams in the area of identifying who in our population is most vulnerable to them.

He called for an online literacy assessment "scan" to be done that can help an individual identify their "weak spots" in the area of digital literacy, expressing his hope that different scans can be done for different age groups.

Seah also called for an expansion of programmes providing broadband internet access as well as hardware such as laptops and computers to lower-income families.

He noted that 44 per cent of families living in rental units did not have internet connection, and another 44 per cent didn't have a computer or laptop at home.

"These threats towards fragmentation and polarisation have become ever more important, as the reach of the Digital Empire grows. To combat the dark sides of this Empire, we must recall what we owe each other — an obligation, and a duty to respect each other."

Top screenshot from MCI YouTube