Some are helped as it opens new possibilities, and clears the way for otherwise inaccessible information.
Others are hindered by this very idea, they want to learn everything all at once and barely manage to glean anything from what they find
I'd say for me it's both. I was a bit orientated to Eastern world religions, especially Buddhism and Daoism before I discovered Paganism on the net. I wasn't fully lucky with Buddhism and Daoism and started searching for something else. But maybe if I'd haven't discovered the many possibilities of Paganism I'd would have become Buddhist or Daoist or some vague mix. It might have had some spiritual benefits, especially if I'd become more concentrated on just one of those religions.
Now I'm bouncing around here discovering this and that without dedicating myself to something yet. So I'll have a longer searching phase which is a spiritual development as well, but also hinders me from dedicating myself fully to something with all the spiritual benefits a dedication has.
But for me it just feels like the right time to explore more possiblities. I guess a spiritual development has explorative phases as well as dedication phases. I was very dedicated to martial arts and qi gong and some spirituality associated with it, so now is a phase where I'm opening up to something different. At the moment it takes energy away from my former dedication, but somehow it also feeds something back.
So I think the net does maybe prolong the explorative phase or make such a phase possible in the first place, but if it's beneficial or not depends on what the user makes out of it. I someone stayed in her/his birth religion (Catholicism for me) because s/he never found all the possiblities and connections through the net one could have had a good spiritual development if the birth religion fitted at least roughly to the person, but if it basicly doesn't the person could have a unhealthy spiritual development. On the other hand the dangers of the net are that people never decide and swallow one path with all the inconveniences it may have and always bounce around never really dedicating themselves to anything.
It's a bit like a forced marriage could work out well under the right circumstances and depending on the people and a free choice partnership could go all wrong, because it has different problems. But I'd still prefer the free choice partnership.
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