The first one is that yes, logically, it would be. This sentiment is even supported by what Whit does in two episodes. In "Into Temptation" he constantly nags not only Jimmy but all of his virtual friends and family. Also, in the episode where Trent and Marvin use the I.S., Whit rebukes Trent's notion that talking back to a virtual teacher is a "new experience" that he should be interested in, and recites Scripture: "Whatever is pure, whatever is lovely..."
The differing viewpoint would be that perhaps it isn't wrong, if the user is doing it for the purpose of understanding why the wrong thing is wrong. If this philosophy were correct, what happens requires no further explanation.
Not so if not, though. The question that the first view leads us to question, then, is that if it is wrong, why does Whit allow and sometimes even encourage kids to use it for that purpose? If Whit was really worried about kids doing evil in his inventions, you think he'd have cut Alex's trip in the RoC short very quickly in "No Boundaries".
One hypothesis I had, to explain what happens through the lens of the first view, is that maybe the kids aren't actually doing the things; maybe they're just observers of what goes on, as the AI simulates it. That doesn't seem to be the case, though, judging by most of how the episodes seem to go, and the one time this is confirmed to be the case in "For Three Dollars More" it is explicitly mentioned that it's different from how it normally is.
So, I'm not sure there's an easy or good answer to this question.
Unless maybe Whit is just evil. That would explain everything.
