Is the Internet good or bad?

The use of the internet has skyrocketed over the past couple of years. People use It every day for their jobs, school work, and as a place to interact with friends and family that live near and far. Since it is such a widely used source, there’s a big debate on whether the rise in technology is a positive or a negative thing. I believe that it’s a good mix of both good and bad.

One positive that I see is it is a faster way of communication. It is the greatest and largest form of communication that we have in the world today. We can communicate with people that are different cities, states, and even different countries with a click of a button. And it’s not just one form that you can do this in. You can communicate through email, instant messaging, video chatting and many more. The possibilities are endless.

With that being said, it brings me to another positive thing about Internet, which is all the social media sites and ways to stay in contact with people. It’s going to sound cliché since I’m a teenage girl, but I honestly don’t know what I would do without sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and all the other popular social media sites. Those sites, plus my phone of course, are really the only way that I can keep in touch with my friends, family, and boyfriend who live in Georgia. If I didn’t have those sites to keep me updated on their lives I would be totally lost!

One of the last advantages I see is that the internet is the abundant source of information that you can find. You can literally find anything under the sun (and beyond!) right under your fingertips. Granted that this can be classified as a grey are with people having mixed feelings about whether it’s a positive or a negative thing, but I find it fascinating all the information you can find.

 

On to the negatives! According to buzzle.com, one of the biggest problems that people are facing with the internet are people’s riffs between the real world and the social media world that they have on the computer. This can fall under the categories of depression, obesity, and social isolation. People can become so consumed with a gaming world, or constantly checking their Facebook to see what their friends are doing that it ruins their REAL social lives. As Jeremy Glass stated in his article We Can’t Get Lost Anymore, “We can’t jump off bridges anymore because our IPhone will get ruined. We can’t take skinny dips in the ocean, because there’s no service on the beach and adventures aren’t real unless they’re on Instagram. Technology has doomed the spontaneity of adventure and we’re helping destroy it every time we Google, check-in, and hashtag.” We’re losing touch with actual human being and not enjoying what’s in front of us because our noses are always buried in our phones.

Another definite negative would have to be the content that children can access now a days. All that parents can do is put parental controls and blocks on certain websites, but they usually don’t work that well. The age appropriate content on the internet has become a major issue over the years with the rise in technology.

One last disadvantage of the internet would have to be the content provided. Sure the Internet can give you information about literally anything that you want to know, but how do you know when the information you’re reading is right and when it’s wrong? This is a major downfall of the Internet. Literally anyone can write something on a website and it sounds totally believable. You just have to be careful and aware about the content that you are reading and try to see if you can find out who wrote the information on the site.