Since the start of the Internet around the late 1990s millions and then billions of people have come to rely on the Internet for work, education and fun. There is no denying this since there was a study that showed us that by 2018 there were 4.208 billion users in the world this is around 55% of our world population. And the average American spends 8 hours or 4.7% of their week on the Internet. As said before there is no denying that we use the Internet a lot, actually ‘a lot’ is an understatement, we use it a huge number of times, but that is not the problem, the question is if it is bad or good for us. That is the question that I will be answering in this essay.
There is lots of evidence suggesting that the Internet has done nothing but make humanities life easier. We see this in school: by having the Internet in classrooms youth can now reach information from all over the world, there are lots of learning websites that can help teachers in teaching students, there is also a study that says children who use the Internet develop more independence because instead of asking parents or teachers for information they can find it themselves. We also see this in businesses: where a business can communicate to existing and potential consumers about promotions or new products, it can also help reduce prices by using email or other social media to communicate with clients instead of using normal mail, not to mention that there are different softwares, that can help you run your business online by themselves. We can also see how technology can help the older generations: the elderly can communicate with their family at the comfort of their homes, online exercises or even small videogames can make sure that their brain stays active and is used, the families of the elderly can feel better knowing that the elderly can always call for emergency or something similar. Parents can also use the Internet to keep in touch with their children, they can have apps to know where their child is and keep up with their children’s movements and posts, they can also use the Internet to do fun family things such as watching a movie together or playing a game on a big screen.
There is also a lot of evidence suggesting that the Internet is bad for us. We see the worst examples in the case of teenagers, especially with social media. We have many examples such as in the case of Molly Russell, whose father claims that she found ways to harm or kill herself on Instagram and then decided to follow, there are several reasons for this some of which involve seeing the perfect pictures of others which seem to describe their lives and then looking back at your life and feeling depressed because it is not as perfect as the pictures you are seeing. It can also affect local shops because of the competition from big multinational companies that will ship cheaper products than the local shops, an example of this is Amazon which is forcing hundreds of small local stores to close. The Internet can also affect different cultures especially ones who are farther away from the rest of the modern world, this is because the Internet can allow people within a culture to want to try different things that their traditional culture oppresses and can lead these people to move away from their culture and more in to the modern world. Another way it can affect people badly are students, this is because maybe instead of paying attention in class they are more worried about their phones and social media.
In conclusion, I believe that the Internet needs to be controlled especially when it comes to social media. I believe that the Internet is good depending on how and where you use it. For example, the Internet could be good for online dating, for communication, etc. But it can also be used badly especially by the youth and social media. But, in the end, I believe that the Internet is good.