Positive and negative impact of the internet

Positive and Negative Impact of the Internet

This is the digital age and there’s no gainsaying the fact that most of the world or at least a sizeable chunk of the 7.5 Billion people are net savvy. We all use the internet to communicate with others, to use the same for hosting video conference calls or just to call one’s family. The fact remains that we all use the internet increasingly more these days on account of the fact that we can now carry out several tasks from being online. And thanks to IOT, or internet of things, the ways and means through which we can use the net to control our immediate environment has grown tenfold in the last few years.  Although we are not yet living in a dystopian world, we may as well be there given the sheer amount of time that each one of us spends online. Given this, it is time that we took a closer look at some of the positive and negative impacts of the internet and the way it is being utilized today.

Positive and negative impact of the internet

The Positive Impact of the Internet

  • Information and knowledge: With access to the internet and the World Wide Web, we can now access vast swathes of information and utilize the same for research and to glean pertinent data from the lot. Thanks to the internet, we can now access information on any topic, study it in detail and use the comprehensive information to build up our trove of knowledge on the same. The net provides us with an easy advantage as it enables us to access tons of data instantaneously thereby saving us valuable time in the process. You would no longer have to visit any dusty library but instead can get all your work done by researching the topic online.
  • Communication: Thanks to the internet, we can now communicate with someone on the other side of the world and instantaneously at that. We can chat with them in real time, even make video calls and even initiate video conferences with multiple people at the same time. None of this would be possible without the various advances made in the field of internet over the course of last few years.
  • Convenience: Thanks to internet, you can now bank online, send payments globally using the various portals online and even order food. You can also pay your school fees online, take care of that utility bill and even pay your parking fines – and all of this right from your laptop, thanks to internet. So yes, the net certainly does help make your life easier and more convenient.

The Negative Impact of the Internet

  • Addictive: Certain activities like online gaming can turn out to be quite addictive. People have been known to get addicted to the point of compromising their own health. To put it in perspective, a South Korean couple was so engrossed with online gaming that they let their baby starve which only underscores the fact that Internet can be highly addictive. Moreover, playing the various games online for hours on end can have a harmful effect on your body and it can also cause you to become obese. And moreover, not being physically active for prolonged periods can cause you to develop back, joint problems, and playing these games for long hours will cause you to experience severe eye strain as well.
  • Privacy: The problem today is that any information you share online is hardly private any longer, some of the sites you use regularly may monitor your behaviour so as to better understand how you behave and they could market this data to third parties as Facebook has done recently. And when it comes to your personal data, you never know if it will be kept private or if someone can hack into it. This is why it is important you take care not to upload important information but just the bare minimum as required.
  • Malware and other security threats: It is thanks to internet that various forms of online threats such as malware and other viruses managed to infect computers worldwide. These viruses can infect your system with the purpose of either hacking your data or cause your system to malfunction.

These are some of the positive and negative impacts of Internet. It is hard to imagine our world without it for we have become truly entwined with everything that the net has to offer us. What we can do is to offset some of the negatives and find a way to help mitigate the rest.

Alan Behrens

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