Positive and Negative Effects of the Internet - Essay Example

Effects of Internet Student’s Name: Instructor’s Name: Course Code: Date of Submission: Introduction Internet is the connection of computers to communicate messages using wireless devices. In the modern world, internet has become a major channel of communication and is being used by many people including the young and old. There are many social sites which have been designed to ensure people from different cultures socialize for instance through facebook, Twitter and Skype. However, the internet has come up with many challenges and has actually changed the social life of many people especially the young people and the businesses. There are both positive and negative effects of the internet on the social life of people. In this article, I will discuss the negative effects of internet on the social life of individuals. In particular, I will discuss the negative effects of internet on culture and education. Culture comprises of all the aspects that make a group of people to behave in a particular way like communication, ideas, values and language. Effects of internet on culture To start with, internet has changed the way of life of individuals. The internet portrays the lifestyle of western people to be better than other cultures. In this regard, the internet portrays the western style of life and many people abandon their cultural practices and start practicing the western style of leadership (Maria et al 2013). Through the introduction of the new values and cultures, the original cultures of people are forgotten. This greatly affects the communities which are preservative of their culture and thus they find life hard because of the new culture being incorporated into theirs. Internet also leads to addiction. Many kids and teenagers have forgotten their social peer groups and are taking much of their time surfing the internet (Rinearson 2006). This reduces the time the young people spend with their friends in social activities like playing football and running and spend most of their time sitting and surfing the internet. In this effect, the excessive surfing of the internet leads to some dangers like obesity because the young people do not find time to do some vigorously exercises. The internet further has some negative impacts on the political and social views of individuals. The origin of the internet is from the western people who are believed to be democratic in terms of political values and views (Stoll 2002). Politically, the internet may enable individuals to post information which maybe misleading, resulting to wrong conclusions. This is because most people think that the information on the internet is most likely to be correct but in the real sense it may not thus people can take up that wrong information which can be based on politics and make wrong conclusions thus affecting the culture of people of making their own judgments. Internet further causes security threats to individuals thus affecting their social life. This is because the internet is used in everyday life for instance in social and political life and therefore the internet is prone to be hacked (Clinton & Hope 2007). Important information kept by individuals can be accessed thus affecting the social way of life of people as their confidential information can be accessed by enemies leading to security threats thus the social life of individuals is threatened. Moreover internet has led to bad relationship among families and more especially young people and their parents. Many young people are emulating the western style of behaving and because they have abandoned their style of living, their culture becomes different from that of their parents (Bree 2011). In this effect, there is misunderstanding between the parents and their children leading to bad relationship simply because of the internet. Internet is also changing the communication styles from the traditional to modern one. The internet has enabled people to abandon their culture of communication of using for instance magazines, newspapers and bill boards to internet means of communication like through facebook and Twitter (Maria et al 2013). This has some disadvantages on the social way of life because not all people can access the internet thus miss out important information. Negative effects of internet on education Internet on the other hand, has some negative effects on the education of students. To begin with, the internet has led to increasing errors in spellings and grammar. Many students are addicted to the internet and they find themselves using the abbreviations of the internet in their academic writing (Husain 2006). The students also use incorrect grammar from the internet and use them in their writing posing threats to correct English for academic writing. The other negative effect of internet of the internet is that it leads to inability to do handwriting. Many students have relied much on the internet sources of information forgetting the handwriting skills. In this, they forget the communication through writing as they communicate mostly in the internet. The negative effect is that the students find it hard to do the assignments which require them to handwrite their work thus lowering their academic performance simply because of the internet. Internet sometimes provides unreliable sources of information. Many students entirely depend on the information from the internet which may not be accurate and reliable (Robert 2006). There are some information on the internet which are not supposed to be relied on but because the students entirely depend on the internet and think that it is accurate thus leading to the adoption of information which is misleading and the students' performance poorly academically. Moreover, plagiarism has been on the increase because of the internet sources of information. The internet has been a source of information for lazy students who just copy any information from the internet (Mohammad 2003). The students just take information from the internet and past it in their academic assignments without even evaluating the reliability of the sources which leads to students facing serious penalties for plagiarism thus affecting the academic performance of the students. Internet has negatively influenced the work ethics. Many students rely mostly on the internet for their home answers and they don’t take their time and struggle to get the answers because the internet gives answers immediately without any efforts involved (Ruth 1999). The students get used to this habit and therefore they even apply it in the school where they don’t want to struggle to get correct answers. In the regard, the students perform poorly because they find it hard to work out the school problems as they are used to surfing the internet. The internet has also led to the poor physical development of the students. Many students spend most of their time surfing the internet and playing games on the internet. The student spends most of the time on the internet thus they don’t have some time to do regular exercises to better their physical development for example running and paying football (Richard 2006). Most schools on the other hand do not provide physical education thus the students don get adequate time to do regular exercises for their physical developments. This affects the concentration of students in learning activities thus leading to poor performance in the academic arena. Conclusion The internet is the connection of computers used to communicate information and can be wireless. It has been proved to have negative effects on the culture of the people. In the first place, it changes the way people communicate in the society by changing from the traditional means like magazines to internet applications like facebook. Other negative effects include addiction, political effects, security threats and relationship breakups. On the side of education, the negative effects of internet include plagiarism, spelling and grammar errors, failure to effectiveness in handwriting, work ethics and wrong sources of information. Finally, internet is a threat to physical development of the students because they spend most of the time on the internet and forget doing physical exercises which is essential for the development of the students. The end result is poor performance academically. In this regard therefore, the internet should be limited in its use especially in the education sector despite having many benefits to improve the performance of students through their own efforts. References Bree, M 2011, Hybrid engagement: How Facebook helps and hinders students’ Social integration, Thomson Learning Clinton, D & Hope, S 2007, Culture and Co-Creation: Exploring Consumers’ Inspirations and Aspirations for Writing and Posting On-Line Fan Fiction, Houghton Mifflin Company. Husain, Ali 2006, Internet use by the faculty members of Kuwait University, Electronic Library, Vol. 24, No. 6, pp. 281-290. Mohammad, N 2003, Internet use by university academics: a bipartite study of Information and communication needs, online information review, Vol. 27, No. 4, pp. 499-510. Maria, L. Mia, L. & Christine, L 2013, The Virtual Fan Community: Social Media And Pop Culture Tourism, Thomson Learning. Robert, H 2006, The internet for academics: towards a holistic adoption model, Online information review, Vol 30, No 5, pp. 555-568. Richard, C. H 2006, Superintendent Leadership for Technology Integration in Public Education, Advances in Educational Administration, Vol. 8, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, p.287-300 Rinearson, R 2006, "Protect your children: Don't let them wander the Internet alone." News-Sentinel. Stoll, C 2002, "Isolated by the Internet." Mind Readings. Ed. Gary Colombo. Boston/New York. Ruth, M 1999, “The Internet and Japanese education: the effect of globalization on education policies and government initiatives", Aslib Proceedings, Vol. 51, No. 7, pp. 224 – 232. Maria, L. Mia, L. & Christine, L 2013, The Virtual Fan Community: Social Media and Pop Culture Tourism, Tourism Social Science Series, Vol. 18, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, p.133-157. Read More