How Internet Has Changed Our Lives - Essay Example

How the Internet Has Changed Our Lives Name Institution Introduction Over the years, the internet has kept on advancing, and the range of services it offers are steadily increasing. The number of internet users is increasing and it has become part of our lives. Although the extent of internet addiction differs from one person to another, we cannot deny that most of the world population is on the internet. Conversely, not disputable, some people still do not know or have not used the internet. However, we can confidently argue that the Internet has affected almost every individual’s life in a positive or negative manner. The internet has affected our lives that we cannot do without it. It has taken control of our lives, and everything we do revolves around the internet. It has changed our social lives, made work easier improved communication, enhanced sharing of ideas and reduced the time we use to perform most of our tasks among other benefits. The internet also has negative effects on our lives. These effects include poor sleeping habits, isolation, and lack of sexual boundaries, poor health and lack of social skills among others. This paper analyzes how the internet has changed our lives positively and negatively. The social networking sites are the most common internet sites among the individuals. According to the data obtained from the Statistics Portal (2015), the following graph (1.0) shows the active users in the major social networking sites. Appendix 1.0 shows a table of social networking sites and active membership Graph 1.0 Positive Effects of Internet in Our Lives Education We cannot deny the impact of the Internet on education. The internet has helped to develop the online libraries that help in research. People are no longer congested in public libraries trying to find materials that are limited in terms of copies. It was common to go to get a particular book in the library only to leave disappointed because other people had borrowed the available copies. It has also become easier to earn degrees while at home or when working (Bidgoli, 2003). The internet has enabled the institutions of higher learning to offer virtual education to students with commitments that do allow them to attend physical lecture halls. Students can share notes and discuss over the internet that has helped improve the quality of education. Healthcare People can get health tips on the internet, which has helped to improve our health. The internet has enabled doctors to share their experiences with their colleagues in different parts of the world. Once a research or new medical information is discovered, doctors can share and implement it in their hospitals within a very short time. More also there are many health applications available on the smartphones, tablets, and other devices that can access the internet. These applications help to disseminate information on health living. We can learn the preventive measure of particular health diseases and the measures to take to control them for those already suffering from them. Without the internet, the health care sector could not be the same. Relationship According to BABM (n.d), the Internet has improved socialization among people from different communities in different parts of the world. Before the emergence of the internet, people could only socialize physically or over, the telephone and other forms of communication. These methods were slow, expensive, and unreliable. People could also socialize only with the people they knew. However, today the internet has made the world a global village. Many social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace and Twitter among others have emerged which have enhanced socialization. We can meet new people and establish a relationship with them. For example in Facebook, a person from a particular profession may form a group, and people in the same profession irrespective of their ethnicity can join. These people are able to socialize and have a cordial relationship with one another. People have become addicted to these social networking sites that some are spending most their time on them. Environment The internet has helped to improve our efforts towards having a green technology. Green technology is using environmental science to conserve the resources and our natural environment by controlling the human activities on the environment. According to BAMB (n.d), by relying on the internet, people have reduced using papers. Magazines and newspapers are switching to editions that can be accessed online. Many businesses are switching to online services to avoid paperwork. The retail stores are also offering to send the receipt via email rather than printing it. The online libraries do not require paperwork (Bidgoli, 2003). The impact of the internet on conserving our environment is eminent. Security and Emergencies The security in our lives has greatly improved. When there is a security problem in a particular place, people can share this information with other people using the social networking sites or other platforms. Information is also shared with private security agencies or public law enforcers within seconds to help contain the situation. The internet has made the security issue a responsibility of every individual making the worker security personnel easy. When it comes to emergencies, the internet has helped a great deal. Information is passed to response teams within a short time to enable combat the situation. Social media has taken an integral part in disaster response. According to Birmingham (2011), social media was the major source of communication after Japan was struck tsunami and an earthquake. After an hour, more than 1200 tweets were sent every minute from Tokyo. Business In the past people have been working very hard. Despite working hard, we could not achieve much of what we wanted in a day. The internet has helped people to work smart and not harder. From your house, you can conduct so many businesses at the same time. The internet has helped people to multitask. You can hold a meeting with you staff members in the United States while you are in Europe handling some other businesses. Additionally, staff members can work from different locations and not necessarily on the company premises. According to an article on Businessline 2014 May 06, business today is operated more efficiently, and overall profits are increasing with the help of software such as e-commerce software and integrated accounting software. The internet has also helped to reduce the cost of advertising the business products. Advertising products online helps the businesspersons incur a minimal cost, and the information gets to unlimited number of people within a short period. Reducing cost and increasing the sales of the business products increases the profitability. Shopping Retail e-commerce sales are increasing worldwide due to the internet. People are shopping online, and goods delivered to their doorsteps. People have reduced impulse buying as they thoroughly do research of the products they want on the internet. Even the individuals who purchase items from the shops physically, most of them do a thorough research on the internet, and they are sure of what they want (Bidgoli, 2003). With the internet becoming an important aspect of our lives companies that what to increase their market share and their revenues have no choice but to have an online presence by utilizing e-commerce software. GPS Navigation GPS Navigation is important has saved people the hassle of losing directions and sourcing for locational information from people. Drivers are provided with traffic updates and weather updates (Roy & Zeng, 2015). They are also provided with recalculation tools for missed turns that help them to avoid accidents. Negative Effects of Internet in Our Lives Isolation Social isolation refers to a situation where a person lacks contact with other people in his daily living, such as friends, other employees in the workplace and other social activities. The internet has increased the social isolation of people by creating another virtual world. People are being more connected to the virtual world than the real world. The number of people working from is increasing, and people are losing contact with their colleagues. In the past people could share stories or other social information. Currently, most of the people are glued to the internet. People are socializing in the Facebook, listing, and watching videos from YouTube as well as other social networking sites. Research has shown that socially isolated people risk having shorter lives. Lack of Social Skills Nowadays people are actively socializing in the social media. Face to face socialization has become less frequent, and this has led lack of the required social skills. People’s ability to read the body language has reduced. People’s ability to socialize with others is also reducing thus destroying relationships among friends. People are so much engaged in the internet to an extent, when you are discussing serious matters, they may not pay attention because they are busy scrolling their gadgets. These behaviors have been carried to the workplace where instead of performing our duties, we are busy on the internet. Poor Health Although the internet has contributed so much to improving our health, its negative impact cannot be ignored. People are spending more of their time on the internet and have no time for physical exercise (Roy &Zeng, 2015). For example, many games that could be physically played to improve our body fitness are now available online. Children are always indoors playing games rather than playing outside with other kids. More also, we have increased working from home, we have reduced going to movie theaters, and everything revolves around our gadgets. Lack of physical exercise has led to increasing in obesity cases to both children and adults. Lack of Patience The internet has killed our patience. It has enabled us to access what we want in seconds. For example in the past if you wanted a movie, you could only go to a movie shop. Today, it takes you few seconds to access and start watching a movie from YouTube or other movie sites. In the past people used to communicate with mails that could take days to get to the recipient and several other days to get a reply. Nowadays people have become less patient. If you send a short message to someone, you expect an instant reply. The internet has made people less patient, and their thinking is inclined towards their expectations of how the other person is supposed to reply (Bruhn, 2011). Lack of Privacy The internet has stripped the people the privacy. In the past, one could switch off their telephone numbers and give a few people their contacts. Long gone are the days staying offline helped to keep our information safe from nosey people. Today, with a few steps of navigation on your computer or any device capable of accessing the internet, people can access not only your contact information but also your physical address. With applications such as Google Maps, individuals can tell where you are at any particular time. For the people with sinister plans, use of viruses, hacking, and phishing helps them to find any information they require. People have also lost a sense of privacy and are tweeting their every move or publishing it on other social media websites. Just thick of the many times you have taken a selfie with your friends and uploaded on your Facebook page. Increased bullying The internet has facilitated bullying in the society. People are no longer able to hide themselves in their homes. Tormentors can penetrate the security of our homes that were known to be safe using the internet created avenues. People can sue emails and social media sites to threaten you. The internet encourages bullying since people can say things that they cannot say in person. Bullying has been on the increase among the teenagers and consequently has increased teen’s suicide. Poor Sleeping Habits The internet contains so many activities that make it obsessive. We are not able to keep it aside unless we are tired can take no more of it. We get sucked into its activities that keep us awake even too late in the night (Bruhn, 2011). We are constantly streaming information that makes it difficult to turn our brains off from them. How many times have you watched a movie from the internet only to wake up in the morning and realize that you cannot tell the time you dozed off? We have brought the internet to our bedrooms thus affecting our health. Lack of Sexual boundaries The internet has enabled sharing of all the information available in the world. With the internet, sexual content exposure is happening to kids at a very young age. Today, to get information on anything you just need to do a search on the web and within a few seconds you are there. Most of the sites do not have any restrictions to prevent kids from accessing pornographic information. Some site has the restrictions, but any one can pass even the kids the restrictions. For example, some pornographic sites require you to login using an email address that will take few minutes to create. Lack of sexual boundaries from the internet is an issue that is endangering our innocent children. Lack of empathy According to Nie & Erbring, (2000), the materials watched from the internet have caused insensitivity in people. Today horror movies are common on the internet. Children of very young age are watching and playing games that have hardened them making them. The internet has normalized the bad things, and people have lost the human heart. Cases of people killing their colleagues in manners that are only experienced in movies are on the rise. The culture of narcissism that has been created by social media has contributed to the lack of empathy for people in the society. The violence of all kinds is being experienced in the world today courtesy of the Internet. People want to practice what they learn from the internet, and the internet has become a perfect teacher. Increased laziness The internet has encouraged laziness. People heavily rely on the internet such that they cannot do without it. We do not what to use our brains even on the slightest issues that require our thinking. For example, when a lecture asks a question in class, most of the people will try to search it from the web even before trying to think of the answer. People cannot remember something as simple as their best friend email address or phone number because it is backed up on the cloud and can be retrieved anytime using the internet. Conclusion The internet has changed our lives positively and negatively. It has positively affected the education, health, security, and business sectors. More also it has helped to improve our security, our relationship with others, shopping habits and conserve the environment. Drivers can also use the GPS navigation tool to guide them or direction of new places as well as the traffic updates and weather of the places they wish to visit. The positive impacts of the internet are many, and our lives can never be the same without it. However, on the other hand, the internet has several negative impacts on our lives. The negative impacts are increased laziness, poor health, and lack of sexual boundaries, patience, privacy, social skills, and empathy. The internet has also led to poor sleeping habits, isolation, and increased bullying. References BABM.(n.d ). Top 10 Ways Technology Has Advanced Our Lives http://www.babm.com/systemizing/tech_advances.html Bidgoli, H. (2003). The Internet Encyclopedia, Volume 2. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons. Birmingham,L. ( 2011 March, 11). Japan Rocked by Magnitude 8.9 Quake, Tsunami. Times Magazine. Retrieved from http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2058391,00.html Bruhn, J. G. (2011). The Sociology of Community Connections. Dordrecht: Springer Science+Business Media B.V. Kishore, S. (2014, May 06). Embrace the internet of things. Businessline Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1521149185?accountid=45049 Nie, N. H., & Erbring, L. (2000). Internet and society. Stanford Institute for the Quantitative Study of Society. Roy, S. D., & Zeng, W. (2015). Web 2.x. In Social Multimedia Signals (pp. 1-7). Springer International Publishing. Appendix Table 1.0 shows social networking sites and their active membership Social Network Active members in Millions Facebook 1415 QQ 829 WhatsApp 700 QZone 629 Facebook Messenger 500 WeChat 468 LinkedIn 347 Skype 300 Google + 300 Instagram 300 BaiduTeiba 300 Twitter 288 Viber 286 Tumblr 230 Snapchat 200 LINE 181 Sinaweibo 167 Vkontakte 100 Table 1.0 Read More