The Internet is becoming popular all over the world, especially during the pandemic, because the amount of people who work from home is getting larger. Nowadays, everyone uses social media as a way to communicate with each other instead of meeting face-to-face. However, everything all has its pros and cons, so in this writing, I will explain my opinions about the advantages and disadvantages of using the Internet.
Firstly, let’s answer this question, why do people need the Internet? The Internet contains almost all the information we need when doing research or homework for school and work. It isn’t difficult anymore when a person needs to search for something. Before, if we want to look up a difficult word, we have to open a dictionary or go to a library to borrow a dictionary, but today, we have Google Translate, which can be used to translate into multiple languages. If you want to discover new places without going out, then Google Earth is for you. Learning how to cook food is also simpler, Google is always there to help. Moreover, some websites are created for us to have more entertaining activities, like Youtube, Facebook, etc. In short, the Internet is a free platform that provides a large amount of valuable and useful content for learning, work, and relaxing.
Next, it makes life easier. Some new applications are designed to help us with errands. Now, we can go shopping online as a replacement for shopping in the mall. Alternatively, it’s safer and more private to pay money via online cash. Besides, the way we communicate has changed too. In the 1990s, we sometimes chat or phone each other through cell phones, but mostly, we meet and talk directly. These days, we cannot go out, so chatting online may be the best choice to stay in touch with friends.
The Internet gives us many opportunities to earn income. It is beneficial and suitable for people who want to work from home. Freelance jobs are available on the websites, advertisements, or on the Facebook homepage, some examples are content creators, online shop keepers, engineering… Therefore, we don’t have to run around the city to find a job anymore.
Unfortunately, the online environment also has its problems. Using phones, laptops, televisions or computers too much can harm our eyes and our mind. Experts say that playing video games helps improve memory, math skills, and patience. Nonetheless, you have to play sensibly or you can develop health problems like a backache because of sitting for hours, sore eyes because of staring at the screen too close, an earache because of hearing loud sounds with headphones, or Nintendo thumb - a situation happens when you make your thumb doing the same action again and again like pressing a button on a game console.
By the way, sending messages is more convenient but then we are going to stand in need of the human touch. When texting, we tend to forget other people’s feelings, we can say words that hurt them even when we don’t know that. Communicating via typing messages and calling virtual friends, people will lack interpersonal and socialization skills with real ones. Nevertheless, socialization is an important soft skill in daily life. We tend to lose our happiness when interacting with others.
The Internet allows us to play online games, watch movies and these services can make one addicted to it and it’s hard to stop that. When addicted to it, we cannot end the action by ourselves and this affects our social life and schoolwork a lot. As a really bad result, we can have strange behaviors and intentions to harm others.
Above, I have mentioned that the Internet supplies almost all the information we need, some can be useful but some cannot. No one can control what other people post on the Internet, thus it’s difficult to manage the materials here. Facing negative thoughts or wrong news can affect our thinking, our knowledge, or worse, our personality. In addition, because of the amount of information from different sources, students can use the Internet to look for answer keys. In normal periods, that’s okay and it helps the pupil to find the answers and understand the lesson. Although when doing online tests, students can use this tool to cheat. As a consequence, it builds dependence inside the student.
Because many people are using the Internet, this can be a chance for criminals to commit a crime for bad purposes. Our data, which we post on social networking is very important, it stores our information for people to recognize us, like our name, date of birth, gender, phone number, appearance, home address,... and some of it shouldn’t be disclosed to strangers. Despite the fact that we do not even share them, some people still want to steal them for their self-interest. Because of this, we should consider before posting anything on Facebook, especially with public mode.
In the end, I do not advise people not to use the Internet because of its disadvantages or encourage everyone to use the Internet every time they need help. We must balance our life and our network socializing, and just use the Internet as a tool to study new things, not to depend on, this will help us avoid the harms and develop the benefits. In my opinion, the Internet is good or bad, it depends on how we use it.