The Internet: A Blessing or a Curse?
How the internet has evolved, the pros and cons and how being a Digital Citizen has changed me
The way the world has changed in the past 50 years has been absolutely staggering. From the early start of the internet, which can be traced back to 1945, we now find that most of us heavily struggle to go a single day without using the internet. Especially in living through a pandemic, I think everyone has had no choice but to be more digitally active than ever. We’ve moved from buying newspapers and CDs (as pointed out by a fellow digital society citizen below) to be able to have a device with nearly everything we could need in our front pocket. Included in this is generations of young adults, including myself who grew up on the internet. More to this, I couldn’t imagine a life without it. When being told stories of my parents travelling to a record store, Good Vibrations, every weekend to buy the latest release they’d heard on the radio is something I can never relate to.
The Internet: Our Best Friend
The internet, originally designed for military use and then communication between researchers has evolved significantly. Now, we find ourselves living in the digital age where we are surrounded by technology. Today, research suggests that the internet is actively used by 4.66 billion people as of January 2021 which has steadily increased yearly and is for a huge range of purposes. There are clearly reasons why the internet is so popular.
-Staying Connected
Firstly, the internet allows for an immense amount of rapid communication. Social media allows for a large number of people to keep up to date with each other and professionally to instantly communicate with colleagues. Instantly, especially with increasing active users, it has never been easier to keep up with your friends or favourite celebrities. This has never been more felt than it was during the pandemic. Social interaction has been found to be absolutely critical for both mental and physical health. So when everyone all around the world was being kept indoors there was a significant spike in both loneliness and mental illness. Helping with this was the internet: one of the only legal ways to interact with others at the time.
-Seemingly Endless Information at Your Fingertips
The internet seems to have the answer to virtually every question you could think of, as long as you can type it into a search engine. You can check out any medical symptom you have online at a moments notice deciding whether you need attention and in turn improving mental and physical health, on top of strain on hospitals. Media sites such as YouTube are a hub of practical information that you could use in your everyday life from cooking tutorials to how to tie your shoes and seemingly everything in-between. On top of this, these are growing all the time. As the internet continues to mature there will only be more and more information shared on it and therefore more to digest.
-Instant Spreadability of News
Nowadays, when any major world event happens every single person with an internet connection finds out about it instantly. Whether this is a political update, sports scores or the latest celebrity scandal you have the ability for live updates. This allows a largely shortened time that it can take individuals to receive information. This can be significantly important in specific areas such as local news, traffic updates or what the weather will be.
-Increased Business Opportunities
Many businesses have benefitted greatly from adopting an online presence. Whether this be from a marketing sense (such as online adverts) or a distribution sense (such as online shopping) businesses are doing their best to use the internet to their advantage. This adds a whole new sector of businesses that purely make their money online such as ‘ghost kitchens:’ a restaurant doing all their business via online delivery apps.
The Internet: Our Worst Enemy
Despite the popularity and benefits, the internet is not all positive: it has a dark side. Unfortunately, this increasing reliance on tech comes with it an increase in those looking to exploit it.
-Fake News
Previously, I mentioned the benefit that the internet has on news media. Instantly spreadable and digestible content has benefits to those it reaches but it also bred a new exploitative wave in content. ‘Fake News’ is a term describing falsified or misleading news stories which are presented as real. False stories have also been shown to spread around 6x faster than real news stories begging the question: can you really believe anything you read online?
-Privacy Concerns
Going online it seems nearly inevitable that all of our private information will be entered at some point. Our address(es) and payment information when buying something or our location from our public IP address is valuable information that could do real damage in the wrong hands. In a world where recently data has surpassed oil as the worlds most valuable resource, there is a lot of importance in accessing this information. Coupling this with common recent leaks of this private information (such as the 2016 Panama Papers): these violate the basic human right to privacy.
-Automation
Although there are benefits of increased technology, there are a growing number of jobs becoming obsolete. For every holiday ordered online, there is less need for a travel agent. For every grocery shop ordered online, there is less need for a bank teller. These could end up making entire professions obsolete.
-Personal Reflection
My Experience
Personally, having grown up around the internet I have used it for every random question or rough translation I could ever have needed. Also, I am currently on the verge of completing my second year of university: one where I have not attended a single in-person university activity. These show my reliance as of late on the internet within my everyday life. Because of this, it seems logical to learn more about what you're doing. I was able to learn about the importance of internet ethics and even the role that data has in politics.
Thinking Outside the Box
Digital Society has really added a unique element to my university experience. Firstly, using a new platform in Medium has allowed me to interact with other students in a way that I haven't been able to do this year. Students sharing content about the same topics and viewpoints is interesting to compare and contrast to mine. Beyond that, producing creditable work provides an extra incentive for producing exciting content.
A New Outlook
Learning about the history of our Digital Society, specifically the internet, has really changed my outlook on it. Previously mentioned was my failure to understand my parents travelling to a record store, this course has made me reassess how quickly online activities change between generations. When I was a child there was no Facebook, no Snapchat but now I am nearly dependent on these to communicate with others. There are children being born into a new generation: with even more advancements to be made. There is a need to keep up to date with the current culture, as a child you are born into them and quickly develop habits. I have learnt the importance of not getting stuck in your ways and keep up to date with our society. The current era of our Digital Society has so many new positives and negatives that could not have been predicted even as far as a decade ago. The importance of these pros and cons are ones that come with an ever-changing world.
The Future
One thing beyond keeping up with our Digital Society is what this society will look like. The internet specifically has changed so much since its incarnation and now your digital footprint is bigger than ever. In the future, there may be others unaware of how this digital footprint can affect how employers and others view them. Being told the story of young elected MP Mhairi Black having old tweets surface after being elected really showed me the effect that this has. The future appears to be relying more and more on technology so I feel that this entire experience has left me better equipped to understand, adapt to and deal with the pros and cons that will come with this. Especially, when within the workplace, I feel as though I will have an increased understanding of the digital use.
