Disadvantages of the internet
Like many people, I thought the internet only had its best, and I always overlooked its worst side. I could watch a lot of movies and get crazily amazed by what the internet could do. My friends had a soft spot for the online staff, and I fell for it. My journey with the internet started at a low pace when I was still young. It gave me lots of benefits right from my education to my lifestyles. I could write blogs, earn money, research my assignments, get an ‘A’ grade, work on my projects, and become top in class, and many more exciting life activities. I often heard that the internet had its flaws but often took the message lightly. Like many people, I believed that the weaknesses of the internet are minor and do not deserve a lot of concentration until I came to have life experience, some from my friend’s experience, and some from my real-life story. Even though the internet has its wide variety of benefits, it also has a wide range of disadvantages that have to be correctly addressed and brought into traction to create awareness and display a platform where these flaws can be solved.
The internet has a wide range of pornography videos and pictures. These contents are meant for adults, but surprisingly, young people can access them as often and quickly as the adults do. These sites are addictive, and once incurred in a young mind, and the damages can be vast. The sites had started taking effect on me when I first saw a porn advert in my phone notification. I was curious and opened the site only to find it ‘attractive’ and got hooked even though my conscious kept telling me that it was a wrong to do. Like me, many young people reach these sites innocently, and since they lack strong self-control, they find themselves deeply rooted in porn addiction sooner than they aspired. It takes lots of motivation, energy, and follow up to ensure that these children get unhooked from these sites with hopes of no return. Pornography is just one of the many disadvantages of the internet that should slowly be worked on.
Cyberbullying is also an incident that is experienced almost daily by young, innocent people. Research that has currently been on the run suggests that 60% of parents with teens aged 14-18 have experienced internet bullying (Cook, 2020). This kind of child mistreatment has dire consequences and long-lasting disturbing memories. Children of age as low as six years go through a moment of life where they experience internet discomfort. Some of the bullying acts involve spreading false rumors on the internet, exposing illicit pictures without the owner’s consent, nagging, and threats online and many more bullying examples that children face. I have never had such an experience but have seen some of my friends go through such traumas. The experience is never a walk on the park and dramatically damages young minds denying them the freedom to interact socially and corrupting their emotional happiness. Cyberbullying sometimes happens between young people. Because of this, young people sometimes live in fear of interacting with their peers or decide to inflict emotional pain on their agemates by spreading rumors and pictures in the internet forums. Such kind of behavior is not accepted in society and is a trouble that is destroying the lives of many young people in the world.
Privacy is now a problem when it comes to using the internet, and due to this, cyber crimes have increased with a high rate. For instance, due to high online shopping levels, some people may leave sensitive information on the sites. Some people may take advantage of this and either personify themselves through a false stolen identity and commit a crime. In other instances, people may go to the extent of stealing money from an innocent person by tracking down his/her personal information. I have heard lots of stories from several people whose identity was stolen and later used to commit a crime. I have confirmed some of these tales to be accurate, and sometimes the innocent people are brought to suffer on account of other’s sins.
One of the internet disadvantages that many can attest to is addiction. I was a victim, together with most of my friends and family members. Internet addiction is harmful and takes effect at a slow pace. These effects cause lots of harm in the future if not tamed in the early stages. Addiction to the internet gave me less time to concentrate on my studies, which is a fate that aims many people who are hooked to their mobile phones, laptops, and tablets.
What is more, addiction causes one to look like a zombie and often unaware of their surroundings. Being hooked on your phone for a long time takes away valuable times and moments with your friends and family. Additionally, this obsession makes one lose interest in their hobbies, career, education, and many more essential things in life. Addiction to the internet causes diverse effects that are often ignored.
In conclusion, the internet has many disadvantages. I have only talked of a few that I feel have been a life experience for me or people around me. The internet has a wide range of advantages and each day, a new benefit crops up but it seems that these benefits come with some flaws.
Recommendations.
The internet can never be eliminated from our lives because we actually can’t live without it. It is part of us, and if used correctly, it can cause more good than originally thought of causing. It is therefore up to figure out how we can eliminate some of disadvantages or at least learn how to behave when browsing online or using our smartphones.
Personally, I have taken an initiative to block some chrome advertisement that come with some ‘exciting’ photos or videos that can hook someone in the world of pornography. However, a lot of discipline and self-control is highly needed to keep my hands off the porn sites. Blocking these advertisements and training myself to have great discipline and self-control will cut down the possibility of watching these sites and being strong enough to leave the places before I watch them. The process can be a lot easier for someone who is not deeply hooked in the pornography but for those with a deeper connection, they might need a third-party help of either a parent, responsible friend or counsellor.
I will also be more careful when typing my personal information in some website pages when I want to do some orders in the online markets. I will also put up more privacy settings when writing down my passwords and other personal details in the internet. These activities will narrow down the chances of any identity theft therefore decreasing the cybercrimes. More to this, I will have to educate my family members and friends on the dangers of carelessly typing personal details in the websites and urge them to put more concrete passwords in their accounts and check their privacy settings from time to time.
Addiction is a common disadvantage of the internet that many individuals are suffering from and there is need to curb it. In my case, avoiding my smartphone will be rather a difficult thing to do and will require a lot of sacrifice to completely accomplish the desire to use my phone less often. Addiction to the internet may be one of the most challenging addictions to forego. The challenge to use the phone less often comes in when it becomes a mandatory to use your phone but in less situations. The less times that one uses the phone or internet may become too tempting leading to spending more hours in front of the electronic screens. To overcome such an obsession, discipline is required and it may take longer to fully recover. However, some of the steps that I will take is train myself to use the phone only while necessary, delete some apps from my smartphone, and avoid the internet as much as possible except when necessary.
To solve most of the problems that come with the use if internet requires lots of education to the public. Most people are only aware of the many advantages that come with the use of internet with little knowledge of the diverse disadvantages that the internet carries. Teaching people on how cyberbullying affect children can create empathy in the society allowing some people to stop this ill behavior. Apart from education, cyberbullying and cybercrimes can still be controlled by use of some legal actions which punishes the offenders.