Internet — Magic or Tragic?

Well, you might have heard about this topic since you were in school, what new is about this? By now we all know it is more of a curse than a boon, and in this era of rumours and fake news — my intuition confirms it more.
Our parents’ generation connected with their long-lost school and college friends through this! INTERNET and it is sort of magic for them because they used to write letters, actual physical letters — a feeling we would never understand.

After 2000, the urban middle class had these huge computers, and then laptops — mobile phones were just getting there to accumulate everything that a laptop does, and here we are — so much inside our phones that we don’t know what our laptops are even for. Name it and you can do it on your phone!
As much as it has helped us, there have been a lot of drawbacks too! People now love their own company than being with 10 different people and socializing. It has bought the world to a single point where individually you can do anything you want to do and not share it with anyone else.
Can you, for a second, imagine the amount of data that is processed for such specific needs? Well, it is so huge!

Nowadays the internet is vastly used some of the facts say that about 48% population of Asia use the internet. In some countries like USA, UK, Japan about 4 out of 5 people uses the internet.
What does it have in the field of education? Professor Hector Alwarez-Trujillo writes in his essay (Benefits and Challenges for the online learner) “technology has become the key to a new world of education”. He further writes that online learning is becoming the most popular source of learning. A great scholar MitchellKapor says “getting information off the internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant”. Well, in this lockdown this statement couldn’t have been truer. E-Learning is the next generation where students might not just go to schools or colleges and gain a degree just sitting at their homes. Quite last isn’t it?
Let’s list some of the things the internet has blessed us with!
Social Networking
This might be the best internet revolutions that have changed the world for good, we now have online friends and long-distance friends that help us stay connected for a lifetime.
Earlier a simple phone call abroad used to cost so much money, but now we have video calls like WhatsApp and skype.
We can share photos, opinions thoughts of everything coming from anywhere.
Skipping the queues
E-Commerce has just made us lazier, isn’t it? Now, we can buy anything without standing in a queue at a shopping mall!
We get a huge amount of discount you don’t have to worry about extra costs anymore. The rising competition between Amazon, Bigbasket, Flipkart is a benefit for you. In this lockdown, these online superstores have helped us a lot, you can’t deny that!
Showing your creativity
Internet is such an amazing platform to showcase your talent and make it reach to your desired audience!
We all are showcasing our talent in this platform and gaining a fanbase. Basically, with a bit of hard work, everyone can gain their audience and your skills can be appreciated!
Now, what are the drawbacks? Well, let’s talk about it.
The Internet has so many drawbacks to start with.
Right from living in the virtual world and disconnecting from the real world, we have come to a point where we have become isolated, introverts and socially awkward beings because of minimal human interaction. Did you understand that complex line?
Well, let me explain! Remember watching those movies where people are hardly seen together but using high — tech devices for talking to each other?
Well, they are not wrong, our current generation is a stepping stone of it, robots are going to be our friends in the future and we will lose human contact.
This lockdown has taught a big part of human interaction, did you miss your friends and were tempted to socialize? If yes, then you are not falling for gadgets! But if you didn’t miss them and loved your company, it can be a sign that you’re going towards that era.
Well, this sounds bizarre but so many children, younger than us like to stay alone and are mostly introverts, their main cause is the internet and the virtual world.
Some other disadvantages are:
Blessing for students, curse for memory retention: Internet is likely to reduce our memory retention. Along with that it also reduces the thinking capacity of students. If you forget anything, just google it. We all do it.
Hackers and Scams: we have so much important data online now, almost everything can be tracked or hacked. Once you put your information out there, a high chance of possibility is there that you can get hacked or tracked. “The Great Hack” is a superb documentary to understand the dominance of social media and internet on people, especially on developed countries.
Fake News: As I have talked before as well, the Internet has a lot of fake news travelling around, we don’t know what to believe and what to forget. So, a fact check is very important. Apps like Facebook, Google have introduced many such functions to check whether a particular news piece is fake or true.
It depends on us of what we do of this superpower which is higher than anything else. Use it wisely or get dependent on it and if it is gone, get handicapped.
Have you ever tried to detox yourselves from your mobile even once? Well try it once, it is soothing. I did it only for a day and I loved doing it.
Internet is a boon but everything used in excess has a side effect. Try to be wise and put it in good use. Especially students — you are the future