essay about internet benefits

What Are the Benefits of the Internet? Argumentative Essay

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

The Internet has been one of the biggest inventions that have made a great difference in the lives of many people in the world. Its introduction has come with an assortment of benefits which in one way or another has made life to be so easy. Many people say that the Internet has reduced the world into easily accessible global village since it helps people to access information from every part of the world with just some simple clicks on the keyboards and keypads of computers and related gadgets.

Internet use allows people who are interested and have the knowledge about it access a lot of information which range from different subjects hence it is able to meet the needs of diversified population that use the Internet. In this light, the invention of the Internet has been accompanied by many benefits that has turned the world into a global village, thus people can easily access any information at the click of a button.

To begin with, the Internet has come up with ways that enable man to undertake many tasks that were in the past deemed as cumbersome since it has almost every material that is needed to tackle all sorts of problems in various fields of life. For instance, scholars and research organizations had difficult time perusing through piles of books to do their research work. These have been made so easy with the introduction of the Internet since it has all the relevant materials that are needed to carry any kind of research work.

Likewise, in the past years, people suffered greatly due to congestion that occurred in processing transactions in the banking halls. Queuing was the only way through which people received banking services. With the invention of the Internet banking was made so easy due to the fact most of the operations of the financial institutions have been made accessible through the Internet, therefore making it possible for people to conduct all their bank transactions without any difficulty.

Through the Internet people can be able to transfer money electronically, check their bank account balances and withdraw and deposit money via the Internet; this is also referred to as Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT). This has also been accessible unlimitedly since the Internet is operational all the time.

Another important aspect is that the Internet has made it easy for people to do business via telecommunication media, thus having an opportunity to explore the international market.

This was a hard nut to crack before the introduction of the Internet because someone wishing to purchase goods in international markets had to use traditional means of communication such as television, phones, and newspaper. But with the coming of the Internet this has become very simple. People nowadays can easily buy goods online and at the same companies can display their commodities on the Internet. All transactions are made online hence making international trade very convenient.

Consequently, online trading has also led to great revolution in the innovativeness due to the fact that companies are able to share ideas with others which trigger them to become dynamic in the way they perform their business operations so as to be able to meet the demands of the international market. Advertisement of goods is also very easy since companies need to launch their websites where they post their commodities and prices.

This was very difficult in the past since advertisement was only limited to television, radio and print media which are relatively expensive and do not advertise the products of each company that has subscribed with them throughout. But the Internet is at all times advertising all the commodities that have been posted on it.

More importantly, the Internet has acted as a channel through which people access employment opportunities since most employers advertise jobs through agents that are online. At the same the invention of the Internet has created many job opportunities that are associated with its existence. For instance, jobs such as creation of web pages and programs have come up due to the Internet.

Internet has also led to the establishment of businesses that deal with Internet such as cyber cafés, online research agencies, search engines such as Google and social networks that are private businesses. In addition to these, individuals have also started Internet service providing firms where people subscribe at a fee to get connected to the Internet. All these cases give a clear implication of the Internet as far as availability of employment is concerned.

In the education field, the Internet has made scholarly work to be so easy since it provides all the materials that student require in doing their research and answering assignments given to them. Learners can also use the Internet to undertake their normal studies since it contains all the academic resources that are needed.

Research work has also been streamlined by the invention of the Internet since researchers from different institutes around the world can share ideas and facts. The Internet has also made learning so easy due to the fact that tutors in learning institutes can send and receive learning materials to or from their students. People can also undertake online courses which they can pursue at the comfort of their homes or offices.

Furthermore, people get entertained in various ways by the ever increasing number of entertainment sites. There are sites that are purposely created to offer recreation to Internet users such as youtube.com which is used by entertainers or even ordinary people to post music, movies or funny comedies and events which are then accessed by people, hence entertaining them.

There are also social networks that are developed in the Internet which are used by people to interact by communicating, sharing photos and finding friends all over the world. Such sites include Facebook and Twitter.

Therefore, from the above benefits, it can be articulated that the invention of the Internet has really changed the lives of many people. Internet has also altered the mode in which various activities are done. It has also led to the development of so many other things related to the technology and at the same time things that seem to be inaccessible to easily reached. In essence, this invention has really affected people’s lives positively.

• Prominent Oceanographic Institutes in the United States
• “Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type” the Book by Cronin Doreen
• Internet Contracts Overview and Analysis
• Has Social Networking Affected Social Skill of Today’s Generation?
• History of Online Social Networking in Saudi Arabia
• Online Persona: Ethical Implications
• Need for Internet Censorship and its Impact on Society
• Telegraph and Its Impacts in Mass Communication
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2018, September 4). What Are the Benefits of the Internet? https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-internet/

"What Are the Benefits of the Internet?" IvyPanda , 4 Sept. 2018, ivypanda.com/essays/the-internet/.

IvyPanda . (2018) 'What Are the Benefits of the Internet'. 4 September.

IvyPanda . 2018. "What Are the Benefits of the Internet?" September 4, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-internet/.

1. IvyPanda . "What Are the Benefits of the Internet?" September 4, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-internet/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "What Are the Benefits of the Internet?" September 4, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-internet/.

45,000+ students realised their study abroad dream with us. Take the first step today

Here’s your new year gift, one app for all your, study abroad needs, start your journey, track your progress, grow with the community and so much more.

Verification Code

An OTP has been sent to your registered mobile no. Please verify

Thanks for your comment !

Our team will review it before it's shown to our readers.

Essay on Internet

• Updated on  
• Oct 1, 2021

With throat-cutting competition, the difficulty level of various competitive exams has increased. Apart from domain-specific knowledge, questions framed in various exams evaluate critical thinking and decision-making ability, reading and writing skills, and  Logical and Analytical Reasoning . It thus has become important to focus on all the components equally. Just like the aforementioned topics, Essay writing is another crucial element of a wide range of entrance tests like IELTS , TOEFL , UPSC exams , etc. The topics for essays can range from Digital India and Economic issues to the role of Education and Women Empowerment . In this blog, we will share some samples of essays on the internet with you!

Uses of Internet Essay

Essay on Advantages and Disadvantages of Internet

Tips to Write an Essay on the Internet 

Here are some of the tips which you can follow in order to write an impressive essay on the internet. 

• Your essay on the internet should be clear and concise with appropriate information. 
• Research meticulously before you start writing an essay on the internet.
• Add both, advantages and disadvantages of using it.  
• Write the content in paragraphs. 
• Avoid the use of jargons and slangs. 
• Keep the tone formal. 
• You can also add statistical data.

The internet is a worldwide network of computer networks that connects millions of people in over 150 countries. Using the internet, you can send emails, chat with people, and obtain information on different variety of subjects. 

Internet can be used for multiple purposes including finding information, communicate with people, shop online, manage your finances, etc.

The first workable prototype of internet came in the late 1960s with creation of ARPANET or the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network. ARPANET used packet switching to allow multiple computers to communicate on a single network.

In order to complete your application process for studying abroad, apart from the basic documents, you also need to submit a personal essay / statement of purpose as it elucidates your motive to take admission in a particular course and university and also shed light on your career goals. It thus needs to be impressive! Take the assistance from the experts at Leverage Edu who will help you write an SOP that will highlight your achievements, purpose and future goals in a very lucid yet impeccable way!

Team Leverage Edu

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Contact no. *

Leaving already?

8 Universities with higher ROI than IITs and IIMs

Grab this one-time opportunity to download this ebook

Connect With Us

45,000+ students realised their study abroad dream with us. take the first step today..

Resend OTP in

Need help with?

Study abroad.

UK, Canada, US & More

IELTS, GRE, GMAT & More

Scholarship, Loans & Forex

Country Preference

New Zealand

Which English test are you planning to take?

Which academic test are you planning to take.

Not Sure yet

When are you planning to take the exam?

Already booked my exam slot

Within 2 Months

Want to learn about the test

Which Degree do you wish to pursue?

When do you want to start studying abroad.

September 2024

January 2025

What is your budget to study abroad?

How would you describe this article ?

Please rate this article

We would like to hear more.

Essay on Importance of Internet

Students are often asked to write an essay on Importance of Internet in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Importance of Internet

Introduction.

The Internet is a powerful tool that has transformed our lives. It is a network of computers that allows us to access information, communicate, and perform various tasks.

Access to Information

Communication.

The Internet has made communication easier and faster. We can chat, video call, and email anyone, anywhere, anytime.

Online Services

From shopping to banking, the Internet offers numerous services. It saves time and makes our lives convenient.

Also check:

250 Words Essay on Importance of Internet

The lifeline of modern society: the internet.

The internet, often referred to as the “network of networks,” has become an integral part of our lives. Its significance cannot be overstated as it has revolutionized communication, education, business, and entertainment.

Communication and Information Access

The internet has transformed the way we communicate. Emails, social media, and video conferencing have made it possible to connect with anyone, anywhere, at any time. It has also made information access easier than ever. The vast ocean of data available online has made the internet a primary source of information, research, and news.

Education and Learning

The internet has significantly impacted education. With the advent of online courses, learning has become more accessible. It has broken the barriers of geography, allowing students to learn from the best educators worldwide. Moreover, the internet acts as an enormous library, offering countless resources for academic research and knowledge expansion.

Business and Commerce

Entertainment and leisure.

Lastly, the internet has transformed the entertainment industry. Streaming platforms have made movies, music, and games readily available. Social media platforms provide a space for sharing creative content and personal experiences.

In conclusion, the internet has significantly shaped our world, influencing various aspects of our lives. Its importance is undeniable, and its potential for future advancements is limitless.

500 Words Essay on Importance of Internet

The advent of the internet.

The internet, a global network connecting millions of computers, has revolutionized the world, transforming every facet of our lives. It’s not just a technology; it’s a phenomenon that has reshaped our societies, economies, and cultures.

The Internet as a Source of Knowledge

Facilitating communication and collaboration.

The internet has also transformed the way we communicate. Email, social media, and instant messaging have made communication faster and more efficient. The internet has made it possible to connect with people across the globe instantaneously, breaking down geographical barriers. This has also fostered global collaboration, allowing people from different parts of the world to work together on projects or ideas.

Impact on Economy and Commerce

Entertainment and media, the internet and social change.

The internet has also been a catalyst for social change. It has given a voice to those who were previously unheard, enabling them to share their stories and mobilize for change. Social media platforms have played a key role in movements like the Arab Spring and Black Lives Matter, demonstrating the power of the internet to drive social change.

The importance of the internet cannot be overstated. It has transformed our world, reshaping the way we learn, communicate, do business, and engage with our society. As we move further into the digital age, the internet will continue to play a pivotal role in shaping our future. However, as with any powerful tool, it is important that we use the internet responsibly, ensuring it is a force for good in our world.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

Happy studying!

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

• Skip to main content
• Skip to secondary menu
• Skip to primary sidebar
• Skip to footer

A Plus Topper

Improve your Grades

Internet Essay | Essay on Internet Internet Essay for Students and Children in English

February 14, 2024 by Prasanna

Internet Essay in English: The essay on Internet is a useful tool to educate students about the benefits and dangers of the Internet. The Internet is also a tool that we cannot avoid in this day and age. Nearly every aspect of our lives, from social interaction to learning and education, is performed through the Internet.

Hence, the best way for students to learn about the Internet is by writing an essay on the Internet. Doing so will ensure that the technology will not be taken for granted. The perfect analogy for the Internet is the ocean; it is vast, expansive, and very easy to get lost in. However, with the right knowledge, this will not be an issue. Read on to find more about Write an essay about English, essay writing on internet.

You can also find more  Essay Writing  articles on events, persons, sports, technology and many more.

Short Essay on Internet – Important Points to Note

Following are a few things to keep in mind before writing an essay on the Internet:

• Perform a thorough research on the topic before starting.
• Always write an introductory paragraph
• Reduce the usage of jargons
• Present the content in points wherever necessary
• Break up large sections of monotonous texts into digestible chunks
• Use dates, figures, names, and other specifics
• Always provide a concluding paragraph
• Read through the essay once to eliminate grammar and spelling mistakes.

“The Internet is becoming the town square for the Global village of tomorrow – Internet Essay”

Essay on Internet in English for Class 10 – Sample 1 (250 Words)

Life in today’s day and age is entirely dependent on the Internet. Without this crucial tool, life would probably come to a standstill. In many countries, financial transactions are done entirely online. So if the Internet were to stop working, it could cause many hassles for the users.

People all over the world are connected through the Internet. News or any information for that matter travels through the Internet. This is how we keep ourselves updated with information. However, there are some downsides to this as well. Due to the Internet’s worldwide reach, crucial data, such as credit card numbers can be stolen. News or other information can be manipulated or distorted.

Essay About Internet – Problems of Internet

On an individual level, the Internet can cause a lot of problems – one of the most significant being procrastination. Procrastination is the habit of postponing a task indefinitely. Social media platforms, such as Facebook and other similar sites, are to be blamed as it is easy to get sucked into them. Countless hours could disappear if the user does not keep track of time.

However, the Internet is not all bad. There are many other things that you can learn. For instance, a technical subject such as physics can be better understood through the help of videos. Abstract subjects such as mathematics are understood better through the help of websites and forums dedicated to explaining the concepts better.

In conclusion, the Internet is like a double-edged sword. It can be a great boon if used in the right way. It provides valuable knowledge and resources to better yourself. However, it can also be easy to distract yourself and waste countless hours of your time.

Sample 2 – Essay on Internet 500+ Words

The United States is responsible for inventing the Internet in the 1960s; however, it was initially known as ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), a project funded by the United States Department of Defence. It was quite primitive and transferred data through “packet switching,” which would later go on to become a fundamental aspect of the Internet.

It took a few more decades before the Internet became widely accessible. By the 1970s and 80, the technology grew to a more recognizable form. And by the late 1990s, most households were connected to the Internet. Though it was very primitive, it set the stage for future events that would change the world.

The first-ever website went live on the 6th of August, 1991. It was dedicated to the World Wide Web project and provided relevant details about the same. The original address still exists – http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html . However, there are no instances of the original page instead, the link leads to the version taken in 1992. Ever since then, countless websites came into existence on the world wide web. Today, as of January 2019, there are over 1.94 billion websites. This number is only expected to grow in the coming years.

Essay on Internet and Its Uses

The Internet is one of the best tools for productivity today. A student can learn any subject from vast online resources. Technical subjects can be explained better through videos or online guides. Abstract subjects like mathematics can be better understood through online practice pages and forums. Writers can find inspiration online. Musicians have access to countless tools to create their next masterpiece. In short, the Internet is a fantastic place to help and guide individuals to do amazing things. Disadvantages of Internet Essay  is primarily written for students and children to know about the internet misuses.

However, we need to know that the Internet is like a double-edged sword. It has the potential to be beneficial to us, but at the same time, it can negatively affect us if we are not careful. Social media sites are invaluable, but they can cause many negative repercussions, such as procrastination and internet addiction. Moreover, the Internet can host many distractions and illegal activities; hence, one should be careful not to get entangled in it.

Another essential concept readers should know about the Internet is the dark web. To understand the dark web better, consider this analogy: An iceberg floats on water, but only 10-15 percent of the entire structure is visible above the waterline. The dark web is the part of the iceberg present below the waterline. So why does this part of the Internet exist?

Conclusion on Internet Essay in English

Important information, such as credit card numbers, online banking details exist on the dark web, and it is heavily encrypted. Similarly, every private and unlisted YouTube video exists on the dark web. Moreover, an individual cannot reach the dark web through a regular browser. Select software or specific configurations that are required to access the dark web. In short, the dark web helps individuals to stay anonymous over the Internet. Essay on Internet in Hindi, English, Punjabi language for kids will update soon.

In conclusion, the Internet can be thought of as a massive ocean; if used in the right way, it can be very productive and helpful.

FAQ’s on Essay on Internet

Question 1. What is the Internet?

Answer: The Internet is a global network of computers that provide information and facilitate communication over a series of interconnected networks.

Question 2. What is the importance of the Internet?

Answer: The Internet is a part of our daily life. It provides information, resources and a platform for interaction.

Question 3. How was the Internet created?

Answer: The Internet was the result of a project funded by the U.S Department of Defence. It was initially called ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network).

• Picture Dictionary
• English Speech
• English Slogans
• English Letter Writing
• English Essay Writing
• English Textbook Answers
• Types of Certificates
• ICSE Solutions
• Selina ICSE Solutions
• ML Aggarwal Solutions
• HSSLive Plus One
• HSSLive Plus Two
• Kerala SSLC
• Distance Education

From Science to Arts, an Inevitable Decision?

The wonderful world of fungi, openmind books, scientific anniversaries, simultaneous translation technology – ever closer to reality, featured author, latest book, the impact of the internet on society: a global perspective, introduction.

The Internet is the decisive technology of the Information Age, as the electrical engine was the vector of technological transformation of the Industrial Age. This global network of computer networks, largely based nowadays on platforms of wireless communication, provides ubiquitous capacity of multimodal, interactive communication in chosen time, transcending space. The Internet is not really a new technology: its ancestor, the Arpanet, was first deployed in 1969 (Abbate 1999). But it was in the 1990s when it was privatized and released from the control of the U.S. Department of Commerce that it diffused around the world at extraordinary speed: in 1996 the first survey of Internet users counted about 40 million; in 2013 they are over 2.5 billion, with China accounting for the largest number of Internet users. Furthermore, for some time the spread of the Internet was limited by the difficulty to lay out land-based telecommunications infrastructure in the emerging countries. This has changed with the explosion of wireless communication in the early twenty-first century. Indeed, in 1991, there were about 16 million subscribers of wireless devices in the world, in 2013 they are close to 7 billion (in a planet of 7.7 billion human beings). Counting on the family and village uses of mobile phones, and taking into consideration the limited use of these devices among children under five years of age, we can say that humankind is now almost entirely connected, albeit with great levels of inequality in the bandwidth as well as in the efficiency and price of the service.

At the heart of these communication networks the Internet ensures the production, distribution, and use of digitized information in all formats. According to the study published by Martin Hilbert in Science (Hilbert and López 2011), 95 percent of all information existing in the planet is digitized and most of it is accessible on the Internet and other computer networks.

The speed and scope of the transformation of our communication environment by Internet and wireless communication has triggered all kind of utopian and dystopian perceptions around the world.

As in all moments of major technological change, people, companies, and institutions feel the depth of the change, but they are often overwhelmed by it, out of sheer ignorance of its effects.

The media aggravate the distorted perception by dwelling into scary reports on the basis of anecdotal observation and biased commentary. If there is a topic in which social sciences, in their diversity, should contribute to the full understanding of the world in which we live, it is precisely the area that has come to be named in academia as Internet Studies. Because, in fact, academic research knows a great deal on the interaction between Internet and society, on the basis of methodologically rigorous empirical research conducted in a plurality of cultural and institutional contexts. Any process of major technological change generates its own mythology. In part because it comes into practice before scientists can assess its effects and implications, so there is always a gap between social change and its understanding. For instance, media often report that intense use of the Internet increases the risk of alienation, isolation, depression, and withdrawal from society. In fact, available evidence shows that there is either no relationship or a positive cumulative relationship between the Internet use and the intensity of sociability. We observe that, overall, the more sociable people are, the more they use the Internet. And the more they use the Internet, the more they increase their sociability online and offline, their civic engagement, and the intensity of family and friendship relationships, in all cultures—with the exception of a couple of early studies of the Internet in the 1990s, corrected by their authors later (Castells 2001; Castells et al. 2007; Rainie and Wellman 2012; Center for the Digital Future 2012 et al.).

Thus, the purpose of this chapter will be to summarize some of the key research findings on the social effects of the Internet relying on the evidence provided by some of the major institutions specialized in the social study of the Internet. More specifically, I will be using the data from the world at large: the World Internet Survey conducted by the Center for the Digital Future, University of Southern California; the reports of the British Computer Society (BCS), using data from the World Values Survey of the University of Michigan; the Nielsen reports for a variety of countries; and the annual reports from the International Telecommunications Union. For data on the United States, I have used the Pew American Life and Internet Project of the Pew Institute. For the United Kingdom, the Oxford Internet Survey from the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, as well as the Virtual Society Project from the Economic and Social Science Research Council. For Spain, the Project Internet Catalonia of the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3) of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC); the various reports on the information society from Telefónica; and from the Orange Foundation. For Portugal, the Observatório de Sociedade da Informação e do Conhecimento (OSIC) in Lisbon. I would like to emphasize that most of the data in these reports converge toward similar trends. Thus I have selected for my analysis the findings that complement and reinforce each other, offering a consistent picture of the human experience on the Internet in spite of the human diversity.

Given the aim of this publication to reach a broad audience, I will not present in this text the data supporting the analysis presented here. Instead, I am referring the interested reader to the web sources of the research organizations mentioned above, as well as to selected bibliographic references discussing the empirical foundation of the social trends reported here.

Technologies of Freedom, the Network Society, and the Culture of Autonomy

In order to fully understand the effects of the Internet on society, we should remember that technology is material culture. It is produced in a social process in a given institutional environment on the basis of the ideas, values, interests, and knowledge of their producers, both their early producers and their subsequent producers. In this process we must include the users of the technology, who appropriate and adapt the technology rather than adopting it, and by so doing they modify it and produce it in an endless process of interaction between technological production and social use. So, to assess the relevance of Internet in society we must recall the specific characteristics of Internet as a technology. Then we must place it in the context of the transformation of the overall social structure, as well as in relationship to the culture characteristic of this social structure. Indeed, we live in a new social structure, the global network society, characterized by the rise of a new culture, the culture of autonomy.

Internet is a technology of freedom, in the terms coined by Ithiel de Sola Pool in 1973, coming from a libertarian culture, paradoxically financed by the Pentagon for the benefit of scientists, engineers, and their students, with no direct military application in mind (Castells 2001). The expansion of the Internet from the mid-1990s onward resulted from the combination of three main factors:

• The technological discovery of the World Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee and his willingness to distribute the source code to improve it by the open-source contribution of a global community of users, in continuity with the openness of the TCP/IP Internet protocols. The web keeps running under the same principle of open source. And two-thirds of web servers are operated by Apache, an open-source server program.
• Institutional change in the management of the Internet, keeping it under the loose management of the global Internet community, privatizing it, and allowing both commercial uses and cooperative uses.
• Major changes in social structure, culture, and social behavior: networking as a prevalent organizational form; individuation as the main orientation of social behavior; and the culture of autonomy as the culture of the network society.

I will elaborate on these major trends.

Our society is a network society; that is, a society constructed around personal and organizational networks powered by digital networks and communicated by the Internet. And because networks are global and know no boundaries, the network society is a global network society. This historically specific social structure resulted from the interaction between the emerging technological paradigm based on the digital revolution and some major sociocultural changes. A primary dimension of these changes is what has been labeled the rise of the Me-centered society, or, in sociological terms, the process of individuation, the decline of community understood in terms of space, work, family, and ascription in general. This is not the end of community, and not the end of place-based interaction, but there is a shift toward the reconstruction of social relationships, including strong cultural and personal ties that could be considered a form of community, on the basis of individual interests, values, and projects.

The process of individuation is not just a matter of cultural evolution, it is materially produced by the new forms of organizing economic activities, and social and political life, as I analyzed in my trilogy on the Information Age (Castells 1996–2003). It is based on the transformation of space (metropolitan life), work and economic activity (rise of the networked enterprise and networked work processes), culture and communication (shift from mass communication based on mass media to mass self-communication based on the Internet); on the crisis of the patriarchal family, with increasing autonomy of its individual members; the substitution of media politics for mass party politics; and globalization as the selective networking of places and processes throughout the planet.

But individuation does not mean isolation, or even less the end of community. Sociability is reconstructed as networked individualism and community through a quest for like-minded individuals in a process that combines online interaction with offline interaction, cyberspace and the local space. Individuation is the key process in constituting subjects (individual or collective), networking is the organizational form constructed by these subjects; this is the network society, and the form of sociability is what Rainie and Wellman (2012) conceptualized as networked individualism. Network technologies are of course the medium for this new social structure and this new culture (Papacharissi 2010).

As stated above, academic research has established that the Internet does not isolate people, nor does it reduce their sociability; it actually increases sociability, as shown by myself in my studies in Catalonia (Castells 2007), Rainie and Wellman in the United States (2012), Cardoso in Portugal (2010), and the World Internet Survey for the world at large (Center for the Digital Future 2012 et al.). Furthermore, a major study by Michael Willmott for the British Computer Society (Trajectory Partnership 2010) has shown a positive correlation, for individuals and for countries, between the frequency and intensity of the use of the Internet and the psychological indicators of personal happiness. He used global data for 35,000 people obtained from the World Wide Survey of the University of Michigan from 2005 to 2007. Controlling for other factors, the study showed that Internet use empowers people by increasing their feelings of security, personal freedom, and influence, all feelings that have a positive effect on happiness and personal well-being. The effect is particularly positive for people with lower income and who are less qualified, for people in the developing world, and for women. Age does not affect the positive relationship; it is significant for all ages. Why women? Because they are at the center of the network of their families, Internet helps them to organize their lives. Also, it helps them to overcome their isolation, particularly in patriarchal societies. The Internet also contributes to the rise of the culture of autonomy.

The key for the process of individuation is the construction of autonomy by social actors, who become subjects in the process. They do so by defining their specific projects in interaction with, but not submission to, the institutions of society. This is the case for a minority of individuals, but because of their capacity to lead and mobilize they introduce a new culture in every domain of social life: in work (entrepreneurship), in the media (the active audience), in the Internet (the creative user), in the market (the informed and proactive consumer), in education (students as informed critical thinkers, making possible the new frontier of e-learning and m-learning pedagogy), in health (the patient-centered health management system) in e-government (the informed, participatory citizen), in social movements (cultural change from the grassroots, as in feminism or environmentalism), and in politics (the independent-minded citizen able to participate in self-generated political networks).

There is increasing evidence of the direct relationship between the Internet and the rise of social autonomy. From 2002 to 2007 I directed in Catalonia one of the largest studies ever conducted in Europe on the Internet and society, based on 55,000 interviews, one-third of them face to face (IN3 2002–07). As part of this study, my collaborators and I compared the behavior of Internet users to non-Internet users in a sample of 3,000 people, representative of the population of Catalonia. Because in 2003 only about 40 percent of people were Internet users we could really compare the differences in social behavior for users and non-users, something that nowadays would be more difficult given the 79 percent penetration rate of the Internet in Catalonia. Although the data are relatively old, the findings are not, as more recent studies in other countries (particularly in Portugal) appear to confirm the observed trends. We constructed scales of autonomy in different dimensions. Only between 10 and 20 percent of the population, depending on dimensions, were in the high level of autonomy. But we focused on this active segment of the population to explore the role of the Internet in the construction of autonomy. Using factor analysis we identified six major types of autonomy based on projects of individuals according to their practices:

a) professional development b) communicative autonomy c) entrepreneurship d) autonomy of the body e) sociopolitical participation f) personal, individual autonomy

These six types of autonomous practices were statistically independent among themselves. But each one of them correlated positively with Internet use in statistically significant terms, in a self-reinforcing loop (time sequence): the more one person was autonomous, the more she/he used the web, and the more she/he used the web, the more autonomous she/he became (Castells et al. 2007). This is a major empirical finding. Because if the dominant cultural trend in our society is the search for autonomy, and if the Internet powers this search, then we are moving toward a society of assertive individuals and cultural freedom, regardless of the barriers of rigid social organizations inherited from the Industrial Age. From this Internet-based culture of autonomy have emerged a new kind of sociability, networked sociability, and a new kind of sociopolitical practice, networked social movements and networked democracy. I will now turn to the analysis of these two fundamental trends at the source of current processes of social change worldwide.

The Rise of Social Network Sites on the Internet

Since 2002 (creation of Friendster, prior to Facebook) a new socio-technical revolution has taken place on the Internet: the rise of social network sites where now all human activities are present, from personal interaction to business, to work, to culture, to communication, to social movements, and to politics.

Social Network Sites are web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system.

(Boyd and Ellison 2007, 2)

Social networking uses, in time globally spent, surpassed e-mail in November 2007. It surpassed e-mail in number of users in July 2009. In terms of users it reached 1 billion by September 2010, with Facebook accounting for about half of it. In 2013 it has almost doubled, particularly because of increasing use in China, India, and Latin America. There is indeed a great diversity of social networking sites (SNS) by countries and cultures. Facebook, started for Harvard-only members in 2004, is present in most of the world, but QQ, Cyworld, and Baidu dominate in China; Orkut in Brazil; Mixi in Japan; etc. In terms of demographics, age is the main differential factor in the use of SNS, with a drop of frequency of use after 50 years of age, and particularly 65. But this is not just a teenager’s activity. The main Facebook U.S. category is in the age group 35–44, whose frequency of use of the site is higher than for younger people. Nearly 60 percent of adults in the U.S. have at least one SNS profile, 30 percent two, and 15 percent three or more. Females are as present as males, except when in a society there is a general gender gap. We observe no differences in education and class, but there is some class specialization of SNS, such as Myspace being lower than FB; LinkedIn is for professionals.

Thus, the most important activity on the Internet at this point in time goes through social networking, and SNS have become the chosen platforms for all kind of activities, not just personal friendships or chatting, but for marketing, e-commerce, education, cultural creativity, media and entertainment distribution, health applications, and sociopolitical activism. This is a significant trend for society at large. Let me explore the meaning of this trend on the basis of the still scant evidence.

Social networking sites are constructed by users themselves building on specific criteria of grouping. There is entrepreneurship in the process of creating sites, then people choose according to their interests and projects. Networks are tailored by people themselves with different levels of profiling and privacy. The key to success is not anonymity, but on the contrary, self-presentation of a real person connecting to real people (in some cases people are excluded from the SNS when they fake their identity). So, it is a self-constructed society by networking connecting to other networks. But this is not a virtual society. There is a close connection between virtual networks and networks in life at large. This is a hybrid world, a real world, not a virtual world or a segregated world.

People build networks to be with others, and to be with others they want to be with on the basis of criteria that include those people who they already know (a selected sub-segment). Most users go on the site every day. It is permanent connectivity. If we needed an answer to what happened to sociability in the Internet world, here it is:

There is a dramatic increase in sociability, but a different kind of sociability, facilitated and dynamized by permanent connectivity and social networking on the web.

Based on the time when Facebook was still releasing data (this time is now gone) we know that in 2009 users spent 500 billion minutes per month. This is not just about friendship or interpersonal communication. People do things together, share, act, exactly as in society, although the personal dimension is always there. Thus, in the U.S. 38 percent of adults share content, 21 percent remix, 14 percent blog, and this is growing exponentially, with development of technology, software, and SNS entrepreneurial initiatives. On Facebook, in 2009 the average user was connected to 60 pages, groups, and events, people interacted per month to 160 million objects (pages, groups, events), the average user created 70 pieces of content per month, and there were 25 billion pieces of content shared per month (web links, news stories, blogs posts, notes, photos). SNS are living spaces connecting all dimensions of people’s experience. This transforms culture because people share experience with a low emotional cost, while saving energy and effort. They transcend time and space, yet they produce content, set up links, and connect practices. It is a constantly networked world in every dimension of human experience. They co-evolve in permanent, multiple interaction. But they choose the terms of their co-evolution.

Thus, people live their physical lives but increasingly connect on multiple dimensions in SNS.

Paradoxically, the virtual life is more social than the physical life, now individualized by the organization of work and urban living.

But people do not live a virtual reality, indeed it is a real virtuality, since social practices, sharing, mixing, and living in society is facilitated in the virtuality, in what I called time ago the “space of flows” (Castells 1996).

Because people are increasingly at ease in the multi-textuality and multidimensionality of the web, marketers, work organizations, service agencies, government, and civil society are migrating massively to the Internet, less and less setting up alternative sites, more and more being present in the networks that people construct by themselves and for themselves, with the help of Internet social networking entrepreneurs, some of whom become billionaires in the process, actually selling freedom and the possibility of the autonomous construction of lives. This is the liberating potential of the Internet made material practice by these social networking sites. The largest of these social networking sites are usually bounded social spaces managed by a company. However, if the company tries to impede free communication it may lose many of its users, because the entry barriers in this industry are very low. A couple of technologically savvy youngsters with little capital can set up a site on the Internet and attract escapees from a more restricted Internet space, as happened to AOL and other networking sites of the first generation, and as could happen to Facebook or any other SNS if they are tempted to tinker with the rules of openness (Facebook tried to make users pay and retracted within days). So, SNS are often a business, but they are in the business of selling freedom, free expression, chosen sociability. When they tinker with this promise they risk their hollowing by net citizens migrating with their friends to more friendly virtual lands.

Perhaps the most telling expression of this new freedom is the transformation of sociopolitical practices on the Internet.

Communication Power: Mass-Self Communication and the Transformation of Politics

Power and counterpower, the foundational relationships of society, are constructed in the human mind, through the construction of meaning and the processing of information according to certain sets of values and interests (Castells 2009).

Ideological apparatuses and the mass media have been key tools of mediating communication and asserting power, and still are. But the rise of a new culture, the culture of autonomy, has found in Internet and mobile communication networks a major medium of mass self-communication and self-organization.

The key source for the social production of meaning is the process of socialized communication. I define communication as the process of sharing meaning through the exchange of information. Socialized communication is the one that exists in the public realm, that has the potential of reaching society at large. Therefore, the battle over the human mind is largely played out in the process of socialized communication. And this is particularly so in the network society, the social structure of the Information Age, which is characterized by the pervasiveness of communication networks in a multimodal hypertext.

The ongoing transformation of communication technology in the digital age extends the reach of communication media to all domains of social life in a network that is at the same time global and local, generic and customized, in an ever-changing pattern.

As a result, power relations, that is the relations that constitute the foundation of all societies, as well as the processes challenging institutionalized power relations, are increasingly shaped and decided in the communication field. Meaningful, conscious communication is what makes humans human. Thus, any major transformation in the technology and organization of communication is of utmost relevance for social change. Over the last four decades the advent of the Internet and of wireless communication has shifted the communication process in society at large from mass communication to mass self-communication. This is from a message sent from one to many with little interactivity to a system based on messages from many to many, multimodal, in chosen time, and with interactivity, so that senders are receivers and receivers are senders. And both have access to a multimodal hypertext in the web that constitutes the endlessly changing backbone of communication processes.

The transformation of communication from mass communication to mass self-communication has contributed decisively to alter the process of social change. As power relationships have always been based on the control of communication and information that feed the neural networks constitutive of the human mind, the rise of horizontal networks of communication has created a new landscape of social and political change by the process of disintermediation of the government and corporate controls over communication. This is the power of the network, as social actors build their own networks on the basis of their projects, values, and interests. The outcome of these processes is open ended and dependent on specific contexts. Freedom, in this case freedom of communicate, does not say anything on the uses of freedom in society. This is to be established by scholarly research. But we need to start from this major historical phenomenon: the building of a global communication network based on the Internet, a technology that embodies the culture of freedom that was at its source.

In the first decade of the twenty-first century there have been multiple social movements around the world that have used the Internet as their space of formation and permanent connectivity, among the movements and with society at large. These networked social movements, formed in the social networking sites on the Internet, have mobilized in the urban space and in the institutional space, inducing new forms of social movements that are the main actors of social change in the network society. Networked social movements have been particularly active since 2010, and especially in the Arab revolutions against dictatorships; in Europe and the U.S. as forms of protest against the management of the financial crisis; in Brazil; in Turkey; in Mexico; and in highly diverse institutional contexts and economic conditions. It is precisely the similarity of the movements in extremely different contexts that allows the formulation of the hypothesis that this is the pattern of social movements characteristic of the global network society. In all cases we observe the capacity of these movements for self-organization, without a central leadership, on the basis of a spontaneous emotional movement. In all cases there is a connection between Internet-based communication, mobile networks, and the mass media in different forms, feeding into each other and amplifying the movement locally and globally.

These movements take place in the context of exploitation and oppression, social tensions and social struggles; but struggles that were not able to successfully challenge the state in other instances of revolt are now powered by the tools of mass self-communication. It is not the technology that induces the movements, but without the technology (Internet and wireless communication) social movements would not take the present form of being a challenge to state power. The fact is that technology is material culture (ideas brought into the design) and the Internet materialized the culture of freedom that, as it has been documented, emerged on American campuses in the 1960s. This culture-made technology is at the source of the new wave of social movements that exemplify the depth of the global impact of the Internet in all spheres of social organization, affecting particularly power relationships, the foundation of the institutions of society. (See case studies and an analytical perspective on the interaction between Internet and networked social movements in Castells 2012.)

The Internet, as all technologies, does not produce effects by itself. Yet, it has specific effects in altering the capacity of the communication system to be organized around flows that are interactive, multimodal, asynchronous or synchronous, global or local, and from many to many, from people to people, from people to objects, and from objects to objects, increasingly relying on the semantic web. How these characteristics affect specific systems of social relationships has to be established by research, and this is what I tried to present in this text. What is clear is that without the Internet we would not have seen the large-scale development of networking as the fundamental mechanism of social structuring and social change in every domain of social life. The Internet, the World Wide Web, and a variety of networks increasingly based on wireless platforms constitute the technological infrastructure of the network society, as the electrical grid and the electrical engine were the support system for the form of social organization that we conceptualized as the industrial society. Thus, as a social construction, this technological system is open ended, as the network society is an open-ended form of social organization that conveys the best and the worse in humankind. Yet, the global network society is our society, and the understanding of its logic on the basis of the interaction between culture, organization, and technology in the formation and development of social and technological networks is a key field of research in the twenty-first century.

We can only make progress in our understanding through the cumulative effort of scholarly research. Only then we will be able to cut through the myths surrounding the key technology of our time. A digital communication technology that is already a second skin for young people, yet it continues to feed the fears and the fantasies of those who are still in charge of a society that they barely understand.

These references are in fact sources of more detailed references specific to each one of the topics analyzed in this text.

Abbate, Janet. A Social History of the Internet. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999.

Boyd, Danah M., and Nicole B. Ellison. “Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13, no. 1 (2007).

Cardoso, Gustavo, Angus Cheong, and Jeffrey Cole (eds). World Wide Internet: Changing Societies, Economies and Cultures. Macau: University of Macau Press, 2009.

Castells, Manuel. The Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture. 3 vols. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996–2003.

———. The Internet Galaxy: Reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.

———. Communication Power. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

———. Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2012.

Castells, Manuel, Imma Tubella, Teresa Sancho, and Meritxell Roca.

La transición a la sociedad red. Barcelona: Ariel, 2007.

Hilbert, Martin, and Priscilla López. “The World’s Technological Capacity to Store, Communicate, and Compute Information.” Science 332, no. 6025 (April 1, 2011): pp. 60–65.

Papacharissi, Zizi, ed. The Networked Self: Identity, Community, and Culture on Social Networking Sites. Routledge, 2010.

Rainie. Lee, and Barry Wellman. Networked: The New Social Operating System. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012.

Trajectory Partnership (Michael Willmott and Paul Flatters). The Information Dividend: Why IT Makes You “Happier.” Swindon: British Informatics Society Limited, 2010. http://www.bcs.org/upload/pdf/info-dividend-full-report.pdf

Selected Web References.   Used as sources for analysis in the chapter

Agência para a Sociedade do Conhecimento. “Observatório de Sociedade da Informação e do Conhecimento (OSIC).” http://www.umic.pt/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3026&Itemid=167

BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT. “Features, Press and Policy.” http://www.bcs.org/category/7307

Center for the Digital Future. The World Internet Project International Report. 4th ed. Los Angeles: USC Annenberg School, Center for the Digital Future, 2012. http://www.worldinternetproject.net/_files/_Published/_oldis/770_2012wip_report4th_ed.pdf

ESRC (Economic & Social Research Council). “Papers and Reports.” Virtual Society. http://virtualsociety.sbs.ox.ac.uk/reports.htm

Fundación Orange. “Análisis y Prospectiva: Informe eEspaña.” Fundación Orange. http://fundacionorange.es/fundacionorange/analisisprospectiva.html

Fundación Telefónica. “Informes SI.” Fundación Telefónica. http://sociedadinformacion.fundacion.telefonica.com/DYC/SHI/InformesSI/seccion=1190&idioma=es_ES.do

IN3 (Internet Interdisciplinary Institute). UOC. “Project Internet Catalonia (PIC): An Overview.” Internet Interdisciplinary Institute, 2002–07. http://www.uoc.edu/in3/pic/eng/

International Telecommunication Union. “Annual Reports.” http://www.itu.int/osg/spu/sfo/annual_reports/index.html

Nielsen Company. “Reports.” 2013. http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/reports/2013.html?tag=Category:Media+ and+Entertainment

Oxford Internet Surveys. “Publications.” http://microsites.oii.ox.ac.uk/oxis/publications

Pew Internet & American Life Project. “Social Networking.” Pew Internet. http://www.pewinternet.org/Topics/Activities-and-Pursuits/Social-Networking.aspx?typeFilter=5

Related publications

• How the Internet Has Changed Everyday Life
• How Is the Internet Changing the Way We Work?
• Hyperhistory, the Emergence of the MASs, and the Design of Infraethics

Download Kindle

Download epub, download pdf, more publications related to this article, more about technology, artificial intelligence, digital world, visionaries, comments on this publication.

Morbi facilisis elit non mi lacinia lacinia. Nunc eleifend aliquet ipsum, nec blandit augue tincidunt nec. Donec scelerisque feugiat lectus nec congue. Quisque tristique tortor vitae turpis euismod, vitae aliquam dolor pretium. Donec luctus posuere ex sit amet scelerisque. Etiam sed neque magna. Mauris non scelerisque lectus. Ut rutrum ex porta, tristique mi vitae, volutpat urna.

Sed in semper tellus, eu efficitur ante. Quisque felis orci, fermentum quis arcu nec, elementum malesuada magna. Nulla vitae finibus ipsum. Aenean vel sapien a magna faucibus tristique ac et ligula. Sed auctor orci metus, vitae egestas libero lacinia quis. Nulla lacus sapien, efficitur mollis nisi tempor, gravida tincidunt sapien. In massa dui, varius vitae iaculis a, dignissim non felis. Ut sagittis pulvinar nisi, at tincidunt metus venenatis a. Ut aliquam scelerisque interdum. Mauris iaculis purus in nulla consequat, sed fermentum sapien condimentum. Aliquam rutrum erat lectus, nec placerat nisl mollis id. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.

Nam nisl nisi, efficitur et sem in, molestie vulputate libero. Quisque quis mattis lorem. Nunc quis convallis diam, id tincidunt risus. Donec nisl odio, convallis vel porttitor sit amet, lobortis a ante. Cras dapibus porta nulla, at laoreet quam euismod vitae. Fusce sollicitudin massa magna, eu dignissim magna cursus id. Quisque vel nisl tempus, lobortis nisl a, ornare lacus. Donec ac interdum massa. Curabitur id diam luctus, mollis augue vel, interdum risus. Nam vitae tortor erat. Proin quis tincidunt lorem.

The Internet, Politics and the Politics of Internet Debate

Do you want to stay up to date with our new publications.

Receive the OpenMind newsletter with all the latest contents published on our website

OpenMind Books

• The Search for Alternatives to Fossil Fuels
• View all books

About OpenMind

Connect with us.

• Keep up to date with our newsletter

Quote this content

Home — Essay Samples — Information Science and Technology — Internet — The Importance of the Internet in the World

The Importance of The Internet in The Modern World

• Categories: Advantages of Technology Internet

About this sample

Words: 637 |

Published: Sep 19, 2019

Words: 637 | Page: 1 | 4 min read

The Changes That the Internet Has Brought to Our Lives

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Verified writer

• Expert in: Information Science and Technology

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

2 pages / 1050 words

2 pages / 991 words

3 pages / 1485 words

2 pages / 1094 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Internet

The internet is an ubiquitous presence in modern society, revolutionizing the way we access information, connect with others, and conduct business. However, this technological marvel also has its negative implications. In this [...]

The question of whether students should have limited access to the internet is a complex and timely one, given the pervasive role of technology in education. While the internet offers a wealth of information and resources, [...]

The internet has revolutionized the way we communicate and has become an essential tool in the modern world. Before its advent, communication was limited to small radius networks, but with the laying of the first cable in the [...]

In an increasingly digital world, access to the internet has become a fundamental necessity for citizens in urban areas. The question of whether cities should offer free public WiFi has become a topic of significant debate. [...]

Do you ever lose focus while reading? Find yourself constantly on your phone scrolling through emails, articles, and social feeds?The Shallows: What The Internet Is Doing To Our Brains by Nicholas Carr deeply examines the [...]

Gmail is popular amongst people, especially on students as they rely heavily on it. But only a few people know how to utilize it to its full potential and use efficiently. There are certain features in Gmail that helps you in [...]

Related Topics

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Where do you want us to send this sample?

By clicking “Continue”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.

Be careful. This essay is not unique

This essay was donated by a student and is likely to have been used and submitted before

Download this Sample

Free samples may contain mistakes and not unique parts

Sorry, we could not paraphrase this essay. Our professional writers can rewrite it and get you a unique paper.

Please check your inbox.

We can write you a custom essay that will follow your exact instructions and meet the deadlines. Let's fix your grades together!

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free

English Compositions

Short Essay on Advantages and Disadvantages of the Internet [100, 200, 400 Words] With PDF

In this lesson, you will learn how you can write short essays on the advantages and disadvantages of the Internet. I will write three sets of sample essays here in very simple words for a better understanding of all kinds of students. 

Table of Contents

Short essay on advantages and disadvantages of the internet in 100 words, short essay on advantages and disadvantages of the internet in 200 words, short essay on advantages and disadvantages of the internet in 400 words.

Today any mode of communication happens through the use of the internet. The internet is a gigantic network that connects the entire world and brings the world into our grip. We are aware of everything because of the internet. It has its own merits and demerits. If we think of the advantages of the internet then there are many.

It helps us to connect, learn, contact, and also send messages to the farthest places. Without it, we are simply blind. Again excessive use of the internet is dangerous. It creates an addiction in users and pulls them towards harmful circles. Their lives are destroyed. Too much internet can create mental disorders. So we must be careful in using this useful product and maintain our own safety.

Today modern systems are controlled by the Internet. Without it, we can’t even lead our basic needs. The Internet is a huge global network system that has the following advantages and disadvantages.

The Internet provides us with faster communication to connect with anyone using different calling modes. Businesses are getting benefited because of the communication facility provided by the internet. The internet is now helping in online education as well. Students can now access many books online without spending a penny. Trade and commerce are easier now. Also, we are receiving information every day through online news. Online banking, ordering foods, clothes, medicines, and groceries, all have become easier due to the internet facility.

However, every boon has its own disadvantages as well. Due to excess use of the internet people are becoming lazy and homebound. The greatest problem with the internet is the lack of privacy. At any moment private information can be leaked and exploited to harm others. Youngsters are getting into unnecessary addiction to online games and dangers. Frauds and online looting are daily incidents. Bank details are often getting destroyed and misused. 

Hence we must remember science is supposed to be a boon and not a curse. Humans are given the power to control the world of the Internet and save others from its exploitation. The internet must be used for overall well-being without any harm

The Internet is one of the most useful and important communication setups in our lives. By the internet, we mean a huge global connecting system or a network that joins everyone together in one string. The Internet has lots of facilities as well as disadvantages. Like any scientific invention, it helps in several ways and also destroys our lives. The following advantages and disadvantages are described. 

The greatest gift that the internet has given us is the facility to communicate easily with anyone around the world. Earlier it was impossible to even think about this. But now with the help of the internet, we can chat, make video calls, send voice messages, and also entertain ourselves with different sorts of communication applications. Huge business organisations and other setups are getting lots of facilities due to the internet.

The internet again is used for education. Today online education is a way of learning. Due to the internet, one can surf through Wikipedia and different documents available online and get knowledge of several things in the world. Lots of expensive books can be accessed online through the internet. So it enables many poor children to learn better.

Banking is one of the significant aspects of the internet. Earlier people has to stand in long queues and wait for banking work to be done. But now just sitting at home, one can do any bank work through the internet. Receiving groceries and medicine of any kind online is more accessible due to internet availability. 

However, the internet has several disadvantages and dangerous consequences. The world is extremely open through the internet and so anything can happen at any time. Youngsters get addicted to online games which harms them mentally and physically. They forget their studies and get involved completely in the world of the internet and suffer from severe depression and their future is destroyed. 

Online theft and fraud cases are quite common on the internet. Nowadays all official documents are available online and hence due to online fraud, many people lose their hard-earned money. Banking frauds can also create dangerous results. 

The Internet is also a place with no privacy. So people are criticized often and as a result many commit suicide for trolling. People become extremely harsh on the Internet and this lack of care for the other person pulls them away from nature. 

So it is always advisable to use the internet with caution. Anything that is good can create a disaster at any moment. So a humble use of the internet is the best choice.

Hopefully, after going through this lesson, you have a holistic idea of this topic. If you still have any doubts regarding this context, kindly keep me posted through some quick comments below.

Thank you. 

Essay on Uses of Internet for Students and Children

500 words essay on uses of internet.

The Internet has become a sensation nowadays. It is something that humans cannot function without anymore. It has occupied a great part of our lives. We use the internet for almost every little and a big task now. It ranges from searching for a job to listening to music.

The Internet has basically made our lives easier and convenient. The world is at our fingertips now, thanks to the internet. When we see how it has changed the scenario of the modern world, we can’t help but notice its importance. It is used in all spheres of life now.

Internet and Communication

The world has become smaller because of the internet. Now we can communicate with our loved ones oceans away. The days of letter writing are gone where we had to wait for weeks to get a reply. Everything is instant now. Even though telephones allowed us to do that, but the cost was too high. The common man could not afford to call people overseas because of the costs.

However, the internet changed that. Communicating with people both near and far is now easy and affordable. We can send them emails and chat with them through instant messaging apps. We may also video call them using the internet which allows us to see them clearly even though we are miles away.

Furthermore, we can now get instant news updates from all over the world. The moment anything takes place anywhere in the world, we get to know about it. In addition, we are informed about the natural calamities within the correct time. Moreover, we can easily contact our job recruiters using the internet. Job application has been made so much easier through the internet.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Internet and Entertainment

Entertainment and the Internet go hand in hand now. Everything is at your fingertips to enjoy. You can book movie tickets easily on the internet. Gone are the days of waiting in long queues to get the ticket for the latest movie. It can all be done through the comfort of your home. Similarly, you can also book match tickets and concert tickets without going through the hassle of standing in long lines.

In addition, we can now do all our shopping online. You won’t have to go out in the harsh weather to shop for stuff. The Internet allows you to browse through a large assortment of products with all the details given. It ranges from something as small as a mug to a laptop, you can have it all. Furthermore, you may also filter the categories to find exactly what you are looking for within seconds.

Nowadays, web series are quite a hit amongst the youth. They do not watch TV anymore; rather they enjoy the web series. Various platforms have created shows which they release on the internet that has a major fan following. You can get your daily dose of entertainment from the internet now. Whether you want to hear the latest music, you don’t have to spend a hefty amount to buy the CD. You can simply listen to it on the internet.

Thus, we see how the internet has changed and made our lives easy in various ways. We can connect with our loved ones easily and get access to unlimited entertainment instantly.

FAQs on Uses of Internet

Q.1 How does the internet help in communicating?

A.1 We can now communicate with our loved ones using the internet. We can video call them and connect with our relatives living overseas.

Q.2 What does internet offer in terms of entertainment?

A.2 Internet offers us various modes of entertainment. We can watch movies and shows online. We can also book tickets and shop for products online.

Customize your course in 30 seconds

Which class are you in.

• Travelling Essay
• Picnic Essay
• Our Country Essay
• My Parents Essay
• Essay on Favourite Personality
• Essay on Memorable Day of My Life
• Essay on Knowledge is Power
• Essay on Gurpurab
• Essay on My Favourite Season
• Essay on Types of Sports

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Download the App

• Engineering Mathematics
• Discrete Mathematics
• Operating System
• Computer Networks
• Digital Logic and Design
• C Programming
• Data Structures
• Theory of Computation
• Compiler Design
• Computer Org and Architecture

Advantages and Disadvantages of Internet

• Advantages and disadvantages of Intranet
• Advantages and disadvantages of Ethernet
• Advantages and Disadvantages of NAT
• Advantages and Disadvantages of ESS
• Advantages and Disadvantages of WLAN
• Advantages and disadvantages of CDMA
• Advantages and Disadvantages of Static IP
• Advantages and disadvantages of Repeater
• Advantages and Disadvantages of Computer Networking
• Advantages and Disadvantages of Fibre Optic Cable
• Advantages and Disadvantages of IoT
• Advantages and Disadvantages of Laser
• Advantages and Disadvantages of HTML
• Advantages and Disadvantages of E-mail
• Advantages and Disadvantages of Laptops
• Advantages and Disadvantages of PHP
• Advantages and Disadvantages of TensorFlow
• Advantages and Disadvantages of Flash Memory
• Advantages and Disadvantages Of Distributed Systems

Pre-Requisite: Introduction to Internet

The Internet is the most popular and innovative creation within the world of technology is the Internet. The web is the place where all types of data are present and even the communication process is feasible using the web. The planet has now become internet-dependent due to its vast advantages. There may be a check both its advantages and drawbacks.

The Cambridge Dictionary defines the web as an outsized system of connected computers around the world that permits people to share information and communicate with one another. The web is run and governed by various companies, businesses, governments, and academic institutions for his or her purpose. It carries a number of data about almost every subject and has very quickly become an important part of everyone’s lives. Over 4.5 billion people everywhere on the planet are internet users currently. Now let us look at the advantages and the disadvantages of the Internet.

Advantages of the Internet

The internet is perhaps one of the best inventions thus far. As anyone can access the computer this made people by stripping away geographical barriers and sharing information instantaneously.

• Communication Forum: The speed of communication becomes faster which is obtained through the web. Families and friends can use the internet easily. The platform for products like SKYPE, ZOOM, Teams, etc. allows for holding a video conference with anyone in the world who also has access. It helps in connecting two people present anywhere very easily. 
• Abundant Information: Anyone can find information on almost any imaginable subject. Plenty of resources are often found through the program in minutes. The Internet helps in providing information on all topics.
• Inexhaustible Education: For instance, students can gain readily available help for their homework online. Not only homework but there are also so many platforms that provide online education that helps students to gain knowledge in various domains. It helps in increasing the knowledge of the learner.
• Entertainment for Everybody: Most folks love using our laptops, smartphones, and, tablets. The web is the big reason behind us spending such a lot of time on these gadgets. With the ease of the Internet, the entertainment industry has also scaled and it helps in expanding in many ways like OTT platforms and many other platforms, etc.
• Online Services and E-commerce: Many services of email, online banking, online shopping, etc are there. Free mail to anyone is definitely accessible all around the world. E-commerce enables one in America to shop for things in Asia, Africa, or other areas of the world through some simple clicks of the mouse.
• Social Network: Social networking is the sharing of data with people across the planet. Aside from being an entertainment website, it’s many uses. The Internet has given a massive gain in these social networking sites as it connects people who are far away in just a few seconds. 
• Learning: The web has now become a neighborhood of education. Education like homeschooling is definitely administered using the web. Teachers can upload their teaching videos on the web and nowadays many more platforms have come to teach students because of the accessibility of the Internet.
• Internet Banking: Internet Banking is one of the main advantages of the Internet as it helps people nowadays in using banks in a digital way which helps in people not going to banks, not standing in queues in banks, etc. People can use banking services at their fingertips with the help of the Internet .

Disadvantages of the Internet

The Internet’s drawbacks can’t be overlooked any longer as numerous teenagers are affected by Internet Addiction Disorder, then many ladies became online shopaholics.

• Internet Addiction Disorder: Internet addiction is detrimental to not only fitness but also psychological state. Many people suffer from this problem as they are addicted to the Internet and use their devices without thinking about the time they wasted on the device.
• Cyber Crime: Cyber Crime can lead by Hacker programs a virus that gets into the pc and ruins valuable data. Users’ personal information like name, address, master card, bank details, and other information are often accessed by culprits when used on the web, leading to significant economic loss.
• Social Alienation: Time spent online flies fast without consciousness. After getting attracted the user is trapped into the trap, users are trapped by a “net”, spending less time with people in the real world. Less interaction and face-to-face communication, actually, may end in a decrease in social abilities.
• Spam: Unnecessary emails, advertisements, etc. are sometimes said to be spam because they need the power to hamper the system and make the users face many problems. Heavy use of the Internet leads to so many issues like bank account fraud, internet fraud, etc.
• Health issues: Playing games and spending too much time on monitors leads to obesity and an unhealthy lifestyle. It also impacts the eyesight of the person using the device for a long time. It has very serious health issues.
• Wastage of Time: The Internet is one of the ways which can lead to the wastage of your time. It happens to almost all of us nowadays, as we start surfing and we continuously start surfing and do not realize how much time wasted. This results in increasing screen time, and this leads to loss of memory power.
• Virus/Malware: Use of the Internet can lead to the invitation of viruses to the system and make the system unproductive, it is one of the big disadvantages of using the Internet as your system can hang because of viruses.
• Affect Focus and Patience: The Internet can lead to affects individual focus and patience which can lead to distract someone from achieving his/her goals in life and this is one of the disadvantages of the Internet.

The Internet can be an advantage and can also be a disadvantage to anyone. It totally depends on the person and how he/she uses it. If the user uses it for growing their knowledge or learning or some meaningful work, it is an advantage for him/her, but if the user uses it for something unproductive, uses it for threatening, or hacking somebody, it works as a disadvantage for the Internet. Its proper use can improve somebody’s life and its improper use can be a disaster to someone. Overall, it totally depends on the person and how he/she uses it.

Please Login to comment...

Similar reads, improve your coding skills with practice.

What kind of Experience do you want to share?

Essay Service Examples Technology Internet

Essay on the Benefits of the Internet

• Proper editing and formatting
• Free revision, title page, and bibliography
• Flexible prices and money-back guarantee

Our writers will provide you with an essay sample written from scratch: any topic, any deadline, any instructions.

Cite this paper

Related essay topics.

Get your paper done in as fast as 3 hours, 24/7.

Related articles

Most popular essays

Internet is ubiquitous in every household across the globe. Today, more than 3 billion people,...

I chose this topic because as a teenager myself, I’ve grown up in a world that has invariably...

• Internet of Things

Prepared or not, the Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the fast-growing technologies taking over...

According to the Lexico Dictionary, censorship is defined as the suppression or repudiation of any...

• Effects of Technology

Have you ever thought about how the Internet affects our cognitive abilities and changes our way...

Ethics, Law, and Technology is a study to examine the ethical and legal issues that arise from...

Society especially the young kids have become dependent on the internet to express themselves and...

In today’s world, it has become impossible to imagine our world without the internet. Even the...

• Conflict Management

Intergroup conflict analysis in political psychology has identified ways that groups form their...

Join our 150k of happy users

• Get original paper written according to your instructions
• Save time for what matters most

Fair Use Policy

EduBirdie considers academic integrity to be the essential part of the learning process and does not support any violation of the academic standards. Should you have any questions regarding our Fair Use Policy or become aware of any violations, please do not hesitate to contact us via [email protected].

We are here 24/7 to write your paper in as fast as 3 hours.

Provide your email, and we'll send you this sample!

By providing your email, you agree to our Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy .

Say goodbye to copy-pasting!

Get custom-crafted papers for you.

Enter your email, and we'll promptly send you the full essay. No need to copy piece by piece. It's in your inbox!

• Spoken English

Verbal Ability

• NCERT Solutions

• Send your Feedback to [email protected]

Help Others, Please Share

Learn Latest Tutorials

Transact-SQL

Reinforcement Learning

R Programming

React Native

Python Design Patterns

Python Pillow

Python Turtle

Preparation

Interview Questions

Company Questions

Trending Technologies

Artificial Intelligence

Cloud Computing

Data Science

Machine Learning

B.Tech / MCA

Data Structures

Operating System

Computer Network

Compiler Design

Computer Organization

Discrete Mathematics

Ethical Hacking

Computer Graphics

Software Engineering

Web Technology

Cyber Security

C Programming

Control System

Data Mining

Data Warehouse

Find anything you save across the site in your account

I Finally Befriended My Idol Tavi Gevinson. Would It Fall Apart Over Taylor Swift?

By Annie Hamilton

This story was featured in The Must Read, a newsletter in which our editors recommend one can’t-miss story every weekday. Sign up here to get it in your inbox.

I first heard Tavi Gevinson’s name at a breakfast I attended on the Upper West Side in 2010. A group of mothers were talking about her, seemingly with some envy. I was confused; UWS moms aren’t supposed to be jealous of 14-year-old girls. From what I could gather, Tavi—who had launched her fashion blog, Style Rookie, a couple years before from her bedroom in Oak Park, Illinois, and had since attended Paris Fashion Week and been interviewed in The New York Times —wasn’t the usual kind of kid-famous: She was a fascinating person. Like other fascinating people, there wasn’t gonna be an easy way to classify her. My cheeks started going hot now, too. I was jealous of that idea—that Tavi couldn’t be easily understood.

I wanted to know Tavi. Or, I wanted Tavi to know me. I didn’t think I should be the one to initiate. She probably wouldn’t like that. She was getting enough attention already. To stand out, I should probably run into her the old-fashioned way. No, I should probably become successful myself. I should probably only run into Tavi once I became a success.

Years went by, and I kept tabs on Tavi. She became an actress.That hurt, but I wasn’t gonna let it crush my admiration completely. Tavi became friends with a good friend of mine. I became friends with a good friend of hers. The eventuality of becoming friends with Tavi became more and more of a possibility. But I never ran into her.

It was 12 years before I was finally invited to a dinner party that Tavi was also attending. It was an intimate dinner party in New York and I wasn’t successful. I wished I had more assets to bring to the party. I will say: I was lookin’ good. Or, I was thinking I was looking good. I was in my mid 20s, in a new “I’m hot” stage of my life. I felt insecure about everything else, but the hotness feeling went a long way.

There’s no way beautiful Tavi ever cared or thought about “looking hot.”

We were allowed to smoke inside, and the wine was better than what I was used to, and I got very drunk. All of the guests were talking about politics. Actually, I’m not sure what they were talking about—all six of them seemed like geniuses, and I was out of my element. I was living in Los Angeles then, and only visiting New York for a couple of nights. All I knew to contribute at a dinner party were stories from my childhood, recaps of nights out, tales of who I’d had sex with. Like I said, I was out of my element, and the wine wasn’t solving anything.

I remembered I had read an article from The Cut the week before—the only topic I could think of that wasn’t about myself. I brought the article up. I looked around. Three of the other guests worked for places like The New Yorker. I was probably a dumbass for bringing up a publication like The Cut, so I attempted to cover my ass. “I’m a dumbass, so I read The Cut.”

Nobody liked that.

Without missing a beat, Tavi turned to the sweet-looking man next to me—who was now ghostly white—and said, “Tony, congratulations—it’s amazing it took The Cut this long to promote you as editor.”

I had just insulted a major publication in front of one of the major publication’s editors . I wanted to rip out my fingernails.

Things got worse from there. That’s when I started contributing sex stories. I had nothing else. Tavi patiently sat through my rambling, with nothing to prove. She had a serious boyfriend with her. They seemed like such a sexy, solid unit.

I woke up the next morning and decided that Tavi was Enemy No. 1. What. A. Bitch.

Years went by and I got my act together a little more. I moved back to New York. I figured out how to hold my tongue at dinner parties.

One evening two years ago, Tavi and I reunited at the scene of the crime: our friend Naomi’s apartment, where Tavi had “thrown me under the bus” years before. I was ready.

We became friends. Not quickly, but honestly. With the normal amount of intensity—but I longed for intimacy with Tavi. I wasn’t sure how to get there. She still scared the shit out of me; it was as if she could see RIGHT THROUGH ME. Like she’s a lie detector or something. Plus, I had entered a rocky new stage of my life—filled with anxiety and mania—and I was doubling down on performing “happy” behavior so that she wouldn’t be able to see what was really going on.

But I had an idea. What if I asked Tavi to write something with me? Writing might be the perfect way for us to understand each other better; and frankly, I thought it might make her like me more. So I suggested we write an article together. She suggested that I review her new zine, Fan Fiction , that would be published online soon. It was an imagined friendship with Taylor Swift that would be loosely—very loosely—based on her own brief interactions with the pop star. I agreed—and immediately wished I hadn’t. There are five Taylor Swift songs that are EXTREMELY meaningful to me, but for some reason I’m not that interested in all of the cultural critiques of her. Sometimes, I like seeing what she’s up to in paparazzi photos, but mostly, I just like listening to those five songs.

Weeks went by. I had a terrible manic episode. I was the only one who wasn’t aware that I was having a terrible manic episode. I didn’t read the zine. I couldn’t bring myself to.

I don’t just like listening to Taylor’s music. I’ll say it: I am interested in “Taylor Swift.” There was a period last summer in which she would come up in every SINGLE conversation I had on a given day. I’d only ever experienced this with politics, with people like Donald Trump. It fascinated me that Taylor’s name was quite literally on everybody’s lips. And that most of what was said was extremely complimentary. I guess I was jealous.

I didn’t read the zine. Tavi called me. She wondered where the article was. I mumbled some gibberish about how maybe we should do something else. Could we write an article in which Tavi teaches me how to be a good friend? Tavi seemed disappointed, but she agreed to it. She said she thought it sounded funny. I felt like a piece of shit.

Why wouldn’t I read Tavi’s zine? I do read . I actually read! I KNOW HOW TO DO IT! It wasn’t the 70 pages that bothered me and I love Tavi’s writing. I look up to her as a writer! Why was I stringing her along like this? WHY COULDN’T I READ THE GODDAMNED ZINE.

Another week went by and Tavi—surprise, surprise—initiated the kind of intimacy I had always dreamed of us having. It started with a voice note. Not that I was able to listen to it. I couldn’t bear to. Instead, I just assumed that it was probably Tavi telling me that she was annoyed that I agreed to write an article about Fan Fiction and then decided to write something else instead. I called her up. Tavi confirmed that she’d like me to review the zine and that she wasn’t interested in working on anything else together for the time being. She expressed, vulnerably, that she wanted the zine to get more readers. If I wrote an article about it, it might help to get it out there. Here Tavi was, respecting me by telling me exactly what she needed. My heart sunk: Tavi and I were getting to know each other better through writing, but only because I was acting like a disrespectful piece of shit.

I’m not actually jealous of Taylor Swift. Her life seems like something I wouldn’t know how to handle. I’m going to say something that’ll at first sound like a BOLD delusion of grandeur, but: I don’t think Taylor Swift would like me. And I wouldn’t blame Taylor for hating me. We sort of, kind of have a mutual friend, and I treated this friend badly. The kind of bad that changed the way I even thought about myself.

I didn’t want to read or hear or watch anything about Taylor because I didn’t want to be reminded of all of my own shortcomings.

I agreed to read Tavi’s zine. I wanted to be a good friend to Tavi.

I read Fan Fiction at a small table in the back of Walker’s in Tribeca in just under an hour. I flew through the thing. It’s painful and awkward and hilarious and expertly written. It’s insightful. It turns out Tavi had already written an article about how to be a good friend, and it’s Fan Fiction. In it, Tavi tells the love story that unfolds when one falls for a new best friend. It is a warning about how not to go about friendship, and how to remain true to yourself in relation to another person. Fan Fiction defines the difference between intensity and intimacy. Tavi grapples with the mistakes she made in trying to become REAL and TRUE friends with Taylor, and through that she tries to make peace with the different, inauthentic versions of herself which emerged. I know the thing’s a fantasy piece, but the truth that Tavi inserted into the idolization of a contemporary woman…well, it was hard to ignore how Tavi was my Taylor Swift.

Towards the end of the second act, Tavi writes: “I could not love Taylor. I was too much of a fan.”

I could not—maybe can not—love Tavi, because I am too much of a fan!

After years of trying to scheme my way into Tavi’s heart, I finally realized: I’d have to get to know her first.

Just as Tavi wasn’t able to see Taylor, or let Taylor SEE HER, I couldn’t properly listen to Tavi because I had already decided who she was, what she liked, and what was most important to know about her. I couldn’t hear Tavi because my prime focus in talking to Tavi has always been to impress.

We went to dinner a couple of nights later. It was the closest I’d ever felt to Tavi, and I think it was because it was the first time that I might have actually listened to her. I already had listened to her. I had read her writing. I knew more about her imagination.

But I couldn’t stop thinking about the last act of Fan Fiction , in which Tavi imagines a correspondence with Taylor in which Taylor and Tavi battle for control over their own narratives. (Tavi writing as Taylor made me laugh out loud. A REAL cackle.) Not only do Taylor and Tavi disagree on what happened between them, on specific memories, but they also fight to be individuals. They wrestle with how to both admire and disagree with each other. It is my favorite part of the zine because it is a fascinating account of Tavi and Taylor’s fictional battle for narrative control.

I began to get self-conscious about this idea. Was I writing this piece just to please Tavi? Was it stupid of me to promote her zine by emulating its style? Would my mimicry actually disappoint her? Would she feel sucked up to, or worse, swindled somehow? I decided to send her my draft. She responded right away.

My email to Tavi:

truly be honest if you hate okkkkkkk done HARD TO READ ABOUT YOURSELF IS WHAT I MEAN

Tavi’s email to me:

Dear Annie, Thank you for sending me your piece. I'm very flattered to know you've followed my work all these years. I respect you so much and admire the level of self-reflection here. I also lol’d a handful of times. Just a few corrections as I’m sure you want to be accurate— I did not throw you under the bus. I made sure you knew Tony worked at The Cut before you could humiliate yourself further. Don't include that I wanted more people to read my zine. I think ending with us getting dinner is a bit sentimental (though I hold that night very close). Overall: I worry it's a bit too fawning. Kind of reads like I'm holding a gun to your head. Any way you can make it so you seem less afraid of me would be great. Other than that—love it! Title: "Work Friends"? xx Tavi

In Fan Fiction, Tavi and Taylor fight to get the last word. But I can’t imagine Tavi ever not securing the final word in any kind of argument. Tavi is good with words and even better at putting her imagination onto the page. I urge you to read Fan Fiction , okay?! I IMPLORE you to.

If this experience with Tavi inadvertently taught me how to be a good friend, Fan Fiction granted me the permission to be the fan again. Her fan again. A fan of anyone, actually.

In my most meaningful relationships, I will always be just that…a fan .

Read Tavi Gevinson’s zine, Fan Fiction, here .

More Great Stories from GQ

The 2024 Overrated List

Bradley Cooper Went Full-Dad Mode in Rare Air Jordans and Two Pairs of Glasses

Why Is Everyone on Steroids Now?

Inside Kevin Costner’s $38 Million Horizon Gamble

Artists Are Canceling Arena Tours Right and Left. Maybe They Shouldn’t Have Been Playing Arenas in the First Place

Not a subscriber? Join GQ to receive full access to GQ.com.

• Advantages And Disadvantages Of Internet Essay

Advantages and Disadvantages of Internet Essay

500+ words advantages and disadvantages of internet essay.

The internet plays a significant role in the lives of people today. It is a valuable source of information that helps people share information and communicate with anyone sitting in any corner of the country with an internet connection. But, with many advantages, there are also disadvantages to the internet. With the help of ‘Advantages and Disadvantages of the Internet’ essay, we will throw light on both these aspects. We have also compiled a list of CBSE Essays for students to boost their essay-writing skills. It contains sample essays on several topics, which will give ideas to students and help them write effective essays.

Advantages of the Internet

The role of the internet in the modern world cannot be understated. Nowadays, every person uses the internet to do their daily tasks. People in different fields like offices, schools, colleges, hospitals etc., use their electronic devices like laptops, computers, tablets, cell phones etc., to make their work simple and fast. The internet has also made access to information easier. We can learn about the whole universe with just a single click by using the internet. We can easily communicate and share information with other people around the world with the help of email, instant messaging, video calls etc.

The internet delivers a wide variety of advantages. It not only enables people to share information but also serves as a place to store information and media digitally. This feature has benefitted the fields of education and research the most. We have seen a boom in the e-commerce business as they have used the internet and provided a seamless experience of buying and selling products online. It has created a large market for online retailers and integrated different business fields. Due to this facility, people can now purchase almost everything they need and get it delivered right to their doorstep in a few days. Many services are now provided on the internet, such as online booking, banking, hotel reservations etc.

The internet has made everything a lot more accessible and quick. Most organisations around the world advertise their vacancies on the internet. So, people can search for different types of jobs around the world. The internet provides different types of entertainment to people; be it music, movies, theatre, entertainment, live matches, or live broadcasts. It also helps students to continue their learning through online education.

It is difficult to name all of the benefits and advantages of the internet. This is because the internet has become so entangled and integrated into our daily lives that it has an influence on everything we experience around us.

Disadvantages of the Internet

Although the internet has many advantages, it also has some disadvantages. In the next section of the advantages and disadvantages of the internet essay, let us discuss the disadvantages and the possible risks associated with the modern-day applications of the internet.

While the internet provides us with all tools, products and services we need right at our doorstep, at the same time, it isolates us from the world outside. As we get more accustomed to ordering everything online, be it clothes, food, drinks, grocery, commodities, or even paying bills, getting out of the house has become less frequent. This has caused health issues and various mental health issues such as social anxiety, insomnia and even depression. Teenagers and kids are the most influenced by the internet as they are the generation which has seen the immense use of the internet. They are moulded to a life dependent on the internet. This hinders their learning capabilities and real-life problem-solving skills because they are accustomed to using their mobile for every task.

Today, the internet is the most popular source of viruses in electronic gadgets. As we perform various activities on the internet, we are exposing ourselves to various threats such as malicious software and viruses. Due to these viruses, confidential data may be accessed by unauthorised people or hackers. Some websites contain immoral materials in the form of text, pictures or movies. These websites damage the character of the new generation, especially kids and teenagers. A lot of time is wasted collecting information on the internet. Many people become addicted to spending time on the internet, like chatting with friends or playing games. A lot of information about a particular topic is stored on websites. Some information may be incorrect or not authentic. So, it becomes difficult to select the correct information.

From the information covered in this advantages and disadvantages essay, it can be said that the benefits of the internet outweigh the disadvantages and threats it brings. The responsibility to be safe falls on the users themselves. One needs to stay vigilant and perform regular security checks on their network and computing devices to ensure they are secure from any online attacks. Provided that all government regulations for safe internet browsing are followed and appropriate measures are taken.

Students must have found the ‘Advantages and Disadvantages of Internet’ essay useful for improving their essay writing skills. Visit BYJU’S website to get the latest updates and study materials for CBSE/ICSE/State Board/Competitive Exams.

Leave a Comment Cancel reply

Your Mobile number and Email id will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Request OTP on Voice Call

Post My Comment

Register with BYJU'S & Download Free PDFs

Register with byju's & watch live videos.

Advertisement

Supported by

Biden to Give Legal Protections to Undocumented Spouses of U.S. Citizens

Undocumented spouses of American citizens will be shielded from deportation, provided work permits and given a pathway to citizenship, according to officials briefed on the plan.

• Share full article

By Zolan Kanno-Youngs

Reporting from Washington

President Biden on Tuesday will announce sweeping new protections for hundreds of thousands of immigrants who have been living in the United States illegally for years but are married to American citizens, officials familiar with the plan said.

Mr. Biden will detail the policy at the White House on Tuesday while marking the 12-year anniversary of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, which protects people who came to the United States as children from deportation, the officials said. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a policy that had not been formally announced.

Under the policy, undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens will be shielded from deportation, provided work permits and given a pathway to citizenship. Officials briefed on the conversations said it could affect up to 500,000 undocumented spouses, although the exact scale of the program remained unclear.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Marrying an American citizen generally provides a pathway to U.S. citizenship. But people who crossed the southern border illegally — rather than arriving in the country with a visa — must return to their home countries to complete the process for a green card.

That means long separations from their spouses and families. The new program would allow families to remain in the country while they pursue legal status.

Officials briefed on the discussions said the announcement could amount to the most sweeping unilateral move by a president to provide relief to unauthorized immigrants since President Barack Obama implemented DACA. In a separate move on Tuesday, Mr. Biden is also expected to announce new ways to help people in DACA, known as Dreamers, gain access to work visas.

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and  log into  your Times account, or  subscribe  for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber?  Log in .

Want all of The Times?  Subscribe .

The state of AI in early 2024: Gen AI adoption spikes and starts to generate value

If 2023 was the year the world discovered generative AI (gen AI) , 2024 is the year organizations truly began using—and deriving business value from—this new technology. In the latest McKinsey Global Survey  on AI, 65 percent of respondents report that their organizations are regularly using gen AI, nearly double the percentage from our previous survey just ten months ago. Respondents’ expectations for gen AI’s impact remain as high as they were last year , with three-quarters predicting that gen AI will lead to significant or disruptive change in their industries in the years ahead.

About the authors

This article is a collaborative effort by Alex Singla , Alexander Sukharevsky , Lareina Yee , and Michael Chui , with Bryce Hall , representing views from QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey, and McKinsey Digital.

Organizations are already seeing material benefits from gen AI use, reporting both cost decreases and revenue jumps in the business units deploying the technology. The survey also provides insights into the kinds of risks presented by gen AI—most notably, inaccuracy—as well as the emerging practices of top performers to mitigate those challenges and capture value.

AI adoption surges

Interest in generative AI has also brightened the spotlight on a broader set of AI capabilities. For the past six years, AI adoption by respondents’ organizations has hovered at about 50 percent. This year, the survey finds that adoption has jumped to 72 percent (Exhibit 1). And the interest is truly global in scope. Our 2023 survey found that AI adoption did not reach 66 percent in any region; however, this year more than two-thirds of respondents in nearly every region say their organizations are using AI. 1 Organizations based in Central and South America are the exception, with 58 percent of respondents working for organizations based in Central and South America reporting AI adoption. Looking by industry, the biggest increase in adoption can be found in professional services. 2 Includes respondents working for organizations focused on human resources, legal services, management consulting, market research, R&D, tax preparation, and training.

Also, responses suggest that companies are now using AI in more parts of the business. Half of respondents say their organizations have adopted AI in two or more business functions, up from less than a third of respondents in 2023 (Exhibit 2).

Gen AI adoption is most common in the functions where it can create the most value

Most respondents now report that their organizations—and they as individuals—are using gen AI. Sixty-five percent of respondents say their organizations are regularly using gen AI in at least one business function, up from one-third last year. The average organization using gen AI is doing so in two functions, most often in marketing and sales and in product and service development—two functions in which previous research  determined that gen AI adoption could generate the most value 3 “ The economic potential of generative AI: The next productivity frontier ,” McKinsey, June 14, 2023. —as well as in IT (Exhibit 3). The biggest increase from 2023 is found in marketing and sales, where reported adoption has more than doubled. Yet across functions, only two use cases, both within marketing and sales, are reported by 15 percent or more of respondents.

Gen AI also is weaving its way into respondents’ personal lives. Compared with 2023, respondents are much more likely to be using gen AI at work and even more likely to be using gen AI both at work and in their personal lives (Exhibit 4). The survey finds upticks in gen AI use across all regions, with the largest increases in Asia–Pacific and Greater China. Respondents at the highest seniority levels, meanwhile, show larger jumps in the use of gen Al tools for work and outside of work compared with their midlevel-management peers. Looking at specific industries, respondents working in energy and materials and in professional services report the largest increase in gen AI use.

Investments in gen AI and analytical AI are beginning to create value

The latest survey also shows how different industries are budgeting for gen AI. Responses suggest that, in many industries, organizations are about equally as likely to be investing more than 5 percent of their digital budgets in gen AI as they are in nongenerative, analytical-AI solutions (Exhibit 5). Yet in most industries, larger shares of respondents report that their organizations spend more than 20 percent on analytical AI than on gen AI. Looking ahead, most respondents—67 percent—expect their organizations to invest more in AI over the next three years.

Where are those investments paying off? For the first time, our latest survey explored the value created by gen AI use by business function. The function in which the largest share of respondents report seeing cost decreases is human resources. Respondents most commonly report meaningful revenue increases (of more than 5 percent) in supply chain and inventory management (Exhibit 6). For analytical AI, respondents most often report seeing cost benefits in service operations—in line with what we found last year —as well as meaningful revenue increases from AI use in marketing and sales.

Inaccuracy: The most recognized and experienced risk of gen AI use

As businesses begin to see the benefits of gen AI, they’re also recognizing the diverse risks associated with the technology. These can range from data management risks such as data privacy, bias, or intellectual property (IP) infringement to model management risks, which tend to focus on inaccurate output or lack of explainability. A third big risk category is security and incorrect use.

Respondents to the latest survey are more likely than they were last year to say their organizations consider inaccuracy and IP infringement to be relevant to their use of gen AI, and about half continue to view cybersecurity as a risk (Exhibit 7).

Conversely, respondents are less likely than they were last year to say their organizations consider workforce and labor displacement to be relevant risks and are not increasing efforts to mitigate them.

In fact, inaccuracy— which can affect use cases across the gen AI value chain , ranging from customer journeys and summarization to coding and creative content—is the only risk that respondents are significantly more likely than last year to say their organizations are actively working to mitigate.

Some organizations have already experienced negative consequences from the use of gen AI, with 44 percent of respondents saying their organizations have experienced at least one consequence (Exhibit 8). Respondents most often report inaccuracy as a risk that has affected their organizations, followed by cybersecurity and explainability.

Our previous research has found that there are several elements of governance that can help in scaling gen AI use responsibly, yet few respondents report having these risk-related practices in place. 4 “ Implementing generative AI with speed and safety ,” McKinsey Quarterly , March 13, 2024. For example, just 18 percent say their organizations have an enterprise-wide council or board with the authority to make decisions involving responsible AI governance, and only one-third say gen AI risk awareness and risk mitigation controls are required skill sets for technical talent.

Bringing gen AI capabilities to bear

The latest survey also sought to understand how, and how quickly, organizations are deploying these new gen AI tools. We have found three archetypes for implementing gen AI solutions : takers use off-the-shelf, publicly available solutions; shapers customize those tools with proprietary data and systems; and makers develop their own foundation models from scratch. 5 “ Technology’s generational moment with generative AI: A CIO and CTO guide ,” McKinsey, July 11, 2023. Across most industries, the survey results suggest that organizations are finding off-the-shelf offerings applicable to their business needs—though many are pursuing opportunities to customize models or even develop their own (Exhibit 9). About half of reported gen AI uses within respondents’ business functions are utilizing off-the-shelf, publicly available models or tools, with little or no customization. Respondents in energy and materials, technology, and media and telecommunications are more likely to report significant customization or tuning of publicly available models or developing their own proprietary models to address specific business needs.

Respondents most often report that their organizations required one to four months from the start of a project to put gen AI into production, though the time it takes varies by business function (Exhibit 10). It also depends upon the approach for acquiring those capabilities. Not surprisingly, reported uses of highly customized or proprietary models are 1.5 times more likely than off-the-shelf, publicly available models to take five months or more to implement.

Gen AI high performers are excelling despite facing challenges

Gen AI is a new technology, and organizations are still early in the journey of pursuing its opportunities and scaling it across functions. So it’s little surprise that only a small subset of respondents (46 out of 876) report that a meaningful share of their organizations’ EBIT can be attributed to their deployment of gen AI. Still, these gen AI leaders are worth examining closely. These, after all, are the early movers, who already attribute more than 10 percent of their organizations’ EBIT to their use of gen AI. Forty-two percent of these high performers say more than 20 percent of their EBIT is attributable to their use of nongenerative, analytical AI, and they span industries and regions—though most are at organizations with less than $1 billion in annual revenue. The AI-related practices at these organizations can offer guidance to those looking to create value from gen AI adoption at their own organizations.

To start, gen AI high performers are using gen AI in more business functions—an average of three functions, while others average two. They, like other organizations, are most likely to use gen AI in marketing and sales and product or service development, but they’re much more likely than others to use gen AI solutions in risk, legal, and compliance; in strategy and corporate finance; and in supply chain and inventory management. They’re more than three times as likely as others to be using gen AI in activities ranging from processing of accounting documents and risk assessment to R&D testing and pricing and promotions. While, overall, about half of reported gen AI applications within business functions are utilizing publicly available models or tools, gen AI high performers are less likely to use those off-the-shelf options than to either implement significantly customized versions of those tools or to develop their own proprietary foundation models.

What else are these high performers doing differently? For one thing, they are paying more attention to gen-AI-related risks. Perhaps because they are further along on their journeys, they are more likely than others to say their organizations have experienced every negative consequence from gen AI we asked about, from cybersecurity and personal privacy to explainability and IP infringement. Given that, they are more likely than others to report that their organizations consider those risks, as well as regulatory compliance, environmental impacts, and political stability, to be relevant to their gen AI use, and they say they take steps to mitigate more risks than others do.

Gen AI high performers are also much more likely to say their organizations follow a set of risk-related best practices (Exhibit 11). For example, they are nearly twice as likely as others to involve the legal function and embed risk reviews early on in the development of gen AI solutions—that is, to “ shift left .” They’re also much more likely than others to employ a wide range of other best practices, from strategy-related practices to those related to scaling.

In addition to experiencing the risks of gen AI adoption, high performers have encountered other challenges that can serve as warnings to others (Exhibit 12). Seventy percent say they have experienced difficulties with data, including defining processes for data governance, developing the ability to quickly integrate data into AI models, and an insufficient amount of training data, highlighting the essential role that data play in capturing value. High performers are also more likely than others to report experiencing challenges with their operating models, such as implementing agile ways of working and effective sprint performance management.

About the research

The online survey was in the field from February 22 to March 5, 2024, and garnered responses from 1,363 participants representing the full range of regions, industries, company sizes, functional specialties, and tenures. Of those respondents, 981 said their organizations had adopted AI in at least one business function, and 878 said their organizations were regularly using gen AI in at least one function. To adjust for differences in response rates, the data are weighted by the contribution of each respondent’s nation to global GDP.

Alex Singla and Alexander Sukharevsky  are global coleaders of QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey, and senior partners in McKinsey’s Chicago and London offices, respectively; Lareina Yee  is a senior partner in the Bay Area office, where Michael Chui , a McKinsey Global Institute partner, is a partner; and Bryce Hall  is an associate partner in the Washington, DC, office.

They wish to thank Kaitlin Noe, Larry Kanter, Mallika Jhamb, and Shinjini Srivastava for their contributions to this work.

This article was edited by Heather Hanselman, a senior editor in McKinsey’s Atlanta office.

Explore a career with us

Related articles.

Moving past gen AI’s honeymoon phase: Seven hard truths for CIOs to get from pilot to scale

A generative AI reset: Rewiring to turn potential into value in 2024

Implementing generative AI with speed and safety