Introduction
The Internet has emerged to be the most popular and advanced tool used for accessing information in the new millennium. The Internet is the most known transforming technology that man had ever developed before and it has all the capability of changing everything, including the activities people do on a daily basis. Moreover, the Internet is said to be the most important tool used when sharing information.
Effect of the internet on the society
The use of the internet has openly transformed societies and all activities people do on a daily basis. The Internet, being one of the latest technologies to be developed on earth has the highest number of people who prefer using it for communication purposes.
This is because the internet makes it easy for people living thousand of miles apart to communicate with one another freely and even visually. Moreover, the internet also allows people living in different geographical locations to effectively coordinate their business operations and even exchange events of their social lifestyles (Ghandchi, par. 1).
Currently, almost everyone has an access to e-mail and other social sites that are available on the internet. Teenagers, for example, are the most common users of internet social sites. They log in to retrieve miraculous information and also chat with one another (Symonds, par. 4). Other social sites available on the internet include; Facebook, Twitter and Skype. These sites make it easy for people to chat and exchange social and cultural ideas (Symonds, par. 4).
Despite all the good things, Internet technology has brought to the societies, there are several drawbacks accompanying it. Internet crimes for example; identity theft, hackers and other advanced monetary thieves are on the increase globally (“Effects of Computers and the Internet on Society” par. 4). Many people don’t involve much in online businesses because of fear.
Impacts of the internet on education
The development of the internet several decades ago lifted up the education sector, which really benefited from this technology. There are several developmental measures that have been put in place with the help of the internet. The question people ask is whether this technology will cause more positive or negative effects on education.
There is no doubt that over a decade ago, the internet has ushered in an amazing progressive revolution as far as informational development was concerned. The Internet is currently the most accessible sources of information both, locally and internationally.
Anyone can access the unlimited amount of information in the shortest time possible through the internet. The Internet provides an alternative way of accessing the information as compared to the old system, such as libraries, it is time saving and students, instead of spending their entire day looking for information in books, will only spend a few minutes to login into a website and retrieve the same information (Maroki, par. 5).
The use of the internet in educational institutions is currently being supported by majority of educators worldwide. Many educational institutions are now seconding the idea of fully incorporating the technology in the education sector.
This is because the internet avails to students the most updated articles and data creating a sense of immediacy (Maroki, par. 9). Nevertheless, bearing in mind that internet exposes students to a great amount of information, not all students use this technology for the academic purposes. Instead, majority of students use it to play games, chat and listen to music.
For this reason, using the internet is disadvantageous to education because it redirects students from academic concentration to social activities. This is evident in cases where instead of reading, students engage more in social sites unrelated to education. Nowadays, students don’t carry out their own assignment and research work. Instead, they simply copy-paste the information available on the internet and submit as their own works.
Most educators feel that it will reach a time when the internet will fully replace using books as sources of information (Maroki, par. 12). This is considered to be very disadvantageous to the student for whom reading books in libraries provides the possibility to develop skills of not only retrieving the information but also engaging in thinking broadly (Maroki, par. 12).
When students use the internet alone as the primary source of information, most of them lose their time by engaging more in social websites available on the internet.
Additionally, frequent use of the internet for academic assignments and research without accessing books can cause mind erosion (Maroki, par. 12). This will happen because of the frequent tendency of accessing free information from the internet. The students’ thinking abilities will go down because they will not have the possibility to read books which helps in memory development.
Impacts of the internet on the economy
It is clear that the internet has transformed businesses all over the world. Most companies nowadays have transformed from old e-commerce to modern e-business with the help of advanced internet technologies (Symonds, par. 6). This is primarily evident in cases where a company, through the internet, makes direct business connections with customers that are thousands of miles away.
Moreover, other companies are currently using more secured internet technologies to establish and intensify business relationship with their trading partners. This technological tool has seen many companies to grow economically and generate huge profits. Furthermore, it is cheap and easy to advertize products through the internet since everyone across the world can easily access the information very quickly.
The other economic benefit is that trading partners nowadays can argue and negotiate on market prices online and even explore new market through the internet easily. Additionally, the internet has greatly reduced money spent as tax for any business transaction done online to about one cent (Symonds, par. 34).
This is contrary to what business transactions done on banks demand. Notable to mention is that, for every bank transaction, 27 cent is charged as transaction fee (Symonds, par. 34). When processing a traveling air ticket through the internet, one pays $1 as transaction cost. This is cheaper than the $8 charged when processing the same through an agent (Symonds, par. 34).
However, the use of the internet in business operation is also accompanied by several drawbacks that scare people from operating online businesses. Some of the negative impact includes the internet security assurance. In today’s world, we have hundreds of advanced internet hackers, e-terrorists and credit card thieves who spent their time on the internet developing fake connections.
This has gradually lowered down customers trust and confidence to conduct business through the internet. Furthermore, lack of productivity power from workers is another common negative effect faced by most companies globally. This is observed in cases where employees spend most of their time on social websites instead of working (Beach, par. 5).
Conclusion
In summary, the internet technology has advanced tremendously in this new millennium. It is important to note that the internet use has both positive and negative impact on whoever uses it.
Works Cited
Beach, Justin. “Positive & Negative Effects of the Internet.” E-how tech. 2011. Web.
“Effects of Computers and the Internet on Society.” 2010. Web.
Ghandchi, Sam. “The New Millennium: The Age of Thinking.” Iranscope. 1999. Web.
Maroki, Neil. “The Impact of the Internet on the Education Systems in the New Millennium.” Business Library. 2001. Web.
Symonds, Mathew. “The Economist.” The Net Imperative. 1999. Web.