Thoughts on the Internet

Advantages of the Internet One of the biggest advantages of the Internet is Communication. In recent years the internet has become faster and more reliable than before. In the past we had the dial up connection which took a very long time to connect and was very irritating. Nowadays we have Broadband and even wireless Broadband which is much faster than before. Finding information on the net is another of the biggest advantages to the Internet. It is packed full of information, there is a possibility that all of it may not be genuine but a lot of it is. Some of the most popular search engines are Google and Yahoo for example.  You can almost find any type ofdata on almost any kind of subject that you are looking for. There is a huge amount of information available on the internet for just about every subject known to man. Emails are now an essential part of communication in a business. It is also a very big advantage for keeping in touch with family and friends. Emailing is free and this is a very big advantage as phone calls, fax an postal services are very expensive to other countries. Nowadays people often use the internet for social networking sites, this lets people stay in contact with friends and family across the world, and even find friends from years ago or find long lost family. But it also has its disadvantages which we will discuss in the next paragraph. Disadvantages of the Internet Using the Internet for long periods of time can separate people from family and friends. Though many will develop online relationships these "cyber" buddies cannot replace "real life" socialising. It is also possible for Internet users to become very addicted to it. Although this is different from other addictions such as chemical addiction, it is actually a real problem as some people may lose employment and suffer other poor effects from overuse of the internet. There are many legal websites full of factual information and there are a lot of sites with inaccurate information. It is often hard to tell the difference between them. Providing personal information online when shopping, banking or using social networking sites can result in hackers gaining access to private data that can be used to steal your funds and even steal your identity. This is becoming a very big problem on a daily basis. Going online often also means subjecting your computer to viruses that can crash your system. This may cause you to lose important files and sometimes destroy your whole computer. Children can often stumble upon or seek out inappropriate websites when using the Internet at home, which can be dangerous if the child shares personal information with others. This is why parents should have parental control on their computers at home and always keep a very close eye on children if they are on the Internet.   Bullying and Pedophiles on the Internet The internet is the perfect place for bullies to find their next targets. We would like to discuss the area in which the social networking sites can have a very big downside on this. Social networking sites such as Bebo and Facebook are full of people with false identities and this leads to younger people not knowing who they are accepting as friends. Examples of some schemes that we have seen as teenagers in the past on these sites are as follows;

• Changing your profile picture to a cartoon character so that the younger generation do not know who they are accepting as friends as they cant see any real pictures of them. 
• People on chat rooms who give a false identity and a false age so that they can communicate with younger people and even get to the stage of meeting them in person.
• People being abused over the Internet by others who find them to be an easy target. This can happen to people who are attending school with these bullies and it’s a way for them to bully people at home as well as at school.

  People should be very careful while using the Internet as it can lead to many problems dealing with both young and middle aged people.