How Internet Changed My Life

Jose Luis Ortega Vaquero

Internet have changed my life

In recent years we have been witnessing a real acceleration of society as regards to technology, both in its development and the emergence of new forms. An important change that should be noted is Internet, and how it has affected different areas of everyday life, especially regarding social relations.

The constant use of technologies such as mobile phone, iPod or computer with Internet connections... has led to increasingly more independence in relationships. We isolated and locked ourselves in a "bubble" full of tools with which we relate to each other, apart from the human side of the relationship. Thus, as we can see many people glued to their mobile phones (no need to mention that all with Wi-Fi or direct Internet connection) communicating with friends and family.

I remember the first time I started to use Internet, I was eleven years old and everything started when I was at my school. I heard about something called Windows Live Messenger (also called MSN), It is a program where you can talk online with your friends. At the beginning I didn't care about it, but then I realized that a big part of my friends were using it, so I thought that it could be a fun idea starting to use it too.
I finished school and I went straight home, and instead of doing my homework, as I always did, I went to my computer, turned it on, and downloaded Windows Live Messenger.
The first user that I added was my best friend, he was connected at that time, so we started talking and figuring out all the things that MSN had. I was talking with him, and a few more friends that I was adding through the process, for at least 2 hours and a half, and of course, I forgot to do all my homework.
So I can say that from here, internet was changing my life.
Since this point, I started to become more irresponsible and instead of doing my homework every day after school, I started doing it at night hours, in fact, it was a few to many days that I never did my homework.

Few years after, this program called Tuenti started to become famous, and of course, everybody wanted to use it. Tuenti is a Social network like Facebook but just for Spain, and at that time Facebook wasn’t that famous like it is nowadays.
Tuenti was great, you could post comments, send private messages, upload photos and tag people on those…, it had everything excepted chat. This is why we still used MSN, because chatting with people was one of the best things to do at this time.
Not long time after, an actualization for Tuenti included chat, so I can say that MSN was now old fashioned, just a few people kept using it.
Tuenti started to get all my attention when I was at home; finding cool pictures to upload on Tuenti, talking with my friends all the time, sending post and comments to other pictures… I was starting to leave homework and studies behind.

Around the age of fifteen to sixteen years old, the online gaming was a big deal then. I remember this game called “Call of duty” was one of the most famous games to play multiplayer online.
Most of the time in class we talked about this game, and then, when we went home after school the first thing my friends and me did was playing this game. One big problem of this game was that it was a shooting game, so you had to “kill people”, and this made me become irritable at that time.
I played for so long that I was becoming a very good player, and this meant that when I lost I used to get angry and I had a lot of nonsense quarrels with my friends.
For me, online games and normal games have a good thing and a bad thing. The good thing is that it is an amazing training for our brain, we are capable to proccess a lot of data at the same time. It also affect positively to our eyes, because this are subjected to a big training too.
But it also have a bad thing, that most of the people don't know when it is time to finishing playing, we spend so much time of our free time that we don't even know how much time we are wasting.
The most amazing thing that online gaming have is that you can play with or against someone who could be ten thousand miles away from where we are. Internet has unlimited capacity to communicate with other people.

With seventeen to eighteen years old, the age of the smartphones came into my life. I remember all my friends starting to get a smartphone, so I wanted to get one too. Having a smartphone was very nice because I could connect online whenever I wanted.
The main thing why I wanted to buy a smartphone was because It is this app called”Whatsapp” that you can download online and install on your phone, and of course It was a free online text, so I didn't have to spend any money sending texts.
Since this point is when I started to use my phone almost all the time, I used it in class, in the street, in my house...; I was always doing something with my phone except when it was bed time.
I started to become more irresponsible with school but my social life was growing up.

The most important age for me was when I was .nineteen years old because this is when I decided to go to the United States to study and play tennis and soccer in college.
I remember I heard about scholarships one day when I was practicing in my tennis club, so I started to research online about this topic.
I found an enterprise called “America International” where they do all the stuff to send you to an American school. So, I wrote to them online, and we met not long time after.
So I came to Kansas City where I played tennis for two years before I came to the University of Illinois at Springfield.

In the United States I started to use more often my computer for two main reasons; to talk with my family and friends from Spain and because I started to have online classes.
To communicate with my family I use Skype. It is a free online calls and video calls so you can see the people who you are talking to. I always met them online at the same time because of the time difference. It is 7 hours later in Spain so it is hard to talk to them whenever I wanted to.
To talk with my Friends I use Facebook; it is a universal Social Network in which you can send messages, post, upload pictures, chat... I also use Whatsapp because it is very comfortable to talk with my friends back in Spain wherever I am.
Online classes were a big change for me. Back in Spain I used to have my books and go to class to take down notes, but at Kansas City it is where I took my first online class. I really liked it because I didn't have to go to class and I could get connected to the class whenever I wanted. But it was also confusing and hard at the same time because I had weekly quizzes and homework, and sometimes I forgot that I had those, so I started to carry over a lot of homework.

So I think internet became more important in my life since I was growing up. Windows Live Messenger was a big change for me at that time, and now, I use Facebook, Tuenti, Whatsapp, twitter, and it is not all about Social Networks, because I use internet for everything; searching information for my classes, buying on-line, searching addresses where I need to go, checking the weather and the traffic… I use internet for everything.

Internet could be considered, from my point of view, the great invention of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It is not only about interconnected networks that allow the exchange of information, also because it has never provided implications: from the appearance of new terminology (such as "chat ") to a revolution in the ways of relating.
Like any invention that impacts society, has both positive and negative (television is a good example) but, although we try to escape its effects, none of us are safe. Internet, like all the new technologies, has invaded us. In fact, rare is the home where there is at least one connection. Even rare who does not use the network to do some kind of processing.
As positive implications of Internet use, I consider the following:
It has generated, using tools such as Messenger, email and social networking, a chance to meet new people (every day, many people find their couple looking through a chat or a specialized web). It can also keep and retrieve friends; even it always complementises social relationships in person.
It opens possible continuing training to those who by their circumstances, cannot be moved to a school.
It involves the emergence of new professions and a change in the normal market. It rises off online banks, online insurance, etc.
Access to numerous information resources without scrolling: workability.
Tool to disseminate information, news, instantly and quickly.
Facilitates job search

On the negative, I consider it to necessary name the following;
The misuse of internet possibilities, generating possible addictions. Child pornography.
The impact on legislation, such as the use of piracy.
Loss of privacy in social networks. The photographs, our state of being, etc... It gives a lot of information about our lives that we do not want to share with everyone.

Obviously Internet affects our lives and social relationships we all have.
In my personal life, the Internet has become an indispensable resource for the normal development of the same. In the age we live, everything is interconnected and we live in a network of networks where Internet and technologies have become resources that make our lives much easier.
Paying bills, ordering food, shopping, etc... these are some of the utilities that we can do thanks to internet, but it is also true that having access to internet, the contact between people is lost because what was once a gathering of friends in a park or place to discuss the events of the week, has become a group of people connected through a server, a screen and a keyboard, it is entirely impersonal, as much as they are your friends who are on the other side, you only see a sequence of letters, but a good thing of internet is that it allows us to have relationships with people from all over the world.

The power that Internet has implemented to humans is unreal, we can find information that would be unthinkable in the past, and that every day is growing up with new updates. The latest and newest Internet has managed (through social networks) is something unthinkable until recently. It has gotten that really oppressed peoples are able to organize and lean against former dictatorships such as Libya, Syria, Egypt, etc.. Countries with censorship railways could not stop the force of these social networks. So my question is: Do you think Internet has any limitations?.