Is the Internet Harmful or Beneficial?

In bygone days, people could hardly know about their friends’ most updated status. They could just contact their friends by writing them letters or giving them a phone call. When people want to search the exact location of a place, they could just refer to a map or atlas. When people want to search information, they could just refer to books or other printed materials. However, those were the days. These days, with the innovation and the widespread use of internet, people’s lives, in all aspects, become easier and more convenient. Internet may be the most eminent innovation in the history of mankind. However, like other innovations, internet itself is beneficial, because of its convenience, its diversity of information and its enhancement of interpersonal communication, but also harmful, because of its no guarantee of information accuracy and the risk of theft of personal information.

Internet can bring us many conveniences. Nowadays, instead of having face-to-face transactions, many transactions can be conducted in a virtual world. Since internet can be accessed at home, workplace, or even through a wireless device, we can conduct transactions at anytime in anywhere. In the 21st century, E-commerce has become more popular and it is a phenomenon associated with online shopping. People can purchase different kinds of product through the use of E-commerce, ranging from household needs, technology to entertainment. Therefore, internet has provided a platform for busy workers who do not have time to shop physically to shop online. In addition, many services are now provided on the internet. Internet services can save many service receivers’ time because instead of walking in to shops during designated operating hours, people can have their services being rendered whenever they are connected to the internet. Examples of online services include job seeking, online banking, entertainment or restaurant reservation, online application for visa and etc. Thus, internet is definitely providing people many conveniences as it allows people to conduct many daily activities at anytime in anywhere.

Other than convenience, internet is also beneficial through offering diversified information. In the past, if students are doing projects, they might probably stay in the library for a day to search for books or articles but may turn out only few reference sources are relevant to their research. But these days, internet provides people with different kinds of information on any topic. Through typing the keywords in the search engines like Yahoo and Google on the internet, there will be a tremendous amount of relevant information available just within a second. By surfing the Internet for research, students can almost find any type of data on almost any field that they are looking for, ranging from the global issues, government regulations and policies, economy statistics, to new ideas, market information, business report and so on. Not only can internet help the researchers in saving time to find the references, but it can also provide huge amount of useful information to them.

Apart from the above, internet can also enhance communication. In the old days, people could just get in touch with each other through telephone or letter. People sometimes may find it troublesome to contact with each other by using those devices. However, nowadays, internet provides many platforms for people to interact with each other. Instant messengers such as MSN and Skype allow the worldwide instant transference of text, sound and video as well as the sharing of images and other data. Other online social networking and blogging services such as Facebook and Twitter allow people to share their life experiences, to upload pictures and to express feelings. People can easily update their friends’ status by browsing these websites and can interact with their friends by leaving a few-word comment or simply clicking a “like” logo under their friends’ posts. In addition, business cooperation can also be improved through the use of internet. Instead of flying to different countries frequently, many businessmen adopt online video conference as a mean to negotiate the business terms at the beginning stage. Businessmen can also transfer huge amount of data with their partners through E-mail. Not only can internet enable people to communicate with the others in a fraction of second, but also allow people to establish global friendship, therefore it is undoubtedly true that internet enhance communication.

A coin has two sides. Like other innovations, internet is not without imperfection. One of the drawbacks of internet use is no guarantee for information accuracy. Internet information providers do not constitute any obligation in providing accurate information. Individuals can easily generate websites without being reviewed or proofread the information posted to the web. Therefore, it is a hard and challenging job for researchers and students to separate the accurate information from the uncertain data and opinions before quoting the information in their research papers.

Besides, the risk of theft of personal information is another flaw of internet use. Very often, internet services, such as online banking and online shopping, require customers to provide personal information like name, phone number, address, credit card number and etc. If the website is not safe or the security protection of your personal computer is not strong, hackers can gain access to your personal information easily. You will be financially suffered if the hacker stole your credit card information for purchase. Worse still, if the hacker put your personal information to engage in some illegal activities, you may be found guilty. Therefore, internet can also create havoc.

Yet, does it mean that internet is necessarily harmful? While each technological innovation has its own drawbacks, the invention of internet does bring us some unique benefits. But to minimize the number of tragedies that caused by internet use, we can compare the information found on the Internet with other resources, check the credibility of the authors and publishers and find information from some reputable websites to prevent getting inaccurate data in our research papers. Besides, it is also the internet users’ responsibility to install antivirus software into their own computer to prevent virus threat and the risk of being hacked. Internet users should also avoid browsing any potentially harmful websites. By doing so, the harm of internet use can be greatly reduced.
All in all, every single innovation has its own advantages and disadvantages. As for internet, its advantages have obviously outweighed its disadvantages as the fact has proved that despite the blemish, internet is becoming more important and more inseparable from human’s daily lives. In addition, the users can be more vigilant about the negative impact of the internet; the drawbacks of internet can be reduced by human effort. As a result, internet is more beneficial than harmful.