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The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Sides of the Internet

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The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Sides of the Internet
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Sides of the Internet

ENGL 1A
Professor Royal
22 May 2011

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Sides of the Internet The amount of people that have used the internet has grown 572% from 2000 to 2010. What would the world be without internet? It is only been 20 years since its creation but yet it has affected society immensely. Internet has had both a positive and a negative influence on society. Due to the significance of both influences, internet cannot be seen entirely as good or bad, people can only have strong opinions on the matter. In this paper, I will be discussing both the positive and negative aspects that internet has in society. Before explaining all of the benefits to society the internet has had, let us start with showing that there is a good argument that the internet has had a negative impact on society. Skeptics will argue that the internet is not beneficial to society because it limits face-to-face interactions, society most important type of interaction. The limiting factors include, but are not limited to, email based sites, like Yahoo.com, Gmail.com, and Hotmail.com, and social networking sites, like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter. They limit face-to-face interactions because is it more convenient then meeting up with everyone that a person would like to talk with. According to the National School Boards Association (NSBA), who published a report on research and guidelines on online social, educational, and networking, the average teen will spend more than 9 hours a week on just a social internet site (Creating & Connecting). It is not terribly surprising that skeptics will say that spending close to two hours a day in a desk chair, on a computer, searching the web, downloading music, chatting with friends or playing internet games is a complete waste of time. They believe it should be used for studying, playing sports, being outdoors, the list goes on and on. Sadly, skeptics are complete right when


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