In your opinion, has the internet made the world better or worse? And why do you think so?
The internet can be a great way of finding information about certain topics.
And it can be a way for people to communicate, like email and so on.
However I think it has brought far more harm than good to the world.
For one thing, it encourages people to be antisocial.
At one time, if people wanted to talk to someone, they had to pick up the phone and actually talk to them.
Or go out of the house and visit.
Nowadays to talk to a person, all they have to do is punch some computer keys.
Even this website here encourages antisocial behavior, for people can become addicted to it, just like any other website or electronic means of communicating.
When people connect electronically, they're actually at a HUGE disadvantage, because they lose the warmth of being around another person.
Second reason is, because it gives perverts a way to exchange information.
Unfortunately, there are websites that produce child pornography, and that allow pedophiles to be able to exchange information about potential victims with others of their kind.
In fact, there was something about it in the news not to long ago!
Also, Islamic terrorists are able to show their hate-filled speeches across the world, by means of YouTube and other websites.
In fact, I heard on the news recently that terrorists actually have their own monthly electronic web-magazine!
Now in both cases I've often wondered why the Government, and local law enforcement agencies, don't go after these websites?
Why they don't shut these types of websites down, and when it comes to YouTube, remove the videos that contain terrorists making hate speeches?
It honestly makes no sense to me why they do not do so!
And as regards the information you can find on the internet, you have to question how much of it is true?
How much of it can you trust?
Plus, people have been able to ruin the lives of others over the internet.
Young people especially are vulnerable!
Bullies in school have been able to post things that are deeply humiliating to their fellow classmates that it harms the victim so badly, sometimes to the point where that person has taken their own life.
This is why I think the internet has made the world worse.
What are your thoughts?
Comments
I'm going to address each of your points in turn.
Antisocial behavior- This word is quite often used interchangeably with introverted. Anti-social is the disregard of the law or morality. Now I do talk with people online quite a bit more, but I've made an effort in the past year to talk to people in real life. I don't often talk to the other students my age at school, mainly because a lot of them are.... well, fake.
Good luck having a meaningful conversation with a lot of them. But I do find common ground with a lot of people, I just don't take part in a conversation unless I feel I can add something worthwhile to it.
Child pornography- This is indeed an issue online and governments should absolutely block websites that violate anti-child porn laws. I don't think a lot of people will disagree with you there.
Terrorism- I haven't heard of ISIS videos being uploaded to Youtube (although it wouldn't surprise me), and I'd imagine that those videos would get flagged and removed before long. Granted, I don't believe those videos should be outright removed, but websites that have those videos should block them to anyone who isn't a legal adult. Maybe a minimum age of 20 or so. And I think governments should enforce them.
Information- I think the best thing to do here is teach people (from an early age) to verify information they find. For example, we could have the government put a label of some kind of websites with verified information? And a good way of sorting through lies is to look at multiple sites, because one website could easily be lying.
Bullying- Quite frankly, I think we don't do enough regarding the bullies themselves. Often, I've been told to 'just ignore it', relieving the bullies of any responsibility for their actions and relieving teachers of the responsibility of setting people on the right track. Ignoring bullying is damaging to everyone, and we should turn a spotlight on it when we see it, because it affects the victim and will affect the bully later in life if they continue to act this way.
There are plenty of problems that come with the internet, but there used to be problems with air travel as well. With most technologies, we've put effort into improving it so that it makes the world a better place. I believe we can do so with the internet, and make it a far better place then it is now.
I enjoyed reading your comment.
I think you used good sound reasoning.
One area that I would like to touch on further is bullies.
The only way to stop bullying, is to punish the offenders.
How so?
Well I would think that for a person under the age of 13, a spanking is the right way to go.
A spanking is not abuse!
If there are no bruises being left, then it does not qualify as abuse.
A spanking will help to teach the child right from wrong, and when that there are unpleasant consequences for wrongdoing.
And in the adult world, consequences for wrongdoing can lead to imprisonment, or even death!
The Bible even states: " Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a boy, But the rod of correction will drive it far from him. Discipline your son while there is hope, And do not become responsible for his death. Whoever holds back his rod hates his son, But the one who loves him disciplines him diligently." - Proverbs 22:6, 22:15, 13:24.
So what the Bible shows is that a spanking is actually an expression of love on the parent's part.
It says on the part of the parent: "I love you so much, that I'm willing to give you a small swat on the backside, so that you don't grow up, feel you can do whatever, and end up doing something that may in fact cost you your life."
And just a quick note, "the rod of correction", can take many different forms.
It does not have to be a hard rigid stick.
It can be a belt, an open hand, a switch, or even a small paddle, just as a few examples.
The biggest problem in today's world, or one of the biggest, is that nobody is willing to discipline their children.
Rather than taking charge, they often times let their children run wild and do pretty much whatever they want to do.
Now obviously in many countries both parents have to work for a living, and therefore are not there when their children get home.
In today's busy world, parents often times don't have time to be parents.
And that is a sad reality!
But even so, many parents still are against disciplining their children.
No wonder why society is becoming the way it is!
Back to my original point.
In regards to children who are 13+, there still has to be some sort of discipline involved.
Which includes punishment for wrong behavior.
And the parents have to be in total agreement on what it is, therefore presenting a united front, for if the child senses otherwise, they will succeed in turning one parent against the other, leaving the child free to go do what they want, because the parents are to busy arguing to stop them.
(If you see this message, don't feel obligated to answer it right away. If you have things that you need to be doing, responsibilities that you need to accomplish, then by all means go and do them.
If you see this message and have not had breakfast yet, go eat first.
If it is late at night, don't feel obligated to answer it right then and there.
Get your sleep, this reply will be here tomorrow.
My point simply is, take care of yourself and what you need to do first.
Don't neglect to take care of things you need to do, just to reply to some comment that you can reply to at anytime.)
I think the internet has made people worse. Do you know how many people have killed themselves over some stupid shit someone said to them online and all the cyberbullying going on? It's ridiculous. Then there are people like Christian Weston Chandler who allow internet trolls to dictate and control his life and actions at the age of 33. However I'd be a fool to ignore all the positive things the internet have brought us over the years as in all the discoveries being documented and broadcasted internationally.
Well I guess it has made a world better as it's harder to hide when some country tries to pull something underhanded. It's harder to use propaganda to justify your wrong-doing to people.
I sometimes wonder how the internet bullying can be more effective than bullying in-person. It's extremely easy to ignore the bullies over internet unless you give them power in your mind. As long the person doesn't know you in a real life then what does it matter in a long run?
To be honest I don't know. Internet has brought its own upsides as well its own downsides. Still at least it provides yet another outlet to "safely" unload your buildup feelings and then forget about what happened.
Spanking kids definitely doesn't leave them good memories. My parents have never hit me or my brother and we're still raised properly and knew when we did something wrong and when not. I know, there are kids who are stubborn and forget what you've just said to them, but a good talk with kids can fix a lot of things, really.
I'm probably one of the few here old enough to have lived reasonably large portions of my life both with and without the Internet.
Asking if the Internet is bad or good is sort of like asking if religion is bad or good. People can use it for both bad and good things, and you can argue both sides.
There was no public Internet (in the same sense as today) when I was a teenager. No cell phones either. And we didn't get to pick the ringtone on our wired phones. That doesn't mean there wasn't bullying, and there were certainly cultures who wanted each other dead.
What's better now than back then is the ability to find stuff out. Back then, if you really wanted to know something, you had to ask someone who hopefully knew more than you, or go to the library and start looking through books. And if you didn't want to put in that effort, you just decided you weren't going to know that. Now you can type anything into a search engine and get an answer back pretty much instantly.
I wasn't particularly social back then, and it would have been helpful to read some of the things and watch some of the videos that are now online, to learn how to better interact with people in real life. Yes, that didn't just come naturally to everyone, just because there wasn't an Internet to distract people from socializing in person. I just had to go through trial and error and heartbreak and occasional success.
Some things are worse now than back then. Many stupid things I did as a kid are gone forever, except in my mind. People searching for my name won't find some dumb thing I posted 30 years ago before I knew better. And while targeted advertising was a thing (if you subscribe to a magazine about something, you're going to get ads mailed to you about that something), it wasn't quite as intense as it is now.
And of course, without the Internet, Telltale Games wouldn't exist, and I wouldn't be writing this to you fine people.
Things are the way they are, and we'll adapt as best we can.
I think it's given a place for a lot of people to express themselves and be creative, and while that's a really good thing and it's inspired animators, writers, artists and even independent show/video game creators, it's also left a large window open for assholes who are too afraid to say shit about someone to their face, so they retreat to the internet where they can say whatever they want and just use a fake identity. And that kind of feedback that they give can hurt people, it can destroy lives, and most of all, it can kill. It's not okay. The internet has done good for the world, but at the same time has released a brand new string of assholes into the mix. Racists, Homophobes, Terrorists and Criminals are bad enough, now we have to deal with "The Social Justice Warriors" and the "PC Master Race" and "CyberBullies", we have to deal with 3 new kinds of assholes with one goal in mind just as the others have, to make people who aren't them suffer. It's not fucking okay.
In short, it's great for creative minds who needed an outlet to be creative with, but it has bred some nasty mother fuckers.
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I believe it's made the world a better place in the grand scheme. The sharing of knowledge is absolutely integral to an advancing society. Sure it has caused some bad things, as did the invention of everything ever, but our ability to communicate with people from around the world has opened the gates of continental intermingling. If only we could get places like the middle east and Korea (without Big Brother's constant castration of information) on board we would be a few steps closer to much lesd ignorance.
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I think spanking should be a last resort, when all else fails. If I'd had kids, I'd try to make them understand why it's wrong, since I have no love for the 'that's the rule, follow it' mentality. Rules should always have a purpose, and I think people should understand what that purpose is.
Internet has improved lifes and ruined others. It's made 1000s of jobs but also made people lose 1000s of jobs. It's help us become more knowledgeable about the world but as hurt many people social interactions. I can't really say
Yes, it has made the world a more connected, informed, and better place. I'll break down your points similar to Xboxplayer.
1.Like it has been said before, antisocial and introverted personalities are commonly misidentified. Introverted people like to be alone and enjoy it, it's not a bad thing and in fact the Internet allows these people the ability to talk to people if they please if not in person.
2.Pedophiles and other criminals using it is sadly a thing that does happen. It is fought by most governments and agencies.
3.Terrorism? That's free speech for them to use the internet for hate speech if not a call for violence against someone and gives them the means to do it. Which it does but at the same time, out of everything, terrorism isn't a thing to do with the internet at all. The government can't target free speech websites such as Youtube, while they can take videos down. The lack of ISIS propaganda on Youtube shows that they are fighting it. I'll get to the rest of my point with this in the next argument.
4.Information? Well, people will lie to you in person, people will lie to you over the internet. It's up to people to do research to support their claims. The spread of lies over the internet is highly countered by the amount of the truth and information spread everywhere and quickly. Lies have been spread more easily when the public has not had availability to confirm things, the internet allows the public the ability to get the truth and be knowledgeable.
5.Bullying? Well that happens everywhere, always have and always will. The Internet gives bullies a new way to do it, but in fact, the internet bullying is one of most easily preventable is you're safe and smart.
Describing a technology as better/worse is silly. Technology is an idea. It has no will or purpose beyond what we give it. It's people that use it one way or another. Oh no, some people are doing bad things with technology? Give me a break. That doesn't make the technology bad or malignant to us. We do that to ourselves, at best.
And the reality is that information is more free than it has ever been. People can connect, share with one another, and work more productively than ever before. If you can't see the overwhelming net gain of the interwebs, than you have a selective attention and biased view on the whole. So what if people are mean? Grow the fuck up. Misinformation, crime, and terrorism all existed before the internet, and not one of these things has actually risen since the rise of technology.