Nowadays, the internet has become the fundamental interface through which we interact socially and with the world around us. The truth is that it has changed the modality in which we think about our relationships when compared to its technological predecessors. In this essay, I will outline what I consider to be the potential advantages of the internet’s usage as a program, as well as some of the negative outcomes that I feel are likely to occur.
As concerning specific changes, trusting in the World Wide Web to socialize has entirely fixed the way people communicate and perceive social situations against the tendencies of past years. First of all, it is clear how it allows one to easily develop long-distance relationships by providing a real-time experience through implementing technologies that everyone can access daily. As a result, people can select and create affective relationships and monitor them online by developing a true shared system of emotions and memories through social media. Secondly, free access to a greater amount of information compared to the past can easily facilitate the onset of study, business, and work activities by widening one’s networking. Consequently, the vast majority of individuals tend to consult internet interfaces daily in order to organize a trip, speak to interviewers for their next job abroad, as well as bond with professionals and colleagues from another continent.
There are, however, some possible drawbacks of this widespread internet usage. One is that people could substitute reality with its simulacrum and perceive an obsessive compulsion in daily actions that need to be controlled against the automatic tendency to reach for free-access information within the web. For example, relationships could be considered as mere utilities instead of truthful bondings, thereby losing their main importance. In addition, addiction to interactions through internet-based software has brought to light the stigma of contemporary social isolation as well as the severe lessening of fine motor skills among teenagers and young adults. Hence, it is quite popular to see people in social occasions scrolling endlessly on their phones while demonstrating that they have lost one of the most important functions of the human brain: communication.
To conclude, although contributing to speeding up many processes in our modern society, interacting through internet platforms may be counterproductive from a psychological point of view. For maximum benefits, I feel it would be better if individuals limited their smartphone use rather than being fully immersed in them.