essay the internet

Essay on Internet Uses For Students

500 + words internet essay.

The internet is described as a global network of computer systems interconnected and following the internet security protocol. However, have you ever considered why the internet is important? This 500+ Words Essay on internet advantages and disadvantages will help students ace essay writing during exams.

A combination of high-end science and advanced technology, the internet is a viral invention. Here, in an essay on the internet, students can learn about the uses and impact of the internet.

Why the Internet Is Important

The internet has undergone significant development from the time of its birth to the present. Over a period of time, the internet has become more interactive and user-friendly. It has also helped man in day-to-day transactions and interactions. The Internet is widely used for numerous functions such as learning, teaching, research, writing, sharing content or data, e-mails, job hunting, playing games, listening to music, watching videos, exploring and finally surfing the internet. Meanwhile, though it makes life easy for people, the internet also comes with a lot of pros and cons. Find the advantages and disadvantages of the internet from this essay.

Also read: History of Internet

Essay on Advantages of Internet

Read this essay on internet advantages to know the effects of using the internet. Look for the points mentioned below.

• The internet has helped reduce the usage of paper and paperwork to a large extent by computerising offices, schools, NGOs, industries and much more.
• Internet helps to provide updated information and news from all over the world
• Education, business and travel have been thriving with the growth of the Internet
• The internet is of high educational and entertainment value
• The internet makes access to public resources, libraries and textbooks much easier
• The internet makes it easy by reducing the time and energy taken to do work
• Work has become more efficient, quick and accurate
• Meetings and conferences are made easier with video calls and other brilliant tools

Apart from all these, as mentioned in the above paragraph on Internet uses, it helps carry out banking activities, exchange information, shop for various goods and more.

Essay on Internet Disadvantages

Despite the use of the internet and its positives, there are also some internet disadvantages. Continuous use of the internet can affect our lifestyle and health. Let us check out the disadvantages of the internet from this paragraph.

• Over-dependence on the internet can lead to many health problems
• People tend to spend more of their productive time doing nothing but browsing
• Even if the internet is now used extensively at work, overuse of the internet could lead to depression
• Quality time with friends and relatives is primarily reduced due to the use of the internet
• Cybercrime has also increased as internet security and privacy are compromised

Thus, we have seen the uses of the internet and its impact on students and working professionals. While we know that overuse of the internet should be avoided, we also have to acknowledge that the internet has still not been exploited to its full potential, despite its massive growth. In conclusion, we can state that to make internet use more comfortable and pleasurable, school students should be taught about the pros and cons of using the internet, thus ensuring that they can stand up against cybercrime and ensure safety.

Also Read: Social Media Essay | Essay on Women Empowerment | Essay On Constitution of India

Frequently asked Questions on Internet Essay

What is the internet.

The internet is a global system of interconnected computers and this system uses a standardised Internet Protocol suite for communication and sharing information.

What are the top 5 uses of the Internet?

The Internet is mostly used by people to send emails and to search on any topic. It can be used to download large files. People depend on the internet for electronic news and magazines these days. A lot of people, especially the young generation use it to play interactive games and for entertainment.

What is WiFi?

WiFi is the latest wireless technology used to connect computers, tablets, smartphones and other electronic devices to the internet.

Leave a Comment Cancel reply

Your Mobile number and Email id will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Request OTP on Voice Call

Post My Comment

• Share Share

Register with BYJU'S & Download Free PDFs

Register with byju's & watch live videos.

Counselling

Search form

A for and against essay about the internet.

Look at the essay and do the exercises to improve your writing skills.

Instructions

Do the preparation exercise first. Then read the text and do the other exercises.

Preparation

Check your writing: grouping - ideas

Check your writing: gap fill - useful phrases, worksheets and downloads.

What's your opinion? Do you think the internet is bad for young people?

Sign up to our newsletter for LearnEnglish Teens

We will process your data to send you our newsletter and updates based on your consent. You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the "unsubscribe" link at the bottom of every email. Read our privacy policy for more information.

Essay on Internet: Topics and 20 Pros and Cons to Write About

Writing an essay on the internet can help you acknowledge the advantages of the technology as well as reveal the disadvantages to be cautious of. Below are some excellent internet essay topics followed by facts and ideas that will help you create a strong argument. Select the right focus and get ready to wow your professor with a well-written piece. 

Writing About the Internet: Essay Types and Topics 

The internet makes a great topic for an essay about technology and can be suitable for a variety of essay types. Here are 10 of the most popular and the most exciting topics to research:  

1. Pros and cons of the internet. How has the internet changed our lives? 

Both variants of the essay question presuppose coverage of both positive and negative aspects with a brief statement of your own opinion in a conclusion. In fact, you may use the same ideas, tuning the response to the prompt you have received. For example, One benefit of the internet/ One way the internet has changed our lives is that it has allowed us to work and hire remotely. 

The same goes for the essay question – The effects of the internet on our lives . The meaning of the prompt is the same but this wording is more suitable if you are mastering a cause and effect essay type . 

2. Is the impact of the internet on society rather positive or negative? 

Unlike the prompts mentioned above, this is a question for an argumentative essay. This means that you should select your stance and argue for one of the two possible thesis statements : (1) The internet has a positive impact on society, some negative effects being associated rather with the misuse of the technology, or (2) Despite certain benefits, the internet has rather negative than positive effect on modern society. Thus, in the body of an essay, you need to present facts and ideas that support your stance and refute the possible counterarguments.  

3. Internet addiction essay

Internet addiction will make an excellent topic for a sociology essay . If you need to write an argumentative essay, a good question to investigate would be if internet addiction is a real thing. Discuss online gaming and the fear of missing out associated with social media addiction. You can also write a problem and solution essay, focusing on the prevalence of internet addiction and suggesting a viable way to tackle it. 

4. Is the internet making people stupid? 

Carr’s argument on Google making us stupid is the best starting point for writing an essay on this topic. If you support Carr’s opinion, the lack of concentration and gradual loss of deep reading skills are the main arguments to bring up.  

5. Is the internet the guarantee of democracy or its demise? 

Again, this is an argumentative essay topic that requires taking one position only. Writing this essay, focus on benefits such as the inability to censor and conceal important  information and ability to mobilize protests or threats to democracy like the spread of fake news and the ability to manipulate opinion of the masses. 

6. Should the internet be considered a basic human right? 

Highlighting the debate over the right to internet access or arguing for one stance on the topic is a great choice for students who want to stand out with their internet essays. Do you believe that free internet access for all can be our reality any time soon? Will that come at the cost of being manipulated into buying things (voting for people) we don’t need?      

7. Should speech on the internet be censored? 

People tend to be more eager to use hate speech when responding to news and comments online rather than offline. What is more important: to create a safe space for everyone online or to guarantee the freedom of expression (a similar debate is not taking place in relation to free speech on campus )? Who should be responsible for censoring hate speech and how can we be sure the censors do not abuse their rights? 

Consider the blocking of accounts of notorious politicians and the role of Facebook and Twitter authority in deciding which voices can and cannot be heard on the net. Should there be more intervention to counteract the misinformation that some countries spread worldwide (Russia being the most prominent example)?  

8. Internet privacy and safe internet use

The issues of cyberbullying, online grooming, cybercrime, and corporate data breaches call for the proper education of people about the hazards of the internet. Should such courses be compulsory at school ? For young parents? For employees?  

9. The impact of the internet on marriage and sex  

Porn and dating sites as well as the availability of educational resources on sexuality matters seem to have a major impact on sexual and marriage life. Is this impact rather positive or negative? 

10. Information in the age of the internet 

Investigate how immediate access to information has transformed the value of theoretical knowledge and analytical skill. Is modern education keeping pace with societal change and can the internet help to bridge the gap? Are we living in the post-truth era now? 

Advantages of the Internet  

Here is a list of the benefits of the internet, which you may further research or develop in your essay: 

• Facilitates the tasks of daily living from shopping to finding the necessary services, getting medical consultations, and following the fastest routes to our destinations.  
• Provides instant and easy communication with family and friends worldwide.  
• Promotes research through the availability of vast amounts of data and easy sharing of research results.  
• Gives access to new helpful tools for doing business (including the benefits of using online tools, online advertising, working remotely, etc.) 
• Gives access to a larger pool of talent for a company and the ability to choose a better employer without having to limit to a local search. 
• Enabled online learning resources and forums that boost dramatically the access to education. 
• Allows joining communities that are not present or cannot be easily found locally, e.g. LGBT communities, ex-pats, eco-activists, unique professional unions, etc. 
• Ability to draw public attention to societal issues and initiate powerful social movements like #metoo and even revolutions. 
• Introduction of new types of entertainment.  
• Social media and blogging sites facilitate self-expression through the ability to share creative content, one’s expertise, and preferences. [Find out more about the pros and cons of social media from this post ]

Disadvantages of the Internet 

• Affects people’s ability to focus and concentrate and harms long-term memory functions (not an assumption but the conclusions of scientific research now). 
• A constant flow of news from around the world and our own friends can be very overwhelming and increases the level of anxiety. At the same time, frequent use of the internet, social media sites, in particular, leads to the fear of missing out (FOMO) and even internet addiction that doesn’t let us limit the amount of news we are exposed to.  
• Is a heavy environmental burden that goes largely unnoticed (see this post for further information). 
• Allows online bullying, trolling, and grooming that are more difficult to investigate and counteract than offline attempts. 
• Algorithms are created in a way to please a user and, thus, serve the content that a user will most probably like and agree with. This limits our access to different viewpoints and perspectives, deepening the division between groups that support opposing ideas. 
• Cybercrime is a serious issue and ever-increasing dependency on the internet for medical, financial, and governmental matters can lead to unprecedented consequences. 
• Post-truth politics and armies or bots can easily manipulate the sentiments of the masses. 
• Negative online reactions create the illusion of action and make the community feel as if they accomplish change; however, it often only allows them to cool down and not care about taking real steps. This phenomenon and its effects can be best seen from the research on censorship in China that allows criticism of the government but censors content related to social mobilization.   
• It is not possible to say that online communication harms a “real” one, as both forms are very much real and make an integral part of our lives now. In fact, much research says that online communication can foster, not harm offline communication. The only documented negative effect is the prevalence of watching pornography, which lowers social interaction and bonding with caregivers in adolescents and is the strongest predictor of decline in marital quality over time.     
• Constant computer use during the working day triggers a number of physical health challenges, starting from obvious vision and musculoskeletal problems to heart problems and earlier death associated with the long sitting time. 

How to Write an Internet Essay

Here are the steps of writing a successful essay: 

• Select a narrow topic or the focus of your essay (previous sections must have helped you with this step already);
• If you are required to cite credible sources , do your research; otherwise, brainstorm the points you would like to make;
• Outline the structure of your essay , briefly indicating what points you will develop in each paragraph or section and how much space you can devote to each (sticking to the required word count is very important so, to make the argument balanced, calculate an average amount of words you can use to develop each supporting point); 
• Create a draft of a thesis statement basing on the points you are going to make;
• Search for interesting facts or statistics that will help you write an interesting essay introduction ; 
• Write your essay using the outline you have created, then reread and revise a thesis statement if necessary; 
• Format the layout and the citations and check your essay with one of the online grammar checkers (these will not really edit your essay for free , but will help you catch occasional mistakes and unintentional plagiarism).

Which topic for an internet essay excited you the most? What positive or negative effects have you noted in your own life? Please share in the comments – I would love to know! 

Good Transition Words for Essays: Enhancing Coherence and Flow

50 Problem Solution Essay Topics for College Students

50 Process Essay Topics for High School and College Students

Should College Athletes Be Paid: Pros, Cons, and Structure Tips for an Essay

How to Quote in an Essay: A Step-by-Step Guide with Examples

The American Dream Essay: Best Topics and Controversies to Consider

MIT Technology Review

• Newsletters

The Impact of the Internet on Society: A Global Perspective

• Manuel Castells archive page

Provided by BBVA

The Internet is the decisive technology of the Information Age, and with the explosion of wireless communication in the early twenty-first century, we can say that humankind is now almost entirely connected, albeit with great levels of inequality in bandwidth, efficiency, and price.

People, companies, and institutions feel the depth of this technological change, but the speed and scope of the transformation has triggered all manner of utopian and dystopian perceptions that, when examined closely through methodologically rigorous empirical research, turn out not to be accurate. For instance, media often report that intense use of the Internet increases the risk of isolation, alienation, and withdrawal from society, but available evidence shows that the Internet neither isolates people nor reduces their sociability; it actually increases sociability, civic engagement, and the intensity of family and friendship relationships, in all cultures.

Our current “network society” is a product of the digital revolution and some major sociocultural changes. One of these is the rise of the “Me-centered society,” marked by an increased focus on individual growth and a decline in community understood in terms of space, work, family, and ascription in general. But individuation does not mean isolation, or the end of community. Instead, social relationships are being reconstructed on the basis of individual interests, values, and projects. Community is formed through individuals’ quests for like-minded people in a process that combines online interaction with offline interaction, cyberspace, and the local space.

View other articles provided by BBVA OpenMind:

• the way of the dodo.

• A Revolution in Business • Banking, Information, and Technology: Toward Knowledge Banking • Cyber Attacks

Globally, time spent on social networking sites surpassed time spent on e-mail in November 2007, and the number of social networking users surpassed the number of e-mail users in July 2009. Today, social networking sites are the preferred platforms for all kinds of activities, both business and personal, and sociability has dramatically increased — but it is a different kind of sociability. Most Facebook users visit the site daily, and they connect on multiple dimensions, but only on the dimensions they choose. The virtual life is becoming more social than the physical life, but it is less a virtual reality than a real virtuality, facilitating real-life work and urban living.

Because people are increasingly at ease in the Web’s multidimensionality, marketers, government, and civil society are migrating massively to the networks people construct by themselves and for themselves. At root, social-networking entrepreneurs are really selling spaces in which people can freely and autonomously construct their lives. Sites that attempt to impede free communication are soon abandoned by many users in favor of friendlier and less restricted spaces.

Perhaps the most telling expression of this new freedom is the Internet’s transformation of sociopolitical practices. Messages no longer flow solely from the few to the many, with little interactivity. Now, messages also flow from the many to the many, multimodally and interactively. By disintermediating government and corporate control of communication, horizontal communication networks have created a new landscape of social and political change.

Networked social movements have been particularly active since 2010, notably in the Arab revolutions against dictatorships and the protests against the management of the financial crisis. Online and particularly wireless communication has helped social movements pose more of a challenge to state power.

The Internet and the Web constitute the technological infrastructure of the global network society, and the understanding of their logic is a key field of research. It is only scholarly research that will enable us to cut through the myths surrounding this digital communication technology that is already a second skin for young people, yet continues to feed the fears and the fantasies of those who are still in charge of a society that they barely understand.

Read the full article here.

Keep Reading

Most popular, large language models can do jaw-dropping things. but nobody knows exactly why..

And that's a problem. Figuring it out is one of the biggest scientific puzzles of our time and a crucial step towards controlling more powerful future models.

• Will Douglas Heaven archive page

How scientists traced a mysterious covid case back to six toilets

When wastewater surveillance turns into a hunt for a single infected individual, the ethics get tricky.

• Cassandra Willyard archive page

The problem with plug-in hybrids? Their drivers.

Plug-in hybrids are often sold as a transition to EVs, but new data from Europe shows we’re still underestimating the emissions they produce.

• Casey Crownhart archive page

It’s time to retire the term “user”

The proliferation of AI means we need a new word.

• Taylor Majewski archive page

Stay connected

Get the latest updates from mit technology review.

Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.

Thank you for submitting your email!

It looks like something went wrong.

We’re having trouble saving your preferences. Try refreshing this page and updating them one more time. If you continue to get this message, reach out to us at [email protected] with a list of newsletters you’d like to receive.

• School Guide
• English Grammar Free Course
• English Grammar Tutorial
• Parts of Speech
• Figure of Speech
• Tenses Chart
• Essay Writing
• Email Writing
• NCERT English Solutions
• English Difference Between
• SSC CGL English Syllabus
• SBI PO English Syllabus
• SBI Clerk English Syllabus
• IBPS PO English Syllabus
• IBPS CLERK English Syllabus

800 Words Essay On Internet in English for Students

• 500+ Words Essay on Newspaper in English For Students
• 500+Words Essay on My Hobby in English
• My Aim in Life Essay For Students: 100, 200 & 500 Words Essay
• 500+ Words Essay on Importance of Education in English
• Essay on My Father in English: 300, 500 & 800 Words Essay
• Essay Writing on Cell Phones For Students
• Essay on Science in English: Check 200, 300 & 500 Words Essay
• Essay on My Family: Short, 10 Lines, 100 Words Essay
• 200+ Action Words in English: Know How to Use
• Essay on my Best Friend: 10 Lines, 100 Words, 200 Words Essay
• Essay on My House in English: Check 300, 500 & 800 Words Essay
• Importance of Sports for Students in English
• Essay on Summer Vacation For Students in English: Samples Class 3 to 5
• 70+ New Words in English With Their Meaning
• Essay on My Favourite Book For Students
• Essay on My Favourite Teacher (10 Lines, 100 Words, 200 Words)
• Essay on My Mother: 10 lines, 100 Words and 200 words essay
• A Guide to Writing an Essay for Job Interviews
• Important Questions On Computer Internet For Bank Exam
• Active and Passive Voice Rules for Competitive Exams
• English Grammar : Learn Rules of Grammar and Basics
• 7 Colours of the Rainbow - VIBGYOR
• Difference between Laptop and Tablet
• Parts of Speech: Definitions, Examples & 8 Types
• 12 Months Name in English and Hindi
• Spotting Errors: Verbal Ability Questions and Answers
• Difference between Save and Save As
• Names of Colours - List of Colours Names in English
• Spotting Error Practice Questions Based On English Grammar "Noun"

The internet has transformed the world in ways that were unimaginable just a few decades ago. It has revolutionized how we communicate, access information, conduct business, and even how we entertain ourselves. The internet has become an integral part of our daily lives, and it’s hard to imagine a world without it.

At its core, the Internet is a vast network of interconnected computers and servers that allows for the exchange of information and data across the globe. It was originally conceived as a way for researchers and scientists to share information and collaborate on projects, but it has since evolved into a ubiquitous platform that has permeated every aspect of modern life.

One of the most significant impacts of the internet has been on communication. Before the internet, communication was limited by geography and time zones. People had to rely on physical mail, telephone calls, or face-to-face meetings to communicate with one another. The internet has made communication instantaneous and borderless. With the rise of email, instant messaging, video conferencing, and social media platforms, people can communicate with each other from anywhere in the world, at any time.

The internet has also revolutionized the way we access information. In the past, people had to rely on physical libraries, books, and other printed materials to access information. Today, with the internet, a wealth of information is available at our fingertips. From online encyclopedias to news websites, academic journals, and online databases, the internet has made it possible to access information on virtually any topic imaginable.

Another significant impact of the internet has been on the economy and the way we conduct business. The rise of e-commerce has made it possible for businesses to reach a global market and sell their products and services online. Online shopping has become increasingly popular, and many traditional brick-and-mortar stores have had to adapt to this new reality by establishing an online presence.

Furthermore, the internet has enabled the rise of the gig economy, where people can work as freelancers or contractors for multiple clients and projects simultaneously. This has created new opportunities for individuals to earn a living and has allowed businesses to access a global talent pool.

The internet has also had a profound impact on education. Online learning platforms and distance education programs have made it possible for students to access educational resources and attend classes from anywhere in the world. This has opened up new opportunities for people who may not have had access to traditional educational institutions due to geographical or financial constraints.

However, the internet has also brought with it a number of challenges and concerns. One of the biggest concerns is privacy and security. With so much personal information being shared online, there is a risk of data breaches and cyber attacks. Companies and individuals need to be vigilant about protecting their personal information and implementing strong cybersecurity measures.

Another concern is the spread of misinformation and fake news. The internet has made it easier for anyone to publish and share information, regardless of its accuracy or credibility. This has led to the proliferation of fake news and conspiracy theories, which can have serious consequences for individuals and society as a whole.

There is also concern about the impact of the internet on mental health and well-being. The constant exposure to social media and the pressure to curate a perfect online persona can lead to feelings of anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem. Additionally, the addictive nature of the internet and the constant stream of information can contribute to decreased attention spans and difficulty focusing on tasks.

Despite these challenges, the internet has proven to be an invaluable tool that has transformed the way we live, work, and interact with the world around us. It has opened up new opportunities for communication, education, and economic growth, and has made it possible for people to connect and collaborate in ways that were previously unimaginable.

As we move forward, it is important to address the challenges and concerns surrounding the internet while also embracing its potential for innovation and progress. This may involve implementing stronger cybersecurity measures, promoting digital literacy and critical thinking skills, and encouraging responsible and ethical use of the internet.

In conclusion, the internet has had a profound impact on virtually every aspect of modern life. It has revolutionized communication, education, business, and access to information. While it has brought with it a number of challenges and concerns, the internet has proven to be an invaluable tool that has transformed the way we live and interact with the world around us. As we continue to navigate the digital age, it is important to embrace the opportunities that the internet provides while also addressing its challenges and promoting responsible and ethical use.

Uses of Internet

In the 21st century, the internet has become an indispensable part of our daily lives, revolutionizing the way we connect, learn, work, and entertain ourselves. Its multifaceted uses have permeated every aspect of society, bringing about unprecedented convenience and opportunities.

Communication stands out as one of the internet’s most significant uses. Instant messaging, video calls, and social media platforms have transcended geographical barriers, allowing people to stay connected with friends and family across the globe. The internet has turned the world into a global village, fostering a sense of unity and understanding among diverse cultures.

Education has undergone a remarkable transformation due to the internet. Online courses, tutorials, and educational resources have made learning accessible to anyone with an internet connection. Students can pursue degrees, acquire new skills, and access a wealth of information at their fingertips, democratizing education and breaking down traditional barriers to learning.

The internet has also redefined the way we work. Remote collaboration tools, cloud computing, and virtual offices have become essential components of the modern workplace. This shift has not only increased efficiency but has also opened up new opportunities for freelancers and remote workers, contributing to the rise of the gig economy.

In the realm of information, the internet has become an unparalleled resource. Search engines allow us to access vast amounts of information on any topic imaginable. This democratization of information has empowered individuals, encouraging critical thinking and facilitating informed decision-making.

Entertainment has undergone a digital revolution, with streaming services, online gaming, and social media platforms providing endless avenues for amusement. The internet has not only transformed how we consume content but has also given rise to new forms of artistic expression and creativity.

In conclusion, the internet’s uses are multifaceted and far-reaching, impacting every facet of our lives. From connecting people across the globe to revolutionizing education, work, and entertainment, the internet continues to be a transformative force, shaping the present and influencing the future. As we navigate the digital landscape, it is essential to harness the potential of the internet responsibly, ensuring that it remains a force for positive change in the years to come.

Convenience Due to Internet

The advent of the internet has ushered in an era of unprecedented convenience, transforming the way we live, work, and interact with the world. In our fast-paced lives, the internet has become a cornerstone of efficiency and ease, offering a multitude of conveniences that have reshaped our daily routines.

Communication is perhaps the most obvious and impactful convenience brought about by the internet. Instant messaging, email, and social media platforms have revolutionized the way we connect with others. Whether it’s staying in touch with loved ones, collaborating with colleagues, or reaching out to friends across the globe, the internet has made communication instantaneous and seamless.

The convenience of online shopping has fundamentally altered the retail landscape. With just a few clicks, consumers can browse, compare prices, and purchase a vast array of products from the comfort of their homes. The rise of e-commerce platforms has not only made shopping more convenient but has also introduced the concept of doorstep delivery, saving time and eliminating the need for physical store visits.

Information retrieval has been transformed by the internet’s vast repository of knowledge. Search engines provide instant access to information on any conceivable topic, enabling users to quickly find answers, conduct research, and stay informed. This ease of information retrieval has empowered individuals, making knowledge more accessible than ever before.

The workplace has undergone a paradigm shift with the internet, enabling remote work and flexible schedules. Online collaboration tools, cloud computing, and virtual communication platforms have made it possible for individuals to work from virtually anywhere, reducing the constraints of traditional office settings and commuting.

Entertainment has also become infinitely more convenient through streaming services, online gaming, and digital media platforms. The ability to access a diverse range of content on-demand has given consumers unprecedented control over their entertainment choices, eliminating the need to adhere to fixed schedules or physical media.

In conclusion, the internet has woven a tapestry of convenience into the fabric of our lives. From streamlined communication and effortless online shopping to boundless information access and flexible work arrangements, the conveniences offered by the internet have become integral to our modern existence. As we navigate this digital landscape, the ongoing evolution of internet technologies continues to enhance and redefine the meaning of convenience in our interconnected world.

Also Read: Rabindranath Tagore Essay in English For Students 500+ Words Essay on Mother Teresa in English For Students Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru Essay in English For Students APJ Abdul Kalam Essay For Students: Check 500 Words Essay

Essay On Internet- FAQs

What is internet short essay.

In the modern time, internet has become is one of the most powerful and interesting tools all across the world. The Internet is a network of networks and collection of many services and resources which benefits us in various ways. Using internet we can access World Wide Web from any place.

What is Internet in 150 words?

The internet is the most recent man-made creation that connects the world. The world has narrowed down after the invention of the internet. It has demolished all boundaries, which were the barriers between people and has made everything accessible. The internet is helpful to us in different ways.

What is internet 100 words?

A. The internet, a recent man-made marvel, has brought the world closer. It has shattered all barriers and made everything accessible. The internet serves us in countless ways, from sharing information with people across the world to staying connected with our loved ones.

Please Login to comment...

Similar reads.

• English Blogs
• School English

Improve your Coding Skills with Practice

What kind of Experience do you want to share?

The internet: History, evolution and how it works

The Internet is a massive computer network that has revolutionized communication and changed the world forever.

What is the internet?

• Internet invention
• How it works

How do websites work?

• Speed and bandwidth

Additional resources

Bibliography.

The internet is a vast network that connects computers across the world via more than 750,000 miles (1,200,000 kilometres) of cable running under land and sea, according to the University of Colorado Boulder. 

It is the world's fastest method of communication, making it possible to send data from London, U.K. to Sydney, Australia in just 250 milliseconds, for example. Constructing and maintaining the internet has been a monumental feat of ingenuity.

The internet is a giant computer network, linking billions of machines together by underground and underwater fibre-optic cables.These cables run connect continents and islands , everywhere except Antarctica

Each cable contains strands of glass that transmit data as pulses of light, according to the journal Science . Those strands are wrapped in layers of insulation and buried beneath the sea floor by ships carrying specialist ploughs. This helps to protect them from everything from corrosion to shark bites.

When you use it, your computer or device sends messages via these cables asking to access data stored on other machines. When accessing the internet, most people will be using the world wide web. 

When was the internet invented?

It was originally created by the U.S. government during the Cold War . In 1958, President Eisenhower founded the Advanced Research Projects Agency ( ARPA ) to give a boost to the country’s military technology, according to the Journal of Cyber Policy . Scientists and engineers developed a network of linked computers called ARPANET. 

- The Internet of Things: A seamless network of everyday objects

- What is cyberwarfare?

- Internet history timeline: ARPANET to the World Wide Web

ARPANET's original aim was to link two computers in different places, enabling them to share data. That dream became a reality in 1969, according to Historian Jeremy Norman . In the years that followed, the team linked dozens of computers together and, by the end of the 1980s, the network contained more than 30,000 machines, according to the U.K.'s Science and Media Museum .

How the onternet works

Most computers connect to the internet without the use of wires, using   Wi-Fi , via a physical modem. It connects via a wire to a socket in the wall, which links to a box outside. That box connects via still more wires to a network of cables under the ground. Together, they convert radio waves to electrical signals to fibre optic pulses, and back again. 

At every connection point in the underground network, there are junction boxes called routers. Their job is to work out the best way to pass data from your computer to the computer with which you’re trying to connect. According to the IEEE International Conference on Communications , they use your IP addresses to work out where the data should go. Latency is the technical word that describes how long it takes data to get from one place to another, according to Frontier . 

Each router is only connected to its local network. If a message arrives for a computer that the router doesn’t recognizse, it passes it on to a router higher up in the local network. They each maintain an address book called a routing table . According to the Internet Protocol Journal , it shows the paths through the network to all the local IP addresses. 

The internet sends data around the world, across land and sea, as displayed on the Submarine Cable Map . The data passes between networks until it reaches the one closest to its destination. Then, it passes through local routers until it arrives at the computer with the matching IP address.

The internet relies upon the two connecting computers  speaking the same digital language. To achieve this, there is a set of rules called the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Internet Protocol (IP), according to the web infrastructure and website security company Cloudflare . 

TCP/IP makes the internet work a bit like a postal system. There is an address book that contains the identity of every device on the network, and a set of standard envelopes for packaging up data. The envelopes must carry the address of the sender, the address of the recipient, and details about the information packed inside. The IP, explains how the address system works, whileTCP, how to package and send the data.

Click the numbers on the following interactive image to find out what happens when you type www.livescience.com into your browser:

Internet speed and bandwidth

When it comes to internet speed how much data you can download in one second: bandwidth. According to Tom’s Guide , to surf the web, check your email, and update your social media, 25 megabits per second is enough. But, if you want to watch 4K movies, live stream video, or play online multiplayer games, you might need speeds of up to 100-200 megabits per second.

Your download speed depends on one main factor: the quality of the underground cables that link you to the rest of the world. Fibre optic cables send data much faster than their copper counterparts, according to the cable testing company BASEC , and your home internet is limited by the infrastructure available in your area.

Jersey has the highest average bandwidth in the world, according to Cable.co.uk . The little British island off the coast of France boasts average download speeds of over 274 megabits per second. Turkmenistan has the lowest, with download speeds barely reaching 0.5 megabits per second.

You can read more about the history of the internet at the Internet Society website . To discover how the Internet has changed our daily lives, read this article by Computing Australia .

• " Getting to the bottom of the internet’s carbon footprint ". University of Colorado Boulder, College of Media, Communication and Information (2021).
• " The evolution of the Internet: from military experiment to General Purpose Technology ". Journal of Cyber Policy (2016). 
• " The Internet: Past, Present, and Future ". Educational Technology (1997). 
• " Three-Way Handshake ". CISSP Study Guide (Second Edition) (2012).
• " Content Routers: Fetching Data on Network Path ". IEEE International Conference on Communications (2011).
• " Analyzing the Internet's BGP Routing Table ". The Internet Protocol Journal (2001). 
• " The Internet of Tomorrow ". Science (1999).

Sign up for the Live Science daily newsletter now

Get the world’s most fascinating discoveries delivered straight to your inbox.

Laura Mears is a biologist who left the confines of the lab for the rigours of an office desk as a keen science writer and a full-time software engineer. Laura has previously written for the magazines How It Works and T3 .  Laura's main interests include science, technology and video games.

Save 32% on this feature-packed Garmin Instinct running watch

1st self-driving car that 'lets you take your eyes off the road' goes on sale in the US — and it's not a Tesla

Hundreds of black 'spiders' spotted in mysterious 'Inca City' on Mars in new satellite photos

Most Popular

• 2 Haunting photo of Earth and moon snapped by China's experimental lunar satellites
• 3 Dying SpaceX rocket tears blood-red 'hole' in the sky over Texas — again
• 4 Global 'time signals' subtly shifted as the total solar eclipse reshaped Earth's upper atmosphere, new data shows
• 5 Rare 'porcelain gallbladder' found in 100-year-old unmarked grave at Mississippi mental asylum cemetery
• 2 'We were in disbelief': Antarctica is behaving in a way we've never seen before. Can it recover?
• 3 George Washington's stash of centuries-old cherries found hidden under Mount Vernon floor
• 4 Scientists create 'toxic AI' that is rewarded for thinking up the worst possible questions we could imagine
• 5 5 catastrophic megathrust earthquakes led to the demise of the pre-Aztec city of Teotihuacan, new study suggests

Essays About The Internet: Top 5 Examples and Prompts

Are you writing essays about the internet? Then, read our guide, including interesting essay examples and writing prompts to get you started. 

The internet is a vast network of billions of computers connecting people virtually worldwide. When you connect to the internet or go online, you can access loads of information and communicate with people from millions of miles away.

The internet has presented groundbreaking benefits to society, such as global, real-time communication, more accessible access to information, and more source of leisure. However, when in the wrong hands, the internet can be a dangerous neighborhood that bustles with criminal opportunities for thieves, stalkers, and murderers.

For inspiration in writing an article about the internet, read our round-up of thought-provoking essay examples and prompts. 

1. Forty Years Of The Internet: How The World Changed Forever by Oliver Burkeman

2. who owns the internet by elizabeth kolbert, 3. a nation of echo chambers: how the internet closed off the world by will leitch, 4. the rise of memes in the internet world by lennlee keep, 5. how to fight lies, tricks and chaos online by adi robertson, 10 writing prompts on essays about the internet, 1. the internet’s benefits to students, 2. dangers of the internet on the youth, 3. how the internet changed how we date, 4. how the internet revolutionized business, 5. safeguarding your privacy online, 6. effects of internet slang on literacy, 7. are bloggers replacing journalists, 8. the internet of things, 9. metaverse: the future of the internet, 10. creating communities online.

“It’s impossible to say for certain when the internet began, mainly because nobody can agree on what, precisely, the internet is. (This is only partly a philosophical question: it is also a matter of egos since several of the people who made key contributions are anxious to claim the credit.”

Burkeman treads the history of the internet through the lens of those who claim to have contributed to its development and arrival on the tech scene. His nostalgic journey interestingly shows how the internet emerged glacially slow, heading toward the dotcom boom not until decades after a successful computer communication experiment initially intended to establish US defense. You might also be interested in these essays about computers .

“The Internet revolution has, indeed, sent heads rolling, as legions of bookstore owners, music critics, and cirrhotic editors can attest. Instead of becoming more egalitarian, the country has become less so: the gap between America’s rich and poor grows ever wider.”

Once envisioned to democratize power to the people, the Internet disappoints as it continues to concentrate power on a few, deepening inequality with graver concerns, such as piracy and fake news.

“We now only have to interact with people who agree with us; if I use Twitter as my primary news source, as so many people do, I can carefully curate my feed to exclude anyone who disagrees with me about anything. (And if someone who slips in there who does, I can call them a horrible person.).”

The essay laments how the internet has isolated us into our echo chambers, leaving our beliefs unchallenged and stripped of world-proven facts on matters as evident as vaccination. Furthermore, because we addictively feed into the positive validation of people who share our opinions, it becomes easy to demonize those who don’t. As such, our society deals with more conspiracy theory believers and spreaders. 

“The internet is still in some ways the Wild West, and putting your meme and your art out in the world requires a certain amount of faith in humanity, diligence and maybe a good rights attorney on retainer.”

An integral part of social media, memes may not mean what we know them to be in the internet age. Instead, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins contends that memes are cultural ideas and customs passed on if worthy of being “meme”-icked. If we go by this definition, memes could date back to early civilizations and even be found in the animal kingdom.

“This kind of viral half-truth is part of the fabric of today’s internet, and the kind of anger it inspired has been turned into a dangerous commodity. It’s cynically exploited by businesses for ad-supported “fake news,” by scammers raising money online, and by authoritarian governments to spread hate and fear.”

The widespread falsehoods being peddled over the internet requires netizens’ heightened vigilance. But Robertson recognizes the struggle always to be vigilant, drawing up a list of practical techniques everyone can use to combat fake news. 

Share your insights and experience on how the internet has expanded your knowledge in a subject matter and helped you complete your academic papers. In addition, you can compare these perks against the difficulties students and researchers had to endure before the birth of the internet. 

Anyone can be a victim on the internet, but kids are most vulnerable to cyberattacks and offenses. So first, cite the most common concerns kids can encounter while surfing online. A few examples you can include are cyberbullying, phishing, predators, and scams. Next, offer kids and parents some helpful safety tips to avoid falling prey to these online traps. 

Critics hate the internet for making dating among the youth an easy game that heavily emphasizes sexual and physical attractions. Do you agree with them? Discuss your feelings on this point. You can also look into how the internet has strengthened relationships, especially long-distance ones, through communication.

In your essay, take a deep dive into how e-commerce has forever changed how we do business, from how we market our products to the skills of employees now sought. Then, lay down the risks and opportunities in e-commerce. Finally, provide expert tips on how businesses, especially small and medium enterprises, can be competitive by conquering the risks online while optimizing profits through the opportunities of a digitally borderless world. 

Privacy is a contentious issue over the internet. Laws on privacy have turned more complex and become doubly challenging to enforce. In this prompt, hammer down the essence of maintaining privacy on the internet. Then, taking off from privacy experts’ recommendations, offer your audience critical steps to ensure they protect their private space and their data when online.

Internet slang is an evolving language created for people to communicate online easily. It has drawn extensive debates on its effects on the future of language and literacy. In your essay, write your insights on internet slang’s negative and positive effects on shaping students’ linguistic views and skills. If you’re a linguistics geek, you might also be interested in discovering how different languages created their internet lingos.

Can blogging meet journalistic standards and be a reliable source of truth? Journalists do not think so, but some contend that blogging is a form of citizen journalism that can legitimately put light on different angles of an event or situation. Answer this question yourself through your essay and dig deeper into the pros and cons of blogs as a source of news. 

The Internet of Things (IoT) — the interconnectivity of devices made possible by the internet — is poised to be the next most significant technological advancement. When writing this essay, explain what part IOT can play in redefining the future. Then, cite its potential real-world applications and how it can revolutionize industries. 

Write about the metaverse and its promises of raising the online experience to the next level. Talk about what your readers can expect and what activities they can do once they enter the metaverse. Then, consider tackling the technologies making the metaverse a reality and the cost of “living” in this virtual space. You may also go so far as to mull over the potential problems the metaverse poses, such as promoting an improved alternate world to escape from reality. 

One of the most significant social benefits of the internet is finding new friends who share the same interests. We can engage with them directly or through forum discussions that strengthen our knowledge of our interests. For this essay, write about online groups and communities you are part of and share how these are helping you learn more while also challenging you to think more deeply to develop your insights and analysis. Want your essay to leave a good, lasting impression on your readers? Check this guide on how to write an argumentative essay . If you’re still choosing an essay topic, read our essay guides on social media and technology .

Yna Lim is a communications specialist currently focused on policy advocacy. In her eight years of writing, she has been exposed to a variety of topics, including cryptocurrency, web hosting, agriculture, marketing, intellectual property, data privacy and international trade. A former journalist in one of the top business papers in the Philippines, Yna is currently pursuing her master's degree in economics and business.

View all posts

From Science to Arts, an Inevitable Decision?

The wonderful world of fungi, openmind books, scientific anniversaries, simultaneous translation technology – ever closer to reality, featured author, latest book, the impact of the internet on society: a global perspective, introduction.

The Internet is the decisive technology of the Information Age, as the electrical engine was the vector of technological transformation of the Industrial Age. This global network of computer networks, largely based nowadays on platforms of wireless communication, provides ubiquitous capacity of multimodal, interactive communication in chosen time, transcending space. The Internet is not really a new technology: its ancestor, the Arpanet, was first deployed in 1969 (Abbate 1999). But it was in the 1990s when it was privatized and released from the control of the U.S. Department of Commerce that it diffused around the world at extraordinary speed: in 1996 the first survey of Internet users counted about 40 million; in 2013 they are over 2.5 billion, with China accounting for the largest number of Internet users. Furthermore, for some time the spread of the Internet was limited by the difficulty to lay out land-based telecommunications infrastructure in the emerging countries. This has changed with the explosion of wireless communication in the early twenty-first century. Indeed, in 1991, there were about 16 million subscribers of wireless devices in the world, in 2013 they are close to 7 billion (in a planet of 7.7 billion human beings). Counting on the family and village uses of mobile phones, and taking into consideration the limited use of these devices among children under five years of age, we can say that humankind is now almost entirely connected, albeit with great levels of inequality in the bandwidth as well as in the efficiency and price of the service.

At the heart of these communication networks the Internet ensures the production, distribution, and use of digitized information in all formats. According to the study published by Martin Hilbert in Science (Hilbert and López 2011), 95 percent of all information existing in the planet is digitized and most of it is accessible on the Internet and other computer networks.

The speed and scope of the transformation of our communication environment by Internet and wireless communication has triggered all kind of utopian and dystopian perceptions around the world.

As in all moments of major technological change, people, companies, and institutions feel the depth of the change, but they are often overwhelmed by it, out of sheer ignorance of its effects.

The media aggravate the distorted perception by dwelling into scary reports on the basis of anecdotal observation and biased commentary. If there is a topic in which social sciences, in their diversity, should contribute to the full understanding of the world in which we live, it is precisely the area that has come to be named in academia as Internet Studies. Because, in fact, academic research knows a great deal on the interaction between Internet and society, on the basis of methodologically rigorous empirical research conducted in a plurality of cultural and institutional contexts. Any process of major technological change generates its own mythology. In part because it comes into practice before scientists can assess its effects and implications, so there is always a gap between social change and its understanding. For instance, media often report that intense use of the Internet increases the risk of alienation, isolation, depression, and withdrawal from society. In fact, available evidence shows that there is either no relationship or a positive cumulative relationship between the Internet use and the intensity of sociability. We observe that, overall, the more sociable people are, the more they use the Internet. And the more they use the Internet, the more they increase their sociability online and offline, their civic engagement, and the intensity of family and friendship relationships, in all cultures—with the exception of a couple of early studies of the Internet in the 1990s, corrected by their authors later (Castells 2001; Castells et al. 2007; Rainie and Wellman 2012; Center for the Digital Future 2012 et al.).

Thus, the purpose of this chapter will be to summarize some of the key research findings on the social effects of the Internet relying on the evidence provided by some of the major institutions specialized in the social study of the Internet. More specifically, I will be using the data from the world at large: the World Internet Survey conducted by the Center for the Digital Future, University of Southern California; the reports of the British Computer Society (BCS), using data from the World Values Survey of the University of Michigan; the Nielsen reports for a variety of countries; and the annual reports from the International Telecommunications Union. For data on the United States, I have used the Pew American Life and Internet Project of the Pew Institute. For the United Kingdom, the Oxford Internet Survey from the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, as well as the Virtual Society Project from the Economic and Social Science Research Council. For Spain, the Project Internet Catalonia of the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3) of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC); the various reports on the information society from Telefónica; and from the Orange Foundation. For Portugal, the Observatório de Sociedade da Informação e do Conhecimento (OSIC) in Lisbon. I would like to emphasize that most of the data in these reports converge toward similar trends. Thus I have selected for my analysis the findings that complement and reinforce each other, offering a consistent picture of the human experience on the Internet in spite of the human diversity.

Given the aim of this publication to reach a broad audience, I will not present in this text the data supporting the analysis presented here. Instead, I am referring the interested reader to the web sources of the research organizations mentioned above, as well as to selected bibliographic references discussing the empirical foundation of the social trends reported here.

Technologies of Freedom, the Network Society, and the Culture of Autonomy

In order to fully understand the effects of the Internet on society, we should remember that technology is material culture. It is produced in a social process in a given institutional environment on the basis of the ideas, values, interests, and knowledge of their producers, both their early producers and their subsequent producers. In this process we must include the users of the technology, who appropriate and adapt the technology rather than adopting it, and by so doing they modify it and produce it in an endless process of interaction between technological production and social use. So, to assess the relevance of Internet in society we must recall the specific characteristics of Internet as a technology. Then we must place it in the context of the transformation of the overall social structure, as well as in relationship to the culture characteristic of this social structure. Indeed, we live in a new social structure, the global network society, characterized by the rise of a new culture, the culture of autonomy.

Internet is a technology of freedom, in the terms coined by Ithiel de Sola Pool in 1973, coming from a libertarian culture, paradoxically financed by the Pentagon for the benefit of scientists, engineers, and their students, with no direct military application in mind (Castells 2001). The expansion of the Internet from the mid-1990s onward resulted from the combination of three main factors:

• The technological discovery of the World Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee and his willingness to distribute the source code to improve it by the open-source contribution of a global community of users, in continuity with the openness of the TCP/IP Internet protocols. The web keeps running under the same principle of open source. And two-thirds of web servers are operated by Apache, an open-source server program.
• Institutional change in the management of the Internet, keeping it under the loose management of the global Internet community, privatizing it, and allowing both commercial uses and cooperative uses.
• Major changes in social structure, culture, and social behavior: networking as a prevalent organizational form; individuation as the main orientation of social behavior; and the culture of autonomy as the culture of the network society.

I will elaborate on these major trends.

Our society is a network society; that is, a society constructed around personal and organizational networks powered by digital networks and communicated by the Internet. And because networks are global and know no boundaries, the network society is a global network society. This historically specific social structure resulted from the interaction between the emerging technological paradigm based on the digital revolution and some major sociocultural changes. A primary dimension of these changes is what has been labeled the rise of the Me-centered society, or, in sociological terms, the process of individuation, the decline of community understood in terms of space, work, family, and ascription in general. This is not the end of community, and not the end of place-based interaction, but there is a shift toward the reconstruction of social relationships, including strong cultural and personal ties that could be considered a form of community, on the basis of individual interests, values, and projects.

The process of individuation is not just a matter of cultural evolution, it is materially produced by the new forms of organizing economic activities, and social and political life, as I analyzed in my trilogy on the Information Age (Castells 1996–2003). It is based on the transformation of space (metropolitan life), work and economic activity (rise of the networked enterprise and networked work processes), culture and communication (shift from mass communication based on mass media to mass self-communication based on the Internet); on the crisis of the patriarchal family, with increasing autonomy of its individual members; the substitution of media politics for mass party politics; and globalization as the selective networking of places and processes throughout the planet.

But individuation does not mean isolation, or even less the end of community. Sociability is reconstructed as networked individualism and community through a quest for like-minded individuals in a process that combines online interaction with offline interaction, cyberspace and the local space. Individuation is the key process in constituting subjects (individual or collective), networking is the organizational form constructed by these subjects; this is the network society, and the form of sociability is what Rainie and Wellman (2012) conceptualized as networked individualism. Network technologies are of course the medium for this new social structure and this new culture (Papacharissi 2010).

As stated above, academic research has established that the Internet does not isolate people, nor does it reduce their sociability; it actually increases sociability, as shown by myself in my studies in Catalonia (Castells 2007), Rainie and Wellman in the United States (2012), Cardoso in Portugal (2010), and the World Internet Survey for the world at large (Center for the Digital Future 2012 et al.). Furthermore, a major study by Michael Willmott for the British Computer Society (Trajectory Partnership 2010) has shown a positive correlation, for individuals and for countries, between the frequency and intensity of the use of the Internet and the psychological indicators of personal happiness. He used global data for 35,000 people obtained from the World Wide Survey of the University of Michigan from 2005 to 2007. Controlling for other factors, the study showed that Internet use empowers people by increasing their feelings of security, personal freedom, and influence, all feelings that have a positive effect on happiness and personal well-being. The effect is particularly positive for people with lower income and who are less qualified, for people in the developing world, and for women. Age does not affect the positive relationship; it is significant for all ages. Why women? Because they are at the center of the network of their families, Internet helps them to organize their lives. Also, it helps them to overcome their isolation, particularly in patriarchal societies. The Internet also contributes to the rise of the culture of autonomy.

The key for the process of individuation is the construction of autonomy by social actors, who become subjects in the process. They do so by defining their specific projects in interaction with, but not submission to, the institutions of society. This is the case for a minority of individuals, but because of their capacity to lead and mobilize they introduce a new culture in every domain of social life: in work (entrepreneurship), in the media (the active audience), in the Internet (the creative user), in the market (the informed and proactive consumer), in education (students as informed critical thinkers, making possible the new frontier of e-learning and m-learning pedagogy), in health (the patient-centered health management system) in e-government (the informed, participatory citizen), in social movements (cultural change from the grassroots, as in feminism or environmentalism), and in politics (the independent-minded citizen able to participate in self-generated political networks).

There is increasing evidence of the direct relationship between the Internet and the rise of social autonomy. From 2002 to 2007 I directed in Catalonia one of the largest studies ever conducted in Europe on the Internet and society, based on 55,000 interviews, one-third of them face to face (IN3 2002–07). As part of this study, my collaborators and I compared the behavior of Internet users to non-Internet users in a sample of 3,000 people, representative of the population of Catalonia. Because in 2003 only about 40 percent of people were Internet users we could really compare the differences in social behavior for users and non-users, something that nowadays would be more difficult given the 79 percent penetration rate of the Internet in Catalonia. Although the data are relatively old, the findings are not, as more recent studies in other countries (particularly in Portugal) appear to confirm the observed trends. We constructed scales of autonomy in different dimensions. Only between 10 and 20 percent of the population, depending on dimensions, were in the high level of autonomy. But we focused on this active segment of the population to explore the role of the Internet in the construction of autonomy. Using factor analysis we identified six major types of autonomy based on projects of individuals according to their practices:

a) professional development b) communicative autonomy c) entrepreneurship d) autonomy of the body e) sociopolitical participation f) personal, individual autonomy

These six types of autonomous practices were statistically independent among themselves. But each one of them correlated positively with Internet use in statistically significant terms, in a self-reinforcing loop (time sequence): the more one person was autonomous, the more she/he used the web, and the more she/he used the web, the more autonomous she/he became (Castells et al. 2007). This is a major empirical finding. Because if the dominant cultural trend in our society is the search for autonomy, and if the Internet powers this search, then we are moving toward a society of assertive individuals and cultural freedom, regardless of the barriers of rigid social organizations inherited from the Industrial Age. From this Internet-based culture of autonomy have emerged a new kind of sociability, networked sociability, and a new kind of sociopolitical practice, networked social movements and networked democracy. I will now turn to the analysis of these two fundamental trends at the source of current processes of social change worldwide.

The Rise of Social Network Sites on the Internet

Since 2002 (creation of Friendster, prior to Facebook) a new socio-technical revolution has taken place on the Internet: the rise of social network sites where now all human activities are present, from personal interaction to business, to work, to culture, to communication, to social movements, and to politics.

Social Network Sites are web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system.

(Boyd and Ellison 2007, 2)

Social networking uses, in time globally spent, surpassed e-mail in November 2007. It surpassed e-mail in number of users in July 2009. In terms of users it reached 1 billion by September 2010, with Facebook accounting for about half of it. In 2013 it has almost doubled, particularly because of increasing use in China, India, and Latin America. There is indeed a great diversity of social networking sites (SNS) by countries and cultures. Facebook, started for Harvard-only members in 2004, is present in most of the world, but QQ, Cyworld, and Baidu dominate in China; Orkut in Brazil; Mixi in Japan; etc. In terms of demographics, age is the main differential factor in the use of SNS, with a drop of frequency of use after 50 years of age, and particularly 65. But this is not just a teenager’s activity. The main Facebook U.S. category is in the age group 35–44, whose frequency of use of the site is higher than for younger people. Nearly 60 percent of adults in the U.S. have at least one SNS profile, 30 percent two, and 15 percent three or more. Females are as present as males, except when in a society there is a general gender gap. We observe no differences in education and class, but there is some class specialization of SNS, such as Myspace being lower than FB; LinkedIn is for professionals.

Thus, the most important activity on the Internet at this point in time goes through social networking, and SNS have become the chosen platforms for all kind of activities, not just personal friendships or chatting, but for marketing, e-commerce, education, cultural creativity, media and entertainment distribution, health applications, and sociopolitical activism. This is a significant trend for society at large. Let me explore the meaning of this trend on the basis of the still scant evidence.

Social networking sites are constructed by users themselves building on specific criteria of grouping. There is entrepreneurship in the process of creating sites, then people choose according to their interests and projects. Networks are tailored by people themselves with different levels of profiling and privacy. The key to success is not anonymity, but on the contrary, self-presentation of a real person connecting to real people (in some cases people are excluded from the SNS when they fake their identity). So, it is a self-constructed society by networking connecting to other networks. But this is not a virtual society. There is a close connection between virtual networks and networks in life at large. This is a hybrid world, a real world, not a virtual world or a segregated world.

People build networks to be with others, and to be with others they want to be with on the basis of criteria that include those people who they already know (a selected sub-segment). Most users go on the site every day. It is permanent connectivity. If we needed an answer to what happened to sociability in the Internet world, here it is:

There is a dramatic increase in sociability, but a different kind of sociability, facilitated and dynamized by permanent connectivity and social networking on the web.

Based on the time when Facebook was still releasing data (this time is now gone) we know that in 2009 users spent 500 billion minutes per month. This is not just about friendship or interpersonal communication. People do things together, share, act, exactly as in society, although the personal dimension is always there. Thus, in the U.S. 38 percent of adults share content, 21 percent remix, 14 percent blog, and this is growing exponentially, with development of technology, software, and SNS entrepreneurial initiatives. On Facebook, in 2009 the average user was connected to 60 pages, groups, and events, people interacted per month to 160 million objects (pages, groups, events), the average user created 70 pieces of content per month, and there were 25 billion pieces of content shared per month (web links, news stories, blogs posts, notes, photos). SNS are living spaces connecting all dimensions of people’s experience. This transforms culture because people share experience with a low emotional cost, while saving energy and effort. They transcend time and space, yet they produce content, set up links, and connect practices. It is a constantly networked world in every dimension of human experience. They co-evolve in permanent, multiple interaction. But they choose the terms of their co-evolution.

Thus, people live their physical lives but increasingly connect on multiple dimensions in SNS.

Paradoxically, the virtual life is more social than the physical life, now individualized by the organization of work and urban living.

But people do not live a virtual reality, indeed it is a real virtuality, since social practices, sharing, mixing, and living in society is facilitated in the virtuality, in what I called time ago the “space of flows” (Castells 1996).

Because people are increasingly at ease in the multi-textuality and multidimensionality of the web, marketers, work organizations, service agencies, government, and civil society are migrating massively to the Internet, less and less setting up alternative sites, more and more being present in the networks that people construct by themselves and for themselves, with the help of Internet social networking entrepreneurs, some of whom become billionaires in the process, actually selling freedom and the possibility of the autonomous construction of lives. This is the liberating potential of the Internet made material practice by these social networking sites. The largest of these social networking sites are usually bounded social spaces managed by a company. However, if the company tries to impede free communication it may lose many of its users, because the entry barriers in this industry are very low. A couple of technologically savvy youngsters with little capital can set up a site on the Internet and attract escapees from a more restricted Internet space, as happened to AOL and other networking sites of the first generation, and as could happen to Facebook or any other SNS if they are tempted to tinker with the rules of openness (Facebook tried to make users pay and retracted within days). So, SNS are often a business, but they are in the business of selling freedom, free expression, chosen sociability. When they tinker with this promise they risk their hollowing by net citizens migrating with their friends to more friendly virtual lands.

Perhaps the most telling expression of this new freedom is the transformation of sociopolitical practices on the Internet.

Communication Power: Mass-Self Communication and the Transformation of Politics

Power and counterpower, the foundational relationships of society, are constructed in the human mind, through the construction of meaning and the processing of information according to certain sets of values and interests (Castells 2009).

Ideological apparatuses and the mass media have been key tools of mediating communication and asserting power, and still are. But the rise of a new culture, the culture of autonomy, has found in Internet and mobile communication networks a major medium of mass self-communication and self-organization.

The key source for the social production of meaning is the process of socialized communication. I define communication as the process of sharing meaning through the exchange of information. Socialized communication is the one that exists in the public realm, that has the potential of reaching society at large. Therefore, the battle over the human mind is largely played out in the process of socialized communication. And this is particularly so in the network society, the social structure of the Information Age, which is characterized by the pervasiveness of communication networks in a multimodal hypertext.

The ongoing transformation of communication technology in the digital age extends the reach of communication media to all domains of social life in a network that is at the same time global and local, generic and customized, in an ever-changing pattern.

As a result, power relations, that is the relations that constitute the foundation of all societies, as well as the processes challenging institutionalized power relations, are increasingly shaped and decided in the communication field. Meaningful, conscious communication is what makes humans human. Thus, any major transformation in the technology and organization of communication is of utmost relevance for social change. Over the last four decades the advent of the Internet and of wireless communication has shifted the communication process in society at large from mass communication to mass self-communication. This is from a message sent from one to many with little interactivity to a system based on messages from many to many, multimodal, in chosen time, and with interactivity, so that senders are receivers and receivers are senders. And both have access to a multimodal hypertext in the web that constitutes the endlessly changing backbone of communication processes.

The transformation of communication from mass communication to mass self-communication has contributed decisively to alter the process of social change. As power relationships have always been based on the control of communication and information that feed the neural networks constitutive of the human mind, the rise of horizontal networks of communication has created a new landscape of social and political change by the process of disintermediation of the government and corporate controls over communication. This is the power of the network, as social actors build their own networks on the basis of their projects, values, and interests. The outcome of these processes is open ended and dependent on specific contexts. Freedom, in this case freedom of communicate, does not say anything on the uses of freedom in society. This is to be established by scholarly research. But we need to start from this major historical phenomenon: the building of a global communication network based on the Internet, a technology that embodies the culture of freedom that was at its source.

In the first decade of the twenty-first century there have been multiple social movements around the world that have used the Internet as their space of formation and permanent connectivity, among the movements and with society at large. These networked social movements, formed in the social networking sites on the Internet, have mobilized in the urban space and in the institutional space, inducing new forms of social movements that are the main actors of social change in the network society. Networked social movements have been particularly active since 2010, and especially in the Arab revolutions against dictatorships; in Europe and the U.S. as forms of protest against the management of the financial crisis; in Brazil; in Turkey; in Mexico; and in highly diverse institutional contexts and economic conditions. It is precisely the similarity of the movements in extremely different contexts that allows the formulation of the hypothesis that this is the pattern of social movements characteristic of the global network society. In all cases we observe the capacity of these movements for self-organization, without a central leadership, on the basis of a spontaneous emotional movement. In all cases there is a connection between Internet-based communication, mobile networks, and the mass media in different forms, feeding into each other and amplifying the movement locally and globally.

These movements take place in the context of exploitation and oppression, social tensions and social struggles; but struggles that were not able to successfully challenge the state in other instances of revolt are now powered by the tools of mass self-communication. It is not the technology that induces the movements, but without the technology (Internet and wireless communication) social movements would not take the present form of being a challenge to state power. The fact is that technology is material culture (ideas brought into the design) and the Internet materialized the culture of freedom that, as it has been documented, emerged on American campuses in the 1960s. This culture-made technology is at the source of the new wave of social movements that exemplify the depth of the global impact of the Internet in all spheres of social organization, affecting particularly power relationships, the foundation of the institutions of society. (See case studies and an analytical perspective on the interaction between Internet and networked social movements in Castells 2012.)

The Internet, as all technologies, does not produce effects by itself. Yet, it has specific effects in altering the capacity of the communication system to be organized around flows that are interactive, multimodal, asynchronous or synchronous, global or local, and from many to many, from people to people, from people to objects, and from objects to objects, increasingly relying on the semantic web. How these characteristics affect specific systems of social relationships has to be established by research, and this is what I tried to present in this text. What is clear is that without the Internet we would not have seen the large-scale development of networking as the fundamental mechanism of social structuring and social change in every domain of social life. The Internet, the World Wide Web, and a variety of networks increasingly based on wireless platforms constitute the technological infrastructure of the network society, as the electrical grid and the electrical engine were the support system for the form of social organization that we conceptualized as the industrial society. Thus, as a social construction, this technological system is open ended, as the network society is an open-ended form of social organization that conveys the best and the worse in humankind. Yet, the global network society is our society, and the understanding of its logic on the basis of the interaction between culture, organization, and technology in the formation and development of social and technological networks is a key field of research in the twenty-first century.

We can only make progress in our understanding through the cumulative effort of scholarly research. Only then we will be able to cut through the myths surrounding the key technology of our time. A digital communication technology that is already a second skin for young people, yet it continues to feed the fears and the fantasies of those who are still in charge of a society that they barely understand.

These references are in fact sources of more detailed references specific to each one of the topics analyzed in this text.

Abbate, Janet. A Social History of the Internet. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999.

Boyd, Danah M., and Nicole B. Ellison. “Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13, no. 1 (2007).

Cardoso, Gustavo, Angus Cheong, and Jeffrey Cole (eds). World Wide Internet: Changing Societies, Economies and Cultures. Macau: University of Macau Press, 2009.

Castells, Manuel. The Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture. 3 vols. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996–2003.

———. The Internet Galaxy: Reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.

———. Communication Power. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

———. Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2012.

Castells, Manuel, Imma Tubella, Teresa Sancho, and Meritxell Roca.

La transición a la sociedad red. Barcelona: Ariel, 2007.

Hilbert, Martin, and Priscilla López. “The World’s Technological Capacity to Store, Communicate, and Compute Information.” Science 332, no. 6025 (April 1, 2011): pp. 60–65.

Papacharissi, Zizi, ed. The Networked Self: Identity, Community, and Culture on Social Networking Sites. Routledge, 2010.

Rainie. Lee, and Barry Wellman. Networked: The New Social Operating System. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012.

Trajectory Partnership (Michael Willmott and Paul Flatters). The Information Dividend: Why IT Makes You “Happier.” Swindon: British Informatics Society Limited, 2010. http://www.bcs.org/upload/pdf/info-dividend-full-report.pdf

Selected Web References.   Used as sources for analysis in the chapter

Agência para a Sociedade do Conhecimento. “Observatório de Sociedade da Informação e do Conhecimento (OSIC).” http://www.umic.pt/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3026&Itemid=167

BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT. “Features, Press and Policy.” http://www.bcs.org/category/7307

Center for the Digital Future. The World Internet Project International Report. 4th ed. Los Angeles: USC Annenberg School, Center for the Digital Future, 2012. http://www.worldinternetproject.net/_files/_Published/_oldis/770_2012wip_report4th_ed.pdf

ESRC (Economic & Social Research Council). “Papers and Reports.” Virtual Society. http://virtualsociety.sbs.ox.ac.uk/reports.htm

Fundación Orange. “Análisis y Prospectiva: Informe eEspaña.” Fundación Orange. http://fundacionorange.es/fundacionorange/analisisprospectiva.html

Fundación Telefónica. “Informes SI.” Fundación Telefónica. http://sociedadinformacion.fundacion.telefonica.com/DYC/SHI/InformesSI/seccion=1190&idioma=es_ES.do

IN3 (Internet Interdisciplinary Institute). UOC. “Project Internet Catalonia (PIC): An Overview.” Internet Interdisciplinary Institute, 2002–07. http://www.uoc.edu/in3/pic/eng/

International Telecommunication Union. “Annual Reports.” http://www.itu.int/osg/spu/sfo/annual_reports/index.html

Nielsen Company. “Reports.” 2013. http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/reports/2013.html?tag=Category:Media+ and+Entertainment

Oxford Internet Surveys. “Publications.” http://microsites.oii.ox.ac.uk/oxis/publications

Pew Internet & American Life Project. “Social Networking.” Pew Internet. http://www.pewinternet.org/Topics/Activities-and-Pursuits/Social-Networking.aspx?typeFilter=5

Related publications

• How the Internet Has Changed Everyday Life
• How Is the Internet Changing the Way We Work?
• Hyperhistory, the Emergence of the MASs, and the Design of Infraethics

Download Kindle

Download epub, download pdf, more publications related to this article, more about technology, artificial intelligence, digital world, visionaries, comments on this publication.

Morbi facilisis elit non mi lacinia lacinia. Nunc eleifend aliquet ipsum, nec blandit augue tincidunt nec. Donec scelerisque feugiat lectus nec congue. Quisque tristique tortor vitae turpis euismod, vitae aliquam dolor pretium. Donec luctus posuere ex sit amet scelerisque. Etiam sed neque magna. Mauris non scelerisque lectus. Ut rutrum ex porta, tristique mi vitae, volutpat urna.

Sed in semper tellus, eu efficitur ante. Quisque felis orci, fermentum quis arcu nec, elementum malesuada magna. Nulla vitae finibus ipsum. Aenean vel sapien a magna faucibus tristique ac et ligula. Sed auctor orci metus, vitae egestas libero lacinia quis. Nulla lacus sapien, efficitur mollis nisi tempor, gravida tincidunt sapien. In massa dui, varius vitae iaculis a, dignissim non felis. Ut sagittis pulvinar nisi, at tincidunt metus venenatis a. Ut aliquam scelerisque interdum. Mauris iaculis purus in nulla consequat, sed fermentum sapien condimentum. Aliquam rutrum erat lectus, nec placerat nisl mollis id. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.

Nam nisl nisi, efficitur et sem in, molestie vulputate libero. Quisque quis mattis lorem. Nunc quis convallis diam, id tincidunt risus. Donec nisl odio, convallis vel porttitor sit amet, lobortis a ante. Cras dapibus porta nulla, at laoreet quam euismod vitae. Fusce sollicitudin massa magna, eu dignissim magna cursus id. Quisque vel nisl tempus, lobortis nisl a, ornare lacus. Donec ac interdum massa. Curabitur id diam luctus, mollis augue vel, interdum risus. Nam vitae tortor erat. Proin quis tincidunt lorem.

The Internet, Politics and the Politics of Internet Debate

Do you want to stay up to date with our new publications.

Receive the OpenMind newsletter with all the latest contents published on our website

OpenMind Books

• The Search for Alternatives to Fossil Fuels
• View all books

About OpenMind

Connect with us.

• Keep up to date with our newsletter

Quote this content

Home — Essay Samples — Information Science and Technology — Internet — The Advantages of the Internet

The Advantages of The Internet

• Categories: Internet

About this sample

Words: 804 |

Published: Jan 30, 2024

Words: 804 | Pages: 2 | 5 min read

Table of contents

Introduction, personal benefits, educational benefits, societal benefits, counterargument and refutation.

• Access to information: The internet offers a wide range of resources that provide individuals with access to a wealth of information. Research materials, academic papers, journals, and educational videos are readily available and can be accessed without leaving the comfort of one's home.
• Communication opportunities: Instant messaging and video calls have allowed individuals to connect with friends, family, and loved ones worldwide. Social media platforms have also provided new and exciting ways for people to communicate and share with one another.
• Entertainment and leisure options: Streaming services offer a plethora of movies and TV shows at one's convenience. Online gaming has allowed individuals to play and connect with gamers from all around the world, providing an avenue for socialization and entertainment.
• E-Learning and online education: The internet has made education available to anyone with a computer and access to the internet. E-learning has provided an avenue for individuals to gain knowledge and skills, irrespective of geographical barriers.
• Promotes collaborative learning: With online forums and discussion boards, learners can collaborate with others to discuss and share ideas. Virtual classrooms have facilitated group activities and project discussions, providing an avenue for interaction and knowledge sharing.
• Provides equal educational opportunities: The internet has created opportunities for those living in underprivileged areas to access quality education. It has also provided accessibility for disabled individuals who would otherwise be limited in their access to education.
• Economic growth and job opportunities: The internet has created numerous business and job opportunities for individuals, especially in the online space and freelancing. The global market reach has been particularly helpful in expanding businesses beyond geographical barriers.
• Enhanced communication and networking: The internet has facilitated international collaborations and provided an avenue for individuals and organizations to connect. Social media platforms have allowed individuals to create and maintain relationships with others, irrespective of geographical locations.
• Democratization of information: The internet has provided an avenue for citizen journalism and online activism, promoting awareness and participation in societal issues.
• Privacy concerns and cybercrime: The internet has made individuals' personal information vulnerable to hacking, which could lead to identity theft and other cybercrimes.
• Misinformation and fake news: The internet has made it easy for individuals to create and spread misinformation, which could have dire consequences on individuals and society.

References:

• Anderson, C. (2018). Advantages and Disadvantages of the Internet. Toopics. Retrieved from https://toopics.com/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-internet/.
• Greenhow, C., Robelia, B., & Hughes, J. E. (2009). Learning, teaching, and scholarship in a digital age : Web 2.0 and classroom research: What path should we take now?. Educational researcher, 38(4), 246-259.
• Walter, S. G., & Su, F. (2011). E-learning 2.0: Social networking and collaboration in learning and teaching. Journal of educational technology development and exchange, 4(1), 1-14.
• Yang, D., & Chen, C. C. (2018). Play, knowledge, and learning: Gaming cultures and the learning society. Peter Lang.
• Taiwo, A. A., & Downe, A. G. (2013). E-learning in Nigeria: bridging the knowledge divide. Journal of education and practice, 4(8), 94-101.
• Hong, Y. Y., & Chan, K. F. (2019). The role of Internet technology in shaping and facilitating international business growth. Journal of International Business Research and Marketing, 4(4), 60-70.
• Moorthy, K., Kong, H. J., & Thatcher, M. (2017). Globalization, networked society , and cultural software: The emergence of a new social order. Routledge.
• Smith, M. A. (2014). Politics, Democracy and the New Media. Routledge.
• Boyd, D. (2019). Media literacy in the digital age. Routledge.

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Dr Jacklynne

Verified writer

• Expert in: Information Science and Technology

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

2 pages / 714 words

3 pages / 1394 words

4 pages / 2037 words

3 pages / 1474 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Internet

In the 21st century, access to the internet has become an integral part of our daily lives. From education and employment opportunities to accessing vital information and engaging in civic participation, the internet plays a [...]

The excessive use of the internet has become a prevalent concern in today's digital age. The internet, once a revolutionary tool for communication and information, has now transformed into an integral part of our daily lives. [...]

Online streaming platforms have revolutionized the way people consume media and entertainment. With the advent of digital technology, these platforms have become a dominant force in the entertainment industry, offering a wide [...]

The rapid evolution of technology has brought us to an era where free internet access in the world is no longer just a luxury but a necessity. The internet has transformed various aspects of our lives, from communication and [...]

American writer, Nicholas Carr’s article, Is Goggle Making Us Stupid, conceives the idea that the net is changing the way our brains receive information. He tries to convince the reader by provoking fear through anecdotes and [...]

Everyone is unique. We all have our own set of traits, DNA, and fingerprints. Each individual possesses their own unique characteristics, interests, and talents to make up a unique identity. Our identity combines all of these [...]

Related Topics

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Where do you want us to send this sample?

By clicking “Continue”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.

Be careful. This essay is not unique

This essay was donated by a student and is likely to have been used and submitted before

Download this Sample

Free samples may contain mistakes and not unique parts

Sorry, we could not paraphrase this essay. Our professional writers can rewrite it and get you a unique paper.

Please check your inbox.

We can write you a custom essay that will follow your exact instructions and meet the deadlines. Let's fix your grades together!

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free

25,000+ students realised their study abroad dream with us. Take the first step today

Here’s your new year gift, one app for all your, study abroad needs, start your journey, track your progress, grow with the community and so much more.

Verification Code

An OTP has been sent to your registered mobile no. Please verify

Thanks for your comment !

Our team will review it before it's shown to our readers.

Essay on Importance of Internet: Samples for Students

• Updated on  
• Nov 23, 2023

Internet is not just a need or luxury, it has become a household necessity. It was used as a source of entertainment but now it is impossible to work in offices or study without the Internet. When the global pandemic locked everyone in their house, it became an important medium to connect, study and work. Students were able to study without the risk of catching COVID-19 because of the Internet. The importance of the internet is also a common topic in various entrance exams such as SAT , TOEFL , and UPSC . In this blog, you will learn how to write an essay on the importance of the Internet.

Also Read: LNAT Sample Essays

Tips to Write the Perfect Essay on Internet

Now the task of essay writing may not always be easy, hence candidates must always know a few tips to write the perfect essay. Mentioned below are a few tips for writing the correct essay:

• Prepare a basic outline to make sure there is continuity and relevance and no break in the structure of the essay
• Follow a given structure. Begin with an introduction then move on to the body which should be detailed and encapsulate the essence of the topic and finally the conclusion for readers to be able to comprehend the essay in a certain manner
• Students can also try to include solutions in their conclusion to make the essay insightful and lucrative to read.

Also Read: UPSC Essay Topics

Sample 1 of Essay on the Importance of the Internet (100 Words)

The last few years have witnessed heavy reliance on the Internet. This has been because of multiple advantages that it has to offer – for instance, reducing work stress and changing the face of communication most importantly. If we take the current scenario, we cannot ignore how important the Internet is in our everyday lives. It is now indeed a challenging task to visualize a world without the internet. One may define the internet as a large library composed of stuff like – records, pictures, websites, and pieces of information. Another sector in which the internet has an undeniably important role to play is the field of communication. Without access to the internet, the ability to share thoughts and ideas across the globe would have also been just a dream. 

Also Read: IELTS Essay Topics

Sample Essay 2 – Importance of the Internet (150 Words)

With the significant progress in technology, the importance of the internet has only multiplied with time. The dependence on the internet has been because of multiple advantages that it has to offer – for instance, reducing work stress and changing the face of communication most importantly. By employing the correct usage of the internet, we can find various information about the world. The internet hosts Wikipedia, which is considered to be one of the largest best-composed reference books kept up by a vast community of volunteer scholars and editors from all over the world. Through the internet, one may get answers to all their curiosity.

In the education sector too, it plays a major role, especially taking into consideration the pandemic. The Internet during the pandemic provided an easy alternative to replace the traditional education system and offers additional resources for studying, students can take their classes in the comforts of their homes. Through the internet, they can also browse for classes – lectures at no extra cost. The presence of the Internet is slowly replacing the use of traditional newspapers. It offers various recreational advantages as well. It can be correctly said that the internet plays a great role in the enhancement of quality of life.

Also Read: TOEFL Sample Essays

Sample Essay 3 on Use of Internet for Student (300 Words)

One may correctly define the 21st century as the age of science and technology. However, this has been possible not only by the efforts of the current generation but also by the previous generation. The result of one such advancement in the field of science and technology is the Internet. What is the Internet? So the internet can be called a connected group of networks that enable electronic communication. It is considered to be the world’s largest communication connecting millions of users.

The dependence on the internet has been because of multiple advantages that it has to offer – for instance, reducing work stress and changing the face of communication most importantly. Given the current scenario, the Internet has become a massive part of our daily lives, and it is now a challenging task to imagine the world without the Internet. The importance of the Internet in the field of communication definitely cannot be ignored.

Without access to the internet, the ability to share thoughts and ideas across the globe would have been just a dream. Today we can talk to people all over the globe only because of services like email, messenger, etc that are heavily reliant on the internet. Without the internet, it would be hard to imagine how large the world would be. The advent of the internet has made the task of building global friendships very easy.

The youth is mainly attracted by entertainment services. Streaming platforms like Amazon , Netflix, and YouTube have also gained immense popularity among internet users over the past few years. The presence of the Internet is slowly replacing the use of traditional newspapers among people too. 

In addition to these, it has various recreational advantages to offer as well. For instance, people can search for fun videos to watch and play games online with friends and other people all over the globe. Hence, we can say the internet holds immense importance in today’s era. Internet technology has indeed changed the dynamics of how we communicate, respond or entertain ourselves. Its importance in everyday life is never-ending. It can be correctly said that the internet plays a great role in the enhancement of quality of life. In the future too, we will see further changes in technology .

Also Read: SAT to Drop Optional Essays and Subject Tests from the Exam

Related Articles

The internet provides us with facts and data, as well as information and knowledge, to aid in our personal, social, and economic development. The internet has various applications; nevertheless, how we utilize it in our daily lives is determined by our particular needs and ambitions.

Here are five uses of the internet: email; sharing of files; watching movies and listening to songs; research purposes; and education.

The Internet has also altered our interactions with our families, friends, and life partners. Everyone is now connected to everyone else in a more simplified, accessible, and immediate manner; we can conduct part of our personal relationships using our laptops, smartphones, and tablets.

This was all about an essay on importance of Internet. The skill of writing an essay comes in handy when appearing for standardized language tests. Thinking of taking one soon? Leverage Live provides the best online test prep for the same. Register today to know more!

Nikita Puri

Nikita is a creative writer and editor, who is always ready to learn new skills. She has great knowledge about study abroad universities, researching and writing blogs about them. Being a perfectionist, she has a habit of keeping her tasks complete on time before the OCD hits her. When Nikita is not busy working, you can find her eating while binge-watching The office. Also, she breathes music. She has done her bachelor's from Delhi University and her master's from Jamia Millia Islamia.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Contact no. *

Thank you! Watch our space for more informative blogs!

Thank you very much ! This helped me to write about internet .

Leaving already?

8 Universities with higher ROI than IITs and IIMs

Grab this one-time opportunity to download this ebook

Connect With Us

25,000+ students realised their study abroad dream with us. take the first step today..

Resend OTP in

Need help with?

Study abroad.

UK, Canada, US & More

IELTS, GRE, GMAT & More

Scholarship, Loans & Forex

Country Preference

New Zealand

Which English test are you planning to take?

Which academic test are you planning to take.

Not Sure yet

When are you planning to take the exam?

Already booked my exam slot

Within 2 Months

Want to learn about the test

Which Degree do you wish to pursue?

When do you want to start studying abroad.

September 2024

January 2025

What is your budget to study abroad?

How would you describe this article ?

Please rate this article

We would like to hear more.

Essay on Uses of Internet for Students and Children

500 words essay on uses of internet.

The Internet has become a sensation nowadays. It is something that humans cannot function without anymore. It has occupied a great part of our lives. We use the internet for almost every little and a big task now. It ranges from searching for a job to listening to music.

The Internet has basically made our lives easier and convenient. The world is at our fingertips now, thanks to the internet. When we see how it has changed the scenario of the modern world, we can’t help but notice its importance. It is used in all spheres of life now.

Internet and Communication

The world has become smaller because of the internet. Now we can communicate with our loved ones oceans away. The days of letter writing are gone where we had to wait for weeks to get a reply. Everything is instant now. Even though telephones allowed us to do that, but the cost was too high. The common man could not afford to call people overseas because of the costs.

However, the internet changed that. Communicating with people both near and far is now easy and affordable. We can send them emails and chat with them through instant messaging apps. We may also video call them using the internet which allows us to see them clearly even though we are miles away.

Furthermore, we can now get instant news updates from all over the world. The moment anything takes place anywhere in the world, we get to know about it. In addition, we are informed about the natural calamities within the correct time. Moreover, we can easily contact our job recruiters using the internet. Job application has been made so much easier through the internet.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Internet and Entertainment

Entertainment and the Internet go hand in hand now. Everything is at your fingertips to enjoy. You can book movie tickets easily on the internet. Gone are the days of waiting in long queues to get the ticket for the latest movie. It can all be done through the comfort of your home. Similarly, you can also book match tickets and concert tickets without going through the hassle of standing in long lines.

In addition, we can now do all our shopping online. You won’t have to go out in the harsh weather to shop for stuff. The Internet allows you to browse through a large assortment of products with all the details given. It ranges from something as small as a mug to a laptop, you can have it all. Furthermore, you may also filter the categories to find exactly what you are looking for within seconds.

Nowadays, web series are quite a hit amongst the youth. They do not watch TV anymore; rather they enjoy the web series. Various platforms have created shows which they release on the internet that has a major fan following. You can get your daily dose of entertainment from the internet now. Whether you want to hear the latest music, you don’t have to spend a hefty amount to buy the CD. You can simply listen to it on the internet.

Thus, we see how the internet has changed and made our lives easy in various ways. We can connect with our loved ones easily and get access to unlimited entertainment instantly.

FAQs on Uses of Internet

Q.1 How does the internet help in communicating?

A.1 We can now communicate with our loved ones using the internet. We can video call them and connect with our relatives living overseas.

Q.2 What does internet offer in terms of entertainment?

A.2 Internet offers us various modes of entertainment. We can watch movies and shows online. We can also book tickets and shop for products online.

Customize your course in 30 seconds

Which class are you in.

• Travelling Essay
• Picnic Essay
• Our Country Essay
• My Parents Essay
• Essay on Favourite Personality
• Essay on Memorable Day of My Life
• Essay on Knowledge is Power
• Essay on Gurpurab
• Essay on My Favourite Season
• Essay on Types of Sports

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Download the App

Talk to our experts

1800-120-456-456

• Internet Essay

Essay on Internet

Introduction.

The Internet is a system of interconnection of computer networks that link several billion devices worldwide. It is a global network of networks that consists of millions of non-public, public, academic, business and government packet-switched networks, joined by a broad array of electronic, wireless and optical networking technologies. The Internet carries an intensive variety of information resources and services, like applications of the world wide web (www), the infrastructure to support email, peer-to-peer networks for file sharing and telephony. It has become an important part of our life and we cannot live without it. The Internet can be called the discovery of man that has revolutionized his style of working and living.

The Internet was started as the creation of a small band of dedicated researchers and has grown to be a commercial success with billions of dollars of annual investments. It has completely reduced distance, minimized all limitations and made our world relatively a smaller place. The Internet has brought information to our doorstep at the click of a button. The Internet revolutionized the computer and world of communication like never before.

Advantages of Internet

The Internet is replete with countless advantages. It has made possible man’s access to countless websites, information programs, scientific discoveries, global political, social, economic and cultural developments and happenings, libraries, entertainment and much more. 

The Internet boom in India has become one of the major contributors to the economic growth of the country. It has revolutionized the metros, the towns and the villages. The Internet has contributed massively to the employment sector across the country. The need for professionals has increased who would feed the information into the web. Content writing and management, web page designing, Internet advertisements have become booming sectors within the IT industry.

In the education field, learners can coordinate projects with classrooms all over the globe. Students across the globe do research works online and all information related to research is accessible on the web at the touch of a button. Not only for the students, but the Internet has also become an incredible tool for job seekers. 

The Internet is being used for finding people, places or information on any subject. One can use the directory services to search phone books of any country together with zip codes. People are connecting with friends and families by exchanging emails to facilitate letter-writing, keeping down the cost of phone calls.

In the field of travel, cities, towns, states and countries are using the web to post detailed tourist and event information. Travelers can easily find information on weather, maps, timings for events and transportation schedules and buy tickets to various tourists’ spots.

Today the Internet is used for shopping, paying utility bills, credit card bills, admission fees, E-commerce, online banking facility. In the world of marketing and sales, companies are marketing and selling their products and creating brands over the net. 

Patients and doctors keep up-to-date with the latest medical findings, share treatment information and give one another support in medical problems. 

Furthermore, people are also finding partners through matchmaking sites. 

Today, people are doing financial research; trading like buying and selling stock and investing money. 

However, the Internet has some setbacks too, which is a threat to the entire mankind. People, especially youngsters are getting addicted to the Internet and thus causing problems to their health. It is making this generation lazy. Internet hackers are on the rise, creating nuisance in the world of business and communication. There are a lot of thefts, frauds and unscrupulous businesses cropping up that are taking undue advantage of innocent people. Anti-social elements of society and cybercrime are also using the Internet against humanity. 

Internet is a great tool that man has discovered but its wrong use and negative impact must be minimized.

FAQs on Internet Essay

1. What is the Internet?

The Internet is a computerized network of information. It is a system of interconnection of computer networks that link several billions of devices. The global system of interconnected computer networks, popularly known as, the internet brings the internet protocol suite, that is, TCP/IP into use to communicate between networks and devices. This network consists of private, academic, public, government and business networks that range from local scope to global scope linked by technologies including wireless, electronic and optical networking. There is a broad range of information resources and services on the internet. These resources include the world wide web (www), telephony, electronic mails, file sharing, and interlinked hypertext documents.

2. What are the Advantages of the Internet?

The Internet has brought information to our doorstep. It has made possible man’s access to countless websites, information programs, scientific discoveries, global political, social, economic and cultural developments and happenings, libraries, entertainment and much more. The spread of the internet across the globe has increased connectivity, communication, and sharing between people. With the accessibility of all kinds of languages, the internet has now become a hub of information, knowledge, and learning for people of all ages and all backgrounds. Internets also now act as an address book as they provide the contact information of people through social networking websites. The Internet has now also become a platform for selling all kinds of items and making money through it without much investment. Therefore, the internet facilitates business opportunities for many people. The Internet is now also used for entertainment purposes, banking, payment of bills, shopping, donations and funds, cloud computing, and cloud storage. In recent times, we have also seen how the internet has made work from home, collaboration, and access to the global workforce an easy possibility.

3. What are the Disadvantages of the Internet?

Some of the disadvantages of the Internet: people especially, the youngsters are getting highly addicted to the Internet. There are a lot of thefts, fraudulent activities and unscrupulous business happening, which have become a threat to humankind. The main disadvantages of the widespread use of the internet are:

The Internet is an addiction that causes distraction, affects focus and patience, and wastes the time of students when not used for the right purposes.

Bullying, trolling and stalking have now become a common task for people due to the Internet.

The Internet has also increased the crime rates in the country.

There are a lot of spam emails and advertisements that flourish throughout the internet.

Internet is also now made a tool for pornography and violent images.

With the internet, now everyone is connected to their work every time. There is no holiday or family time left now.

Internets have also made identity thefts, hacking, and cheating possible.

It is also a proven fact that since people spend the majority of their time sitting over the internet, it has greatly increased health issues and obesity in people.

People most often end up buying things that they don't need because of exchange policy and net banking.

The Internet is surely not a safe place for children to spend their time.

4. How has the Internet Become a Boon to India?

The Internet in India has made revolutionary changes in the metros, small towns and villages. It has created a plethora of job opportunities. The rise in the use of the Internet has led to the growth of cyber cities, cyber cafes and Internet parlors across the country. The main advantages of the widespread use of the internet are:

The Internet has made connectivity, communication, and sharing of documents and related data very easy.

The Internet is a library of information, knowledge, and learning for people of all ages and from all fields.

The Internet has facilitated online shopping, thereby giving business opportunities to many entrepreneurs.

Apart from business, there are various jobs available over the internet.

With the advent of net banking and mobile banking, the internet has made banking-related jobs easy.

The Internet has now become one of the biggest sources of entertainment with thousands of web series, movies, and shows.

The widespread use of the internet has made work from home job opportunities possible and easy.

It has also grown possibilities of collaboration and access to a global workforce for businesses.

Cloud computing and cloud storage facilities have increased access to data across multiple devices. 

5. How has the Internet made our life easier and convenient?

The widespread usage of the internet in all corners of the world has made our lives more convenient as compared to the times when there was no internet. Earlier, people used to stand in long queues for any of their work whether it was to send letters to their loved ones, book movie tickets, train tickets, flight tickets, or for bank-related work like withdrawing money and depositing money. Now, all this work can be done over the internet without the need to stand in queues and wait. Emails and chat applications have completely stopped the trend of sending letters. Booking tickets for any purpose is now easily done from the comfort of home using a mobile phone or laptop. Also, net banking and phone banking services have minimized the need for a person to go to the bank for any purpose. Surely, the internet has made lives much easier than they otherwise were.

The Invention of Internet Essay

Introduction and thesis statement, events that led to the advancement of the internet, effects of advancement of the internet, evolution if the advancement the internet.

Internet is a communication tool that has enabled the entire world to become like a village. This is because with internet people from all corners of the world can reach each other in less than a minute. Internet was invented, and it required people to have computers to get its access.

With internet, people who work or study abroad can talk to their family members almost anytime. This is due to low cost of making telephone calls through the internet (Abbate, 2000). In fact, internet has saved a lot of resources for both individuals and governments.

This is due to the ease of sending and receiving information from their accomplices or business partners from all over the world. For instance, governments used to spend a lot of money in air tickets as their officials went around the world looking for potential business or development partners. Invention of the internet has made work easy because ministry officials can make deals over internet enabled calls. In addition, today one is able to make video calls with the aid of various internet applications.

This means that the internet is an essential communication tool that has transformed the whole world in terms of accessibility (Aspray, 2008). Development in the internet is continuously advancing as several mobile gadgets have been developed to enable more people to access internet. This ranges from the use of laptops which are portable computers to hand devices such as mobile phones.

Several events led to the advancement of the internet in the world today. All these events revolve around the fact that everyone wanted easy and cheap modes of communication. As the world developed and people started migrating from their homes to other countries and continents in the world, they needed to communicate with people back at home.

Therefore, this led to the advancement in the internet to enable them to communicate effectively with people back at their homes. In addition, the development of the digital world played a crucial role in development and advancement, in internet.

This means that due to the creation of digital images and other effects that could be translated electronically; it was vital to advance internet. This was vital because people required sending and receiving photos and other data through the internet. Many countries in the world came up with strategies of ensuring that computer applications studies are compulsory in their public and private institutions (Hewson, 2002).

The level of computer literacy in the world played a leading role in the advancement of internet as teachers and students wanted to get the information online. In fact, it is easier to get information from internet compared to going through books in the library. This is due to the simple nature of data searching through the search engines in the internet. Internet was advanced to enable professionals to consult on their work from wherever they are in the world without necessarily travelling to hold physical meetings.

Internet has enabled the world to become small in the sense that regardless the distance between people, they can close business transactions effectively. This is because business partners may meet and transact their business in the virtual world through the internet.

For instance, social networks, which are supported by the internet, have created a global scenario where people can mingle and make friends. In fact, strangers are meeting through internet, and if they have common activities they may extend them to their benefits. In addition, people abroad have been able to communicate with their family members and friends without incurring a lot of costs.

Internet has enabled people to shop from anywhere in the world by visiting desired websites. This has happened especially in the motor vehicle business where a consumer accesses motor dealers through the search machines. The customer is able to see various motor vehicles available in the dealers’ yards.

All information regarding vehicles is made available on the internet and upon making the desired choice, negotiations start (Misa, 2011). This maybe in the form of electronic mails, internet enabled phone calls or live chats. When they agree on terms of purchase and shipping the vehicle to customer’s location, payment is done through internet payment systems.

Then the vehicle is shipped to the customer who throughout the process keeps in touch with the dealers through internet. Internet has enhanced learning in universities and other learning institutions by providing easy means of accessing information. In fact, there is a variety of information available in the internet hence allowing students to have access to a lot of knowledge.

Everything that has advantages may be accompanied by several disadvantages. Internet has many advantages, but it also has a dark side of its advancement. There has been cases of internet crimes where people have lost their property and lives to internet friends. This happens where one discloses their information to strangers who purport to be looking for business accomplices (Weber, 2004).

After they get all the necessary information, they get access to bank accounts draining all the money to their accounts. Many people in the world have committed suicide after losing their long saved fortunes to internet conmen. Internet has negatively impacted social lives where young people have been exposed to pornographic materials. These materials have corrupted minds of youths hence causing them to engage in irresponsible sexual behaviors.

As a result, it has led to spread of sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV/AID among young people. Internet has contributed to increased rate of piracy hence affecting artists (Morozov, 2011). This happens because upon the release of their music and other electronic works of art people send them to the internet making it easy for others to download. This affects their profitability as majority of people who get access to the works of art pay almost nothing.

In addition, people have lost their lives by meeting bandits from the internet. This is where people start up relationships on the internet and upon meeting they may disagree on some things. This might lead to physical confrontation or even to loss of lives in some cases. Therefore, internet users should be careful whenever planning to meet or transact any business with strangers.

Internet has transformed lives of many people in the world today as they can access any information with only a click of a mouse. This means that information sources have been made readily available in the world today. Transacting business with people abroad has become easy with the development of electronic payment systems which are aided by the internet.

People can send pictures and other information through the internet to their loved ones and friends. On the other hand, internet should be used wisely to reduce the rates of social crimes. People have lost their lives and property though internet deals, therefore, caution must be taken to prevent such actions.

Abbate, J. (2000). Inventing the Internet . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Aspray, W. C. (2008). Internet and American Business . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Hewson, C. Y. (2002). Internet Research Methods: A Practical Guide for the Social and Behavioral Sciences. London, GBR: SAGE Publicatins Inc. (US).

Misa, T. J. (2011). Leonardo to the Internet: Technology and Culture from the Renaissance to the Present . London: JHU Press.

Morozov, E. (2011). The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom. PublicAffairs. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Weber, R. (2004). Computers Then and Now . Michigan: Compass Point Books.

• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2023, November 1). The Invention of Internet. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-invention-of-internet/

"The Invention of Internet." IvyPanda , 1 Nov. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/the-invention-of-internet/.

IvyPanda . (2023) 'The Invention of Internet'. 1 November.

IvyPanda . 2023. "The Invention of Internet." November 1, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-invention-of-internet/.

1. IvyPanda . "The Invention of Internet." November 1, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-invention-of-internet/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "The Invention of Internet." November 1, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-invention-of-internet/.

• AGRICOMP: Challenges Facing Dealers
• Two Inventions Comarison: Telephone and Internet
• Why Studying Abroad Results in Better Education
• “Lost in Translation”: Interpersonal Communication Between Strangers and Complete Strangers
• Studying Abroad as a Chance to Employed
• Computers: The History of Invention and Development
• A Sociological Essay “The Stranger” by Georg Simmel
• The Flute Advancement and Its Invention
• Technology in the 20th Century
• Technological Advancement: Automatic Vehicles
• Utilitarianism Theory Application in Duelling Dilemma
• Ethical Case: Facebook Gossip or Cyberbullying?
• Web Privacy - Reliance on Internet
• Internet Censorship in Saudi Arabia
• Benefits of the Internet

The Internet Has Made Health Anxiety Worse Than Ever

“Don’t google your cancer,” the oncology nurse said to me as she drew my blood ahead of my first round of chemotherapy. It was 2006 and I was 17 years old. I was very confused by the emphasis she put on this advice. Still, I took the print-out of “safe” web addresses she gave me home and pinned it on the noticeboard in the kitchen, where it stayed, ignored, as I slowly progressed through six months of cancer treatment.

I was confused because the opportunities for me to use the internet to research my recent diagnosis of Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, a kind of blood cancer, were minimal anyway. I didn’t own a smartphone or a laptop and my only access to the internet was in communal spaces: at school or via my family’s shared computer with its dial-up connection. The notion that I could use these public facilities to explore something as intensely private as my cancer didn’t even register as a possibility for me.

Read More: The Unique Hell of Getting Cancer as a Young Adult

Everything changed a year later when I learned that the treatment had not been effective and the cancer was back. Or it had never gone away in the first place, it was hard to tell. Standing petrified in my college dorm room, I found the lump in my neck myself and its malignant properties were quickly confirmed by scans and tests. The chance of this happening, I was told by my doctors, was less than 5%. I had been “unlucky.”

Now, I was no longer a regularly supervised schoolgirl and I owned my own computer. I was free to look up symptoms and side effects and death rates as much as I liked. The medical professionals were doing their best with my case, but naturally they couldn’t give me absolute certainty about what was going to happen. Desperately craving some concrete information about my future, I kept searching and searching until I literally scared myself sick. I would have to snap the laptop shut and lie down until this internet-induced nausea passed, worn out from a rigorous schedule of in-patient treatments and college classes.

With hindsight, I can now recognize this as an early sign of the hypochondria that would become such a feature of my life in my 20s The popular conception of hypochondria, or health anxiety as it is often termed in the modern medical lexicon, is that it is rooted in ignorance. Unable to know the full scientific story about this suspected lump or that twinge of pain either because of a lack of access to healthcare or fear of what a doctor might say, the anxious brain writes in a narrative to explain it—usually one that involves the worst possible scenario and a terminal illness.

This idea of the hypochondriac’s ignorance being “cured” with knowledge is a very old one. As I delved deeper into the fascinating yet convoluted history of this condition with my own searches, I became preoccupied with the so-called “glass men”   of the middle ages, who experienced something called the glass delusion. Widely documented across Europe, these sufferers believed they were partly or wholly made of glass rather than human flesh, and the obsession with their fragile and breakable nature could come to dominate their whole life.

The 14th century French King Charles VI was a notable sufferer and in 1613 Cervantes published a whole novella about a “glass graduate” who experienced this. The treatment was simple: the “glass man” must be made to understand that he was not, in fact, made of glass. This was usually done by beating or squeezing him soundly until he acknowledged that he had not shattered into fragments. This proof, this extra knowledge of his resilience, would then cure him of the delusion.

But if hypochondria were truly cured by knowledge, advances in medicine would have made it a thing of the past. Yet anxiety disorders , including health anxiety, continue to be prevalent in countries with the most advanced healthcare systems. Hypochondria evolves and changes to keep pace with scientific knowledge. Where once people feared that they were made of glass or that an excess of black bile was making them melancholy, now they worry that they have brain tumours or long COVID-19. At every stage of medical progress, hypochondria is right there with us.

Read More: How to Tell If Your Health Concerns Are Normal—Or a Sign of Something More

Indeed, research shows that the prevalence of health anxiety is increasing among those who attend medical clinics—suggesting that more contact with medical knowledge is making our fears worse, rather than ridding us of them. This has been partly attributed to the rise of “cyberchondria,” in which anxieties about health escalate as a result of information found online. First used in the early 2000s, this word describes the pattern of excessive internet searching that I fell into after my cancer was declared cured, when my every twinge and sniff seemed to me to be a sign that the tumours were back.

I rationalized this behavior, as I think a lot of people with pre-existing conditions do, as simply being responsible or cautious about my health. Having already found a tumour once when my disease was supposed to be cured, I was hypervigilant against it happening again. Googling my every symptom and falling down a never-ending rabbit hole of research papers, online forums and wellness podcasts was just me being a good patient, I would tell myself.

It wasn’t excessive because I had such a complicated medical history. Doctors had told me to “keep an eye out” for possible symptoms and that was all I was doing. It took a lot of therapy and self-examination for me to realise that all of this extra information wasn’t affecting my medical outcomes positively at all: if anything, it was making me feel worse, not better.

Even with this awareness, it can be difficult to escape the clutches of cyberchondria. At times, it feels as though the whole internet is designed to magnify my fears. Typing “does headache mean…” into Google gives me, among others, the suggestions “miscarriage”, “concussion” and “brain tumour”, which are all rather more serious issues than the far more common and likely causes of “dehydration”, “stressed about work” and “lack of fresh air”.

The “escalation” mechanism that experts have identified as a tool in online political radicalisation operates in this field too. Just typing what feels like a mundane health query into a search engine can be the first step in a journey that leads to disinformation, self-diagnosis, and severe anxiety. Worse, there is evidence that the so-called “worried well”, with their health anxiety and their cyberchondria, can be up to 70% more likely to develop cardiac problems. All this worrying can make the worst happen, it would seem.

Knowing what I do now, I have immense respect for the foresight of my oncology nurse back in 2006. She said then that googling my cancer was a bad idea, and she was right, even though the true power of cyberchondria had not yet been unleashed by our constantly-online existence. The list of approved resources she gave me that day included only my healthcare provider’s website, a patient’s guide published by a cancer charity, a couple of online medical dictionaries and some academic publishers. This is what I restrict myself to today, even though sometimes my fingertips tingle with the desire to search more widely. I could click, and click, and click, until I am sick forever.

More Must-Reads From TIME

• The 100 Most Influential People of 2024
• Coco Gauff Is Playing for Herself Now
• Scenes From Pro-Palestinian Encampments Across U.S. Universities
• 6 Compliments That Land Every Time
• If You're Dating Right Now , You're Brave: Column
• The AI That Could Heal a Divided Internet
• Fallout Is a Brilliant Model for the Future of Video Game Adaptations
• Want Weekly Recs on What to Watch, Read, and More? Sign Up for Worth Your Time

Contact us at [email protected]

• General Reading
• Academic Reading
• IELTS Writing Task 2
• IELTS Writing Task 1

Essay#64 | The Internet

Ielts writing tip.

It is particularly important in IELTS writing task 2 to display clear thinking and organization. You should go through the processes you have been practising, taking notes and organizing your writing but in addition you should remember to:

• have a clear  introduction  telling the reader briefly what areas you are going to cover;
• make it clear  which side  of an argument you are presenting (use clear linking expressions such as ‘On the one hand … On the other hand’) and make sure you do not mix two sides of an argument in the same paragraph;
• give  examples  clearly (choose good examples which illustrate your argument when you take notes, and when you write introduce them with phrases such as ‘We can see an example of this … ’);
• make it clear when you are giving your  own opinion  (use expressions such as ‘in my view … ’);
• give a clear  conclusion  which relates your argument back to the original question/s and summarises your opinion

You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.

Write about the following topic:

It is generally believed that the Internet is an excellent means of communication but some people suggest that it may not be the best place to find information.

Discuss both these views and give your own opinion.

Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.

Write at least 250 words.

Model answer.

Using the Internet has become a normal part of everyday life for many people. They use it to book airline tickets, or to access news about world events, or to follow the fortunes of their favorite football club. Millions of people across the world belong to social networking groups where they keep in touch with their friends and if they live away from them, their family. In my opinion, these are all good ways to use the Internet.

When it comes to finding out information there are some very good sites where it is possible to check, for example, someone’s biographical details or statistics about global warming. However, information from the Internet should be used with caution, because although there are many reliable sites, such as academic journals and well-known newspapers, there are also unreliable ones, so it is important to check where the information originates from before using it.

Some students use websites that offer ready-made assignments. This is not a good idea, even if you ignore the fact that it is cheating, because such websites may contain factual errors or biased views. In a recent case, a student found herself in serious trouble when she submitted an essay from one of these sites only to discover that it was about Austria, not Australia, but had an error in the title.

Nevertheless, it is nowadays possible for people all over the world to study or do business on an equal footing, in a way that was unimaginable only a few years ago. On the whole, I believe that the Internet is an excellent way both to communicate and to find information, as long as it is used intelligently.

(278 words)

• Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window)

You May Like this

Table#8 | Worldwide Market Share of the Notebook Computer

The table below shows the worldwide market share of the notebook computer market for manufacturers in the years 2006 and 2007.

Table#7 | Teacher Training Qualifications

The table below shows the number of students living in the UK gaining English language teacher training qualifications in 2007/8 and 2008/9, and the proportion of male qualifiers.

For millions of Americans, high-speed internet is unavailable or unaffordable − a telecommunications expert explains how to bring broadband to the places that need it the most

Pioneers Chair in Telecommunications & Professor of Telecommunications, Penn State

Disclosure statement

Christopher Ali does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Penn State provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation US.

View all partners

Millions of Americans still don’t have access to high-speed internet . Christopher Ali , a professor of telecommunications at Penn State University, discusses who lacks access to broadband and how the federal government – with a US$65 billion commitment – is trying to bring more people online.

The Conversation has collaborated with SciLine to bring you highlights from the discussion that have been edited for brevity and clarity.

What is broadband internet?

Christopher Ali: Broadband internet, often just called broadband, is the technical term for high-speed internet connectivity .

The Federal Communications Commission , which is in charge of setting an official definition for broadband in the country, defines broadband as an always-on internet connection of 100 megabits-per-second download and 20 megabits-per-second upload .

But what high-speed internet fundamentally means to Americans is do we have the connectivity necessary to go about our digital lives. Can we stream Netflix? Can we go on Zoom? Can we file our taxes? Can we do our homework? Can we do our jobs? Can we game?

What can you tell us about disparities in broadband access?

Christopher Ali: One of the really frustrating things is, despite millions – tens of millions – of dollars spent on broadband mapping, we are still unsure of who is underconnected throughout the country.

Right now, the FCC reports that 7.2 million people lack access , but the commission numbers have been historically suspect. As a result, there are no doubt many more who are unserved and undercounted. In fact, the FCC repeatedly receives challenges to its broadband map.

Back in 2021, for instance, when the FCC reported that about 14 million people lacked internet access, an independent review found that 42 million people lacked access . That’s a huge discrepancy.

But one thing is certain: Broadband deserts are most often found in rural, remote and Indigenous areas .

It’s also clear that cost is part of the issue. Here in the U.S., we pay a tremendous amount of money – the most for internet access monthly than almost any other country in the developed world .

A program called the Affordable Connectivity Program subsidizes broadband for low-income families, and 50 million families across the country are eligible.

What benefits does broadband access provide?

Christopher Ali: Broadband access can aid with economic development . It can be a game changer when it comes to telehealth, especially for rural, remote and Indigenous communities , which often don’t have enough doctors and nurses. With telehealth, you can suddenly connect with a health care professional.

It aids in education. Some studies have found that access to broadband can impact grades and SAT scores , although there is disagreement about this . But the opportunities for students with broadband are undeniable – like applying online for college and student aid.

It contributes to civic engagement , allowing voters to contact local officials online. It impacts public safety , both in terms of our own safety as members of the public but also by allowing first responders to communicate online with their dispatch.

Broadband also helps sometimes with cultural enrichment, and we see this a lot with Indigenous communities , which can stream cultural and traditional events.

And it improves quality of life. Everyone enjoys being able to FaceTime with family and friends and go shopping online. These things were particularly essential during the COVID-19 pandemic .

The Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment Program, passed as part of the 2023 infrastructure bill, allocates $42 billion in federal funds to expand broadband infrastructure. How can communities maximize its impact?

Christopher Ali: The money from the BEAD program is going to be managed by the states and not by the federal government. Each state receives a chunk of money, depending on the number of people who are unconnected. Texas, with more than 1 million unserved or underserved locations , will get $3.3 billion, the most of any state. Pennsylvania will get about $1.2 billion.

What states have done a particularly good job expanding broadband access?

Christopher Ali: Minnesota has done some amazing work over the past decade . As I discuss in my book “ Farm Fresh Broadband: The Politics of Rural Connectivity ,” Minnesota was one of the earliest states to create a broadband grant program – the Border-to-Border program – and has set really ambitious targets. Back in 2016, for instance, the state set up a goal of universal coverage at 100Mbps/20Mbps by 2026 .

Another state is Virginia, which really got a wake-up call during the pandemic, and it mobilized a lot of the federal money that came down the pipes to empower counties, cooperatives and local ISPs .

Vermont has done something called communication union districts . They’ve allowed communities to come together to use public funding to deploy broadband networks.

Public networks are going to be a game changer because they empower communities to connect themselves and direct their own digital futures – either with municipally funded networks, or cooperatives, or some sort of public-private partnerships.

Watch the full interview to hear more.

SciLine is a free service based at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a nonprofit that helps journalists include scientific evidence and experts in their news stories.

• Digital divide
• Rural broadband

Project Offier - Diversity & Inclusion

Senior Lecturer - Earth System Science

Sydney Horizon Educators (Identified)

Deputy Social Media Producer

Associate Professor, Occupational Therapy

Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World

Read our research on:

Full Topic List

Regions & Countries

• Publications
• Our Methods
• Short Reads
• Tools & Resources

Read Our Research On:

About 1 in 5 U.S. teens who’ve heard of ChatGPT have used it for schoolwork

Roughly one-in-five teenagers who have heard of ChatGPT say they have used it to help them do their schoolwork, according to a new Pew Research Center survey of U.S. teens ages 13 to 17. With a majority of teens having heard of ChatGPT, that amounts to 13% of all U.S. teens who have used the generative artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot in their schoolwork.

Teens in higher grade levels are particularly likely to have used the chatbot to help them with schoolwork. About one-quarter of 11th and 12th graders who have heard of ChatGPT say they have done this. This share drops to 17% among 9th and 10th graders and 12% among 7th and 8th graders.

There is no significant difference between teen boys and girls who have used ChatGPT in this way.

The introduction of ChatGPT last year has led to much discussion about its role in schools , especially whether schools should integrate the new technology into the classroom or ban it .

Pew Research Center conducted this analysis to understand American teens’ use and understanding of ChatGPT in the school setting.

The Center conducted an online survey of 1,453 U.S. teens from Sept. 26 to Oct. 23, 2023, via Ipsos. Ipsos recruited the teens via their parents, who were part of its KnowledgePanel . The KnowledgePanel is a probability-based web panel recruited primarily through national, random sampling of residential addresses. The survey was weighted to be representative of U.S. teens ages 13 to 17 who live with their parents by age, gender, race and ethnicity, household income, and other categories.

This research was reviewed and approved by an external institutional review board (IRB), Advarra, an independent committee of experts specializing in helping to protect the rights of research participants.

Here are the  questions used for this analysis , along with responses, and its  methodology .

Teens’ awareness of ChatGPT

Overall, two-thirds of U.S. teens say they have heard of ChatGPT, including 23% who have heard a lot about it. But awareness varies by race and ethnicity, as well as by household income:

• 72% of White teens say they’ve heard at least a little about ChatGPT, compared with 63% of Hispanic teens and 56% of Black teens.
• 75% of teens living in households that make $75,000 or more annually have heard of ChatGPT. Much smaller shares in households with incomes between $30,000 and $74,999 (58%) and less than $30,000 (41%) say the same.

Teens who are more aware of ChatGPT are more likely to use it for schoolwork. Roughly a third of teens who have heard a lot about ChatGPT (36%) have used it for schoolwork, far higher than the 10% among those who have heard a little about it.

When do teens think it’s OK for students to use ChatGPT?

For teens, whether it is – or is not – acceptable for students to use ChatGPT depends on what it is being used for.

There is a fair amount of support for using the chatbot to explore a topic. Roughly seven-in-ten teens who have heard of ChatGPT say it’s acceptable to use when they are researching something new, while 13% say it is not acceptable.

However, there is much less support for using ChatGPT to do the work itself. Just one-in-five teens who have heard of ChatGPT say it’s acceptable to use it to write essays, while 57% say it is not acceptable. And 39% say it’s acceptable to use ChatGPT to solve math problems, while a similar share of teens (36%) say it’s not acceptable.

Some teens are uncertain about whether it’s acceptable to use ChatGPT for these tasks. Between 18% and 24% say they aren’t sure whether these are acceptable use cases for ChatGPT.

Those who have heard a lot about ChatGPT are more likely than those who have only heard a little about it to say it’s acceptable to use the chatbot to research topics, solve math problems and write essays. For instance, 54% of teens who have heard a lot about ChatGPT say it’s acceptable to use it to solve math problems, compared with 32% among those who have heard a little about it.

Note: Here are the  questions used for this analysis , along with responses, and its  methodology .

• Artificial Intelligence
• Technology Adoption
• Teens & Tech

Olivia Sidoti is a research assistant focusing on internet and technology research at Pew Research Center

Jeffrey Gottfried is an associate director focusing on internet and technology research at Pew Research Center

Many Americans think generative AI programs should credit the sources they rely on

Americans’ use of chatgpt is ticking up, but few trust its election information, q&a: how we used large language models to identify guests on popular podcasts, striking findings from 2023, what the data says about americans’ views of artificial intelligence, most popular.

1615 L St. NW, Suite 800 Washington, DC 20036 USA (+1) 202-419-4300 | Main (+1) 202-857-8562 | Fax (+1) 202-419-4372 |  Media Inquiries

Research Topics

• Age & Generations
• Coronavirus (COVID-19)
• Economy & Work
• Family & Relationships
• Gender & LGBTQ
• Immigration & Migration
• International Affairs
• Internet & Technology
• Methodological Research
• News Habits & Media
• Non-U.S. Governments
• Other Topics
• Politics & Policy
• Race & Ethnicity
• Email Newsletters

ABOUT PEW RESEARCH CENTER  Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of  The Pew Charitable Trusts .

Copyright 2024 Pew Research Center

Terms & Conditions

Privacy Policy

Cookie Settings

Reprints, Permissions & Use Policy

Featured Topics

Featured series.

A series of random questions answered by Harvard experts.

Explore the Gazette

Read the latest.

‘Harvard Thinking’: Forgiving what you can’t forget

How to untangle ethics of psychedelics for therapeutic care

Exercise cuts heart disease risk in part by lowering stress, study finds

Can we talk?

Conversation makes a big difference in study of isolated older people

Tracy Hampton

MGH Communications

Just talking to other people can stimulate different brain functions among socially isolated older adults, even when the interactions are internet-based, according to a new clinical trial out of Massachusetts General Hospital.

The  results  are published in  The Gerontologist , a flagship journal of the Gerontological Society of America.

“We initiated the first proof of concept behavioral intervention study in 2010, nearly a decade prior to the COVID-19 pandemic drawing attention to the detrimental effects of social isolation on our overall health,” explained lead author Hiroko H. Dodge, the principal investigator of the National Institutes of Health–funded trials.

The 186-participant phase 2 randomized trial, called  I-CONECT , used the internet and webcams to allow for conversational interactions between trained interviewers and socially isolated individuals aged 75 years and older who had normal cognition or mild cognitive impairment.

Investigators rotated conversation partners assigned to each participant to enhance the novelty of the experience, provided user-friendly devices allowing participants without any internet/webcam experience to easily engage in video-based conversations, and encouraged conversations with standardized daily themes and picture prompts.

Thirty-minute conversations were conducted four times per week for six months and then twice per week for an additional six months. A control group of similar individuals did not participate in such conversations, but both the intervention and control groups received weekly 10-minute telephone check-ins.

After the initial six-month period, the intervention group had a higher global cognitive test score compared with the control group with a large effect size among those with mild cognitive impairment. Also, intervention group participants with normal cognition had scores indicating higher language-based executive function.

At the end of final six-month period, intervention group participants with mild cognitive impairment had test scores indicating better memory-related brain function than those in the control group. Measures of emotional well-being improved in both control and intervention groups, suggesting that emotion can be boosted by brief weekly telephone calls while improving cognitive function requires frequent conversational engagement.

Also, brain imaging tests showed that the intervention group had increased connectivity within the dorsal attention network—a region important for the maintenance of visuospatial attention—relative to the control group, although this finding must be interpreted carefully because of the limited number of participants assessed due to COVID-19–related research restrictions.

Upon requests from former trial participants asking to continuously have conversations, Dodge and her colleagues have established a nonprofit organization, the  I-CONNECT Foundation . The foundation has been providing social interactions to isolated older individuals in the community free of charge, using the same materials used in the trial.

“Our next goal is to extend these activities to reach more isolated individuals in need, as well as to delve into the biological mechanisms underlying the impact of social interactions on our brain functions,” said Dodge. “Providing frequent stimulating conversational interactions via the internet could be an effective home-based dementia risk-reduction strategy against social isolation and cognitive decline. We plan to extend this therapy to geriatric outpatient populations, for which we are currently fundraising, and also examine its effectiveness for mild to moderate depressive symptoms.”

The team is also exploring the possibility of providing conversational interactions via chatbot — an artificial intelligence – trained robot that provides stimulating conversations as a cost-effective intervention. “We are aware that human contacts are critically important for our emotional well-being, but for cognitive stimulations, chatbots might work as effectively as humans, which we are currently investigating,” said Dodge, who serves as the director of Research Analytics at the recently inaugurated Interdisciplinary Brain Center at MGH and is a faculty member of the Harvard Medical School.

Funding was provided by the National Institute on Aging.

Share this article

You might like.

Wronged and can’t move on? In podcast, a theologian, a psychologist, and a public health expert discuss why and how to heal.

Experts from law, philosophy, spiritual care discuss issues surrounding research, safer use, kicking off University initiative

Benefits nearly double for people with depression

So what exactly makes Taylor Swift so great?

Experts weigh in on pop superstar's cultural and financial impact as her tours and albums continue to break records.

Good genes are nice, but joy is better

Harvard study, almost 80 years old, has proved that embracing community helps us live longer, and be happier

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

Myanmar Dispatch

A Gen Z Resistance, Cut Off From Data Plans

Even through the Myanmar army’s communications blackout, residents of a conflict zone find moments of grace, and occasional connectivity, away from the battlefield.

By Hannah Beech

Photographs by Adam Ferguson

Reporting from Demoso, Myanmar, where the lack of connectivity allowed for some book reading.

In the night, the mountain air not quite chill enough to still the insects, young people gathered around a glow. The light attracting them was not a phone screen, that electric lure for people almost everywhere, but a bonfire.

From around the blaze, music radiated. Fingers strummed a guitar. Voices layered lyrics about love, democracy and, most of all, revolution. Moths courted the flame, sparking when they veered too close, then swooning to their deaths.

For months now, these hills of Karenni State in eastern Myanmar have been severed from modern communications. The military junta that seized power in a coup three years ago, plunging the country into civil war, has cut off the populations most opposed to its brutal rule. In these resistance strongholds, where people from around the nation have congregated, there is almost no internet, cell service or even electricity.

The return to a pre-modern age carries awful consequences for people’s lives. When a baby’s fever spikes, there is no way to call a doctor. Rebel fighters, who have overrun dozens of Myanmar military bases in recent offensives, cannot contact battle commanders from frontline outposts. Students cannot attend online classes, which in some places in Myanmar are the only educational option.

News — who survived an airstrike, whose village was burned, whose daughter has fled the country for work abroad — travels at a pedestrian’s pace or, if expensive fuel can be found, by motorcycles bumping along jungle paths.

Yet the communications blackout has brought one unexpected benefit. Without the distraction of hand-held devices, people talk to each other, in person, with eye contact. They joke. They sing. They dance. They play the guitar.

Only a war, it seems, can break the engrossing command of a tiny screen.

In what people in Karenni call the B.C. years — that’s Before Coup — nearly everyone was on Facebook. Then, in the pre-dawn hours of Feb. 1, 2021, the junta pulled the plug on telecommunications. That was the first sign of trouble. By the morning, most of the nation’s elected leadership had been arrested. They remain imprisoned today.

Since the coup, internet and cell services have been restored in most other parts of the country, but Facebook and other social media are banned. In regions where militias have repelled the junta’s forces — like parts of Karenni State (also known as Kayah State) in the east, Rakhine State in the west, and the Sagaing Region and Chin State in the northwest — entire townships are still in the dark.

Without online games to play or videos to stream on phones, the shadowed space at night is filled most often by homegrown music.

On the front lines, when the thud of artillery recedes for the day, or the hour, resistance soldiers trade AK rifles for guitars. A rebel army commander slaps a beat on a cajón, the Afro-Peruvian instrument. At a hospital, emergency supplies are lined up against a wall made of leaves: bandages, rubber gloves, rubbing alcohol — and a ukulele.

After serving rebel soldiers a meal of spicy noodles with foraged herbs, Emily Oo picked up a guitar resting on the dirt floor of a security outpost captured last year by opposition forces. A few years ago, she was a middle school student in Loikaw, the state capital of Karenni, studying English and TikTok dance moves.

Last year, she and her family fled home as fighting between resistance soldiers and the junta’s forces engulfed her neighborhood. Most people in Karenni are now displaced, living with a few bundles of their most valuable possessions, including, surprisingly often, a guitar.

“History is written with our blood,” she sang. “The heroes who lost their lives in the battle for democracy.”

The lyrics, part of a well-known revolutionary anthem, were written by candlelight in 1988 when Myanmar was consumed by another national uprising against an earlier military dictatorship. After that protest movement was violently crushed, Myanmar seemed to slip further back in time, while most of Asia urbanized and prospered.

A dozen years ago, the junta then ruling Myanmar priced SIM cards at roughly four times the country’s average annual income, preventing all but the richest from connecting with the world.

So most people’s source of news — or an amalgamation of fact, rumor and rhetorical flourish — was the local tea shop, as it had been for decades. People sat on plastic stools around plastic tables, leaning in close to avoid military intelligence spies who might be listening in. The tea, either milky sweet or bracingly bitter, grew cold. The gossip was hot.

As political reforms brought in a quasi-civilian administration in 2016 , internet access became cheaper. Facebook accounts proliferated. So did online disinformation. Falsehoods about sexual violence fanned the flames of genocide against a Muslim minority.

Today, in Karenni, Myanmar’s smallest state and one of the least developed even before the online blackout, innuendo again stands in for truth. Conspiracy theories multiply. But amid the uncertainty and paranoia, music acts as a salve.

“Every day I heard the sounds of bombs, airplanes and gunshots,” said Maw Hpray Myar, 23, who fled a junta-controlled city and started a music school in the forests of Karenni. “When we hear the sounds of music, our fears go away a little bit.”

When there is the uncommon chance to access the internet, the appeal of getting online can pose its own dangers.

In January, members of the resistance assembled at a secret command post in Loikaw. They were not there for battle strategy but for access to Wi-Fi, courtesy of Starlink, a satellite internet service used in conflict zones worldwide.

The resistance forces binged on Facebook. They hearted photos of newborn babies and images of other rebel recruits posing, young and resolute, in their camouflage uniforms. Some were so absorbed by their online forays that they didn’t notice the whirring nearby, one soldier who was there recalled.

He and others escaped the armed drone dispatched by the junta’s forces. But three people too tethered to the internet did not and were injured in the attack, one seriously.

On the night of the third anniversary of the coup, opposition soldiers gathered in the rebel-controlled town of Demoso to celebrate the marriage of Augustine and Josephine, whose names were proclaimed on a sign at the venue. Augustine was heading to the front soon, and many of the other militia members were enjoying a couple days’ respite from battle. Generators lit up the tent, and soldiers occasionally glanced at the sky to ensure no fighter jet was targeting the bright festivities.

As the partygoers knocked back shots of whiskey before crowding the dance floor, Ko Yan Naing Htoo sat on a plastic stool, smoking. In the B.C. years, he had been an accountant. Then he joined a rebel army. A land mine claimed his leg.

“I feel very sorry that I cannot fight alongside my comrades anymore,” he said.

A commander boogied over to Mr. Yan Naing Htoo and wrapped an arm around his shoulder. They nodded to the music, the lyrics about missing home for a people displaced from theirs. Then a wave of song carried the commander back to the dance floor.

Marooned on his plastic stool, Mr. Yan Naing Htoo sucked on his cigarette. His hand went to his pocket and pulled out a phone, a vestigial motion from another era. He swiped the device. It was dead. He put it away and watched as men swayed and sang, so near but just out of reach.

Hannah Beech is a Times reporter based in Bangkok who has been covering Asia for more than 25 years. She focuses on in-depth and investigative stories. More about Hannah Beech