How the Web Has Both Improved and Destroyed Ours Lives Simultaneously

In this day and age there's no need to be bored, but is there a bad side to that? In this article we are going to look at the reasons why the internet is both a good and bad thing.

Social Networking Sites

Networking sites are a strange thing when you think about it. They enable people to communicate with each other, but it somehow keeps them apart more. Thanks to sites like Facebook and MySpace, it’s now possible to very quickly get hundreds of "friends". To begin with this may make you feel good, but it's not real friendship is it. Nobody can possibly have 500 friends. It’s just not possible. I’m not even sure I even KNOW that many people, let alone actually having that many friends.

In spite of this, you don't have to use these sites just to add loads of people to a friends list, you can just use them to keep in touch with your real friends. This is great, if it means you can keep in touch with family who are far away, or if it means you can easily organise social events with your actual friends. On the other hand, there is a bad side to this, because the more time you spend chatting online with your friends, the less time you actually spend with them in person.

A World of Information

The internet is like the biggest library that has ever existed. I’m not going to quote some huge number here, like it’s the equivalent of a library full of more books than the whole Universe could fit. There is one very simple reason why I'm not going to do this: I can’t be bothered. It’s far too much effort. Go and research that yourself.

And that’s exactly my point. The internet is like EVERYTHING at our fingertips. All information immediately available. But locked within that truly amazing fact is what also makes it bad: it gives us short attention spans and makes us lazy. We’re no longer content to browse a library full of books, pick out a book, and then read that book. Now we are constantly searching for tiny bits of information. Our mind is free to constantly jump from one thing to another, never having to absorb too much of any one particular thing.

David Hasselhoff wikipedia, pictures of midgets, Cat piano YouTube video. All this within the space of 5 minutes. Try looking for all that on the same bookshelf in your library.

Fun at Your Fingertips

There are no two ways about it, YouTube is a revolution in entertainment. Now you can get clips of virtually anything that you want, whether it’s old comedy shows from the 70’s, American drama shows from the 80’s, or your favourite music videos.

However, the down-side of this is that it’s another way that the internet has reduced our attention spans. We no longer seem happy to sit there watchign a whole 30 minute episode of a TV show, or worse still, a whole 90 minutes of a movie. We just want the really good bits, fed to us instantly!

You will never be bored in the modern world, as long as you've got your computer and your internet connection.