Internet: Three Severe Consequences That Follow

By Demosa Neva Sukmono

            The internet has changed people’s lives drastically since its global launching in the 1990s. It changes people’s lives by making communication much easier, presenting large amount of information or helping people to promote their businesses. However, the internet, in fact, has great potential in giving bad effects to the people. Among the negative effects, internet addiction, information overload, and cyber crime are the worst due to the severe consequences that follow.

            The first reason that makes internet addiction dangerous is that the people who are addicted to the internet tend to spend more time going online. By doing this kind of activity, those people will forget their real lives, such as exercising, cleaning their houses, talking with their family, and even forgetting their jobs. In their essay titled “Is the Creation of Internet Beneficial to Humanity”, Su and Lee stated that too much time going online reduces our time dealing with the real world activities. “As a result, the Internet cuts out the social interactions of our lives. With the Internet doing so many jobs for us, we have become lazy and non-social” (4). Furthermore, Joana Saisan (2005) explained that internet addiction has potential to cause financial problem due to the addiction to online gambling, online gaming, and online shopping.

            In addition to dangerous internet addiction, information overload is also able to give serious impact. Even though the internet presenting large amount of information, it is often difficult to determine the valid ones. In many cases, people tend to read the information which they actually do not need. Their brains will be eventually filled by unimportant or even invalid information. As a result, people are confused by the information or even make incorrect decision based on invalid data. As explained by Edmunds and Morris (2015) that people often face difficulties in obtaining information they really need, and it is the result of over abundance information on the internet.

            Furthermore, cyber crime as one of the worst negative effects of the internet has been the hottest topic these days. Unlike many other crimes, cyber crime is considered new, modern, and difficult to prevent. It is due to the fact that the internet is used by so many people everyday. According to Beal in her article “Internet”, by August 2015, there were more than 3,1 billion internet users around the world estimated by Internet Live Stats. This condition makes any activities including cyber crime is very difficult to prevent. Moreover, cyber crime has been known as the cause of destructive loss to people, organization, or even a nation. It can be read from many newspapers that hackers hacked someone’s bank account or stole a lot of money from the bank by inflirtating bank’s database. In many cases, hackers also stole a country’s important information and sold it to another country via internet. In short, cyber crime becomes one of the most dangerous crime since it is difficult to prevent, able to reach various parties, and able to cause great damage.

            To conclude, as people’s lives are more and more influenced by the internet, it is expected that people are smarter and more careful in using it. The internet like many other tools has potential to give advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand it can help so many people to live better and more easily, but on the other hand it can also damage and destroy them. So, wiser and more careful internet users are expected in the future because the internet is just a tool; the brain is what really matters.

Refferences

Beal, Vangie. “Internet”. Webopedia. 2015. Accessed. 18 October 2015.

http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/I/Internet.html

Edmunds, Angela and Anne Morris. “Abstract.” The Problem of Information Overload     in Business Organizations: A Review of the Literature. Science Direct, 2015.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0268401299000511

Saisan, Joanna. “Internet and Computer Addiction”. HelpGuide.Org. September 2015.     Accessed. 18 October 2015. http://www.helpguide.org/articles/addiction/internet-and-computer-addiction.htm

Su, Gary GuangHao and Jason Lee. “Is the Creation of Internet Beneficial to        Humanity”. cs.ucdavis.edu. 29 November 2010. Accessed. 18 October 2015.

www.cs.ucdavis.edu