How Does the Internet Affect My Life?

September 9, 2018

How Does the Internet Affect My Life?

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It’s hard for me to remember a time when the internet didn’t affect my life. One change or influence could be my patience. I feel like I have a shorter patience now… I am also used to constantly being entertained, so when I am not, it feels weird to sit down and do nothing, I almost feel like I should constantly be doing something.

In rural Maine, there aren’t many diverse thinkers (or diversity in general)- and it is much harder for students without the Internet…The internet challenged my closed world views and helped shape me in ways that I couldn’t have been without it.

The question of the internet’s place in this balance is whether or not this will lend to a more educated community of inquisitive thinkers, or a more redundant and repetitive mindset of individuals who don’t rely on their own knowledge, when anything they need to know can be pulled out of the cloud faster than out of their hippocampus. (ie consumers vs creators)

The more interconnected that the world becomes, the less personal it becomes. So while there may be beneficial aspects to the internet, it comes at a cost, both personal and social.

Lots of people with a diverse range of opinions armed with various studies, articles, and facts which can lack context and even truth has made us feel more divided than ever, while somehow making us closer connected.

The fact is that technology has built barriers between some people, while others it’s opened the door for connection. Those that live farther away often socially closer than those sitting right in front of us.

The more we do online the more the computer learns from it.

What concerns me is the lack of connection to the organic world, If we end up in a future where nature is no longer valued and humans are entirely satisfied with the basics for survival and a place to view the world through a screen… This would be a shame.

Essentially our relationship to the internet is subjective to the overarching goal of selling users products and subscriptions. Because of this fact the internet is not a full cycle information machine but rather a global marketplace targetting individuals in order to maximize profit.

Our generation gets bored with stuff that we do faster than our past generation. Is that because we get used to this kind of [rapid] satisfaction?

Now when we hang out with friends people are always on their phone or we are watching Netflix or playing on our laptops. People never really go outside to hangout or play like when we were younger. If people are outside they are probably just sitting on their phone or taking pictures…For me this is something that I struggle with because I don’t really know if this is just because I am older or if it is because of technology in our lives.

Recently I went to my friends camp and I found it amazing how much they used their phones out there. they had even bought unlimited data because there was no wifi. I guess I felt like this wasn’t camping at all more of just a normal night in a tent.

I remember back then when technology wasn’t that evolved and my family and I would actually be in the living room watching a movie we rented from blockbuster or playing outside in the backyard. There were fewer screens back then and it seemed like there was a lot more family time where we would go and do something we thought that was fun. Looking back on it, it seemed like when technology wasn’t so big there were a lot more human interactions

the internet gives anybody the ability to share their opinion on anything to everybody. However, in this ability it grants everybody power as well as insignificance. You have the power to influence people and their minds, make narratives, and cause change but there are so many voices on the internet that you will most likely remain irrelevant and unknown.

In middle school when me and my friends would go out into the woods behind my backyard and build forts….it was very memorable to me because we would just go into those woods and just have a great time and using our imaginations collectively to just do whatever we wanted. Post iPhone Era makes moments like the one above so rare nowadays

It was a picture of her 2 year old  toddler at the airport with a t-shirt that said “Just Give Me The Tablet And No One Gets Hurt”. At first, I laughed and obviously it’s a cute baby in a funny t-shirt, but then existential me kicked in and realized that it seemed kind of sad. Here, is a 2 year old who has already… being entertained through a screen to find a sense of comfort.

I was always the last person in my school to join in on all the social medias.  It was a mixture of my parents not letting me and me not wanting to.  Before I was introduced to social media and the internet I did a lot of outdoor activities, mostly just sports.  I was huge into sports when I was really young and I still am.

When I was younger I remember my babysitter used to always do my nails and hair, or play outside. When I’m babysitting the kids constantly ask to use my phone, a tablet, or watch TV

When i look back i even noticed that the teachers didn’t have any sort of laptop, tablets or even phones…moving up in grades and years increasing you saw more people [using] technology

If someone from the early 1900s experienced news daily, such as through a newspaper or telegram, and someone from the 1990s got to see news hourly on the television, a person in the late 2010s almost has no choice but to experience updating news by the second. Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, and more have the ability to spread updates instantly to hundreds of thousands of people in the time it takes someone to get out of bed.

After the internet was widely accessible, and mobile phones become part of our wardrobes, information was at the literal tips of our fingers. …these tools made tasks faster and faster as the answers were more immediate and resources were significantly more abundant. Games became massively multiplayer, friends were meeting inside of games and on the web, rather than just in their local area.

We are becoming intertwined with the technology of the internet in ways we aren’t even realizing.