Negative Effects of Internet Addiction in Society
by Mauliya Risalaturrohmah (2111004)
Internet,
no doubt is one of the best inventions. It has
brought people closer in many regards. Nowadays, internet has become an
integral part of our daily lives. In fact, with the onset of the internet, to access
the information has become easy. Emails and instant messages have made online
communication possible. Moreover, it can be accessed
by users of any age and condition. People in different parts of the world
can collaborate over the internet. They can exchange views, share information
and work together over the internet. But, these days, due to the social
networking sites such as facebook, twitter, which taking over, internet is
producing adverse effects on the students, especially those students studying
in college. Therefore, we will describe about the negative
effects of internet addiction in society.
Firstly,
internet addiction can be what causes
insomnia. It is a condition where the people
are unable to sleep. They keep on their laptops, mobile phones, gadgets, etc
late at night. They chat with their friends or play games on the online gaming
sites. These days, people also check their updates on facebook and Gmail even
in the middle of nights on their mobiles. If this thing continues for a long
time, insomnia may occur. In addition, insomnia for children between 8 to 18
years of age is commonly caused by internet addiction. The survey shows that
over half the children interviewed said that they use the internet for over
five hours a day. Boys tend to browse the internet excessively compared to
girls. Then, Hong Kong teenagers who are addicted to the net
could be suffering from insomnia. The first study of the impact
of online addiction on insomnia and depression on Hong Kong adolescents was
co-led by Professor Wong Wing-sze, an associate professor at the
Department of Psychological Studies at The Hong Kong Institute of Education
(HKIEd) and fellow researcher Cheung Lee-man. The study, reported in the
Journal of Sleep Research last year, found 17% of the teenagers surveyed were
“internet addicts”. This condition is very harmful as we all know that proper
sleep is a must for good health. Not only it will affect their mental growth,
but their physical growth will also be very much affected by it.
Secondly, internet
becomes one of the causes of moral corruption. In fact, there are many
things available on the internet that should not be in the reach of people
especially students, but internet does not have any hard and fast rule for
that. A juvenile can also approach the content which only a 17+ years is
allowed to see. It can exist in many forms, including videos, films, pornography
pictures, and even comics. Pornography pictures and videos usually depict acts
of sexual intercourse, sodomy, cunnilingus, and fellatio between children and
between a child and an adult (Esposito, 1998).This leads to some kinds of moral
corruption among the students. The innocence and purity of the school students
as well as the college students is extremely affected by such things. According
to a study conducted by University of Florida, the students who use internet
two to three hours on a daily basis are likely to fall a prey to sexual
exploitation. With the advent of internet, exploiting small children sexually
has become very easy. There are a large number of sexual predators lying there
on the internet and once a student comes in contact with such people, his mind
and thoughts are affected by that. In the long run, this can produce adverse
effects on the mental health of the student and he is sexually exploited
online. In the extreme cases, student might not be able to tell this thing to anyone.
Thirdly, internet
has an impact on cognitive development. As we know that internet
supplies a lot of posted information which is lawless. It is uncontrolled and
there is no way to check its reliability. In other side, many internet usages
especially young children who face it by getting on the internet are that they
are less able to discriminate between what it is true or untrue, and they are
unable to prove the reality in the virtual world. Furthermore, whenever teacher
gives assignments to students, they tend to search it on the internet and copy
down the facts. But, this is not the right thing to down. Such negative
influences are not only a threat for younger children but also for those in University.
They face trouble in writing courses by plagiarizing research projects. At a
large university in New York, the dropout rate among freshmen new comers rose
dramatically as their investment in computers and internet access increased.
Administrators learned that 43% of the dropouts were staying up all night on
the internet (Wallace, 1999, as cited in Affosno, 1999).
In short, there
are many negative and positive arguments about the existence of internet. I
agree that internet has its disadvantages. So, we need
to be more careful while using it, especially the youth at present on how they
are using the internet.
