Roush 1
Roush 2
Delilah Roush
Mrs. Koryn-Noah Patrick
ENG-101
January 28, 2019
Internet Effects on Society
The modern-day Internet has absolutely had a large impact on our modern-day lives. Our society has significantly changed ever since the World Wide Web first launched on August 6, 1991. The access to many new discoveries and ability to obtain more information on any topic under the sun in just a simple Google search has increased convenience in the 21st century-world. The internet has assisted humans in learning a broad range of information that was never known prior to the Internet and most likely would never have been discovered had the Internet not been invented. However, our big question lies where whether all this new, modern technology has been beneficial to society, or draining to society. There is a wide range of negative effects in which the existence of the Internet has brought to our everyday lives. One should keep in mind the dangers of the Internet each time that they utilize it. Areas of topics examined include social and psychological effects that the Internet has had on children and teenagers; particularly of my generation and of following generations.
The first topic of discussion is social media. Throughout the past decade, it has been more convenient than ever before in history for youth and young adults to communicate with friends and relatives, as well as meet new people across the globe, by using social media. However, these platforms have opened a new door for teens to participate in illegal acts, cyberbullying, “sexting”, body shaming, amongst other things. On platforms such as Snapchat and Instagram, many teens, commonly girls, will take tons of “selfies”, and search for a perfect filter before sharing a photo with others. It has been argued that specific Snapchat filters are “racist”, as many African American and Asian teens have taken offense to the fact that they lighten skin tone and alter different facial features. Such filters may cause many teenaged girls to become insecure, have a poor self-image and feel less beautiful; teens now feel that they must look “perfect”. Social media has the potential of being very competitive, as well. Teens nowadays have multiple identities; an “online” identity and a “real-life” identity; these two identities significantly differ, as teens attempt to appear more “cool” or popular on social media. In the senior superlative of my high school’s newspaper, there was an “award” given for “best Instagram profile.” It is almost like teens are judged by the content which they publicly share on their social media accounts. In these regards, social media has had a negative effect on the psychological and social well-being of adolescence in our modern-day society.
My next argument for this paper is that of withdraw from socialization, and unproductiveness. Today’s youth have become lethargic as well as less communicative due to spending much of their time being “glued to the scree...
