The internet was born 50 years ago and now it is being regularly used by society.
Usually when people think about the internet they don’t think about where it originated from. They most likely don’t even think about how often they use it. Whether it is thought about or not, the internet is used at school, at home and almost everywhere in between.
When at school, classes are taught with internet use. High school librarian Carissa McDonald believes that the internet is an instrumental part of what teachers do in the classroom every day. “Most teachers are pretty adaptable, but if we had an internet outage for more than a day, I do think it would cause issues,” McDonald said. Many classes use the internet for notes, projects and assignments on different platforms, such as Google Classroom or Moodle.
The internet is especially prevalent and useful for college students as well. Senior at St. Ambrose University, Jaya Thakur, mentions how useful the internet is for school purposes. “I will occasionally use the internet for podcasts or YouTube, but eighty percent of the time I would say I’m using it for assignments,” Thakur shared. Thakur also shared that if she isn’t doing her assignments online something has to be pulled up on the internet for projects and notes.
McDonald often teaches students how to properly use the internet for research and school purposes. While there are plenty of good sources for students to use, there are also a hefty number of unuseful sources. “I think it is an on-going challenge for not only students but anyone who uses the internet, there is a lot of garbage out there,” said McDonald.
As the influence of the internet becomes more and more prevalent in the daily lives of many, it is important to be educated on how to make safe decisions and protect personal information when online.
The internet has made life easier in terms of accessibility to many things, but it also seems to be hindering many things. “In school, my professors are especially pushing real-world skills. I personally would say that with the large use of the internet and the way that it makes communication from person to person easier, it is hindering soft skills,” Thakur said. Soft skills include, but don’t limit, social skills, communication skills and people skills.
As many teens can attest to, the internet is not, however, only used for school purposes. Social media has been all the rage for the past few years, and its presence is only increasing amongst youth. There are many social media platforms that consume copious amounts of people’s time.
“Before I got rid of my social media, I would spend hours scrolling through Instagram, responding to people’s Snapchats, and reading tweets,” shared Thakur, who is now social media free. “I now really try and focus my time on more important things such as school and work. I really don’t even know how I had time for social media,” she shared.
Fifty years ago it was unknown how popular the internet would become, society has made many changes to everyday life since then. Fifty years later, people are truly unaware of how much they use the internet.
