Shantikumar Khumukcham
Assistant Engineer, PHED, Manipur
Introduction: The worldwide web (www) or the Internet is one of the most innovative inventions of our time. It was started in the US during the cold war era of the 1960s and evolved over a period of time.
Positive Impacts: Today, the Internet has transformed the lives of millions and the way they live. Just one click or a press and you can talk to a friend face-to-face thousands of miles away, book tickets from anywhere, submit forms in a University in Singapore sitting at home, buy anything without going to the stores, transfer money instantly, watch movies, play games, read books, seek information, hire a cab, order food, surf, mail, chat, ping, text and what not.
With the introduction of smartphones and cheap internet services, it is even easier to access it nowadays. Simply, it has become an integral part of our lives. Without it, Stock markets would collapse, the banking system might fail, businesses go bankrupt and millions of people lose their jobs. There will be utter chaos.
The Dark Side: However, it is often said that the beautiful full moon has a dark side hidden from the view. The Internet can also offer harmful influences too. Rising popularity of the Internet has resulted in concerns about excessive Internet usage and its consequences on education, security, morality, relationships and social functioning.
- Education: The growth rate of the internet specifically the social media networks such as Facebook, WhatsApp etc., has extensively become popular among the youth especially the teenage students. Studies show that students spend several hours a day attending to Facebook & WhatsApp updates even during their classes and study hours which create distractions and reducing the quality time to focus on their studies. It also affects their face-to-face communication skills. Many of the students rely too much on the internet to provide answers. This has also led to a reduced focus on learning and knowledge retention. Social media has also affected the way the students communicate. Abbreviations such as LOL, ROFL etc., and words like “Ur” instead of “Your” and “V” for “We” are also widely used to cut down on response time and space. The changes in linguistics and communication etiquette have greatly affected the students’ communications habits. Use of WhatsApp as a tool for unfair means in exams is not new.
- Fake News on Social Media: Everything on the internet is not true. People tend to believe every information shared on social media sites and get influenced easily. One needs to verify the source of information before sharing/believing it.
- Morality: Exposure to inappropriate material or content is a big problem today. Unknown to their parents, teenage students are introduced to a vast number of unwanted pornographic contents. It has influenced the rise of immoral activities, sexual crimes and teenage pregnancy among students.
- Cyberbullying: Students especially teenage girls are exposed to various forms of cyberbullying. Verbal aggression, blackmail, threats sharing of private data, photographs and videos on the Internet with the intention to embarrass, hurt, humiliate, offend and get revenge.
- Security: The Internet has also widened the scope of criminal activities. Terrorist organisations like ISIS have successfully used the internet and social media in recruiting educated youths all across the world. Sharing too much personal information like real name, date of birth, location and phone numbers on social media could lead to identity theft and eventually financial loss. Stolen sensitive information such as bank account numbers, passwords, phone numbers etc. are sold in the underground market these days. This criminal activity translates into billions of rupees.
Conclusion: In a place like Manipur where ethnic and community-based tensions flared-up at the drop of a hat, Social media plays an unpopular role in spreading hatred among communities. Such news spread like wildfire in social media and people spew venom without verifying the facts. We as a society need to understand the dangerous consequences of a fabricated hateful social media post. Students should also restrict the use of social media as much as possible as it wastes precious time and inculcates bad habits. Parents have their roles to play. Paying attention to their wards’ progress in studies, instilling family values and moral lessons from time to time will go a long way towards keeping the negative aspects of social media from influencing their studies.
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A Brief History about the Internet: During the US-Soviet cold war in the 1960’s, US Military experts and Scientists were deeply concerned about the eventuality of a Soviet missile attack and its impact on the nation’s telephone system. Such an attack would paralyse the backbone of its communication network. They needed a robust system of a network to enable them to communicate even if the Soviets destroy the telephone system. Thus, they started funding heavily on scientific and space research and established new agencies such as National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), to develop space-age technologies.
As a result, in 1968, scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) and ARPA created ARPAnet a network of computers that could talk to one another. It laid the foundation of the Internet. The network grew in number over the years and the US military benefited immensely from this innovation in sharing details of top-secret weapons programs and missions. Considering its high-efficiency, the scientists and research institutions were soon attracted to that and a network of networks emerged amongst them. Other countries followed suit and it expanded further. The number of computers connected to the networks rose from 200 in 1980 to one million in 1990. However, it was not open to the public and used only by the researchers, military experts, and the scientists.
In 1991 a computer programmer in Switzerland named Tim Berners-Lee at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) introduced the World Wide Web (www) a worldwide network of computers or the internet of today. It changed the world of connectivity forever. It is estimated that nearly 3.6 billion people are connected to the internet through mobile devices and computers today. One speculation is that it would progressively evolve from a network of interconnected computers to a network of interconnected objects, from books to cars, from electrical appliances to food, and thus create an ‘Internet of things’ in the near future.
