The social impact of unrestricted internet usage
More than half of the United States population has personal computers, which have access to the internet. While people utilize the internet for a number of reasons, the most significant reason would be interpersonal communication. Since interpersonal communication is quite dominant in internet usage, the internet may be beneficial to people’s social engagement. However, there are some researchers that suggest that offline communication is more beneficial compared to online communication. For instance, online communication is not as interactive as telephone or face-to-face conversation because if expresses fewer info that is contextual.
An unrestricted use of the internet for interpersonal communication may not create larger social networks, better relationships with people online, more social support or improved psychological results that relate to social interaction. For instance, researchers have proved that people who use the internet on a daily basis were more depressed than those who did not use the internet on a daily basis. People who frequently use the internet seem to have an increase in stress. This is because internet usage brings more social obligations and activities to lives of the users, and this leads to more pressure and stress to the lives of such individuals. It is also challenging to use technology because there are bombardments of communication and information.
Other impacts of unrestricted use of the internet may relate to a decline in user’s association with the family members or friends, reduction in their social engagement and increased loneliness and depression. People who use the internet frequently may not be much committed to their local area nor have much knowledge of their local area. However, for extraverts, unrestricted use of the internet was related to increased community involvement, reduction in loneliness and self esteem. For the introverts, the effects would be the opposite.
People who use the internet frequently for social reasons are more socially occupied offline, but their use of internet for social reasons shows declines in some social interactions. People’s use of the internet and differences in individuals play a critical role in effect that the internet poses to them. The major reason for some alterations is that, with time, there are evolving reasons why people use the internet. The internet that people used three or four years ago may not be the same internet that people may use now. This is also true for the future; the purpose of internet usage and content of the internet keeps changing with time. If three years ago, people used the internet to do online business, this may purpose may change significantly in the next three years. For instance, the nature of emails changes when there are more friends online since more companies would want to advertise their brands. While these alterations take place, people will discover new ways of using this internet technology, and this might alter it’s social impact
Conclusion
Since the internet is a technology of social engagement, people who use it would have effects that are the same as traditional communication. This means that there would be more social support and reduced stress or loneliness. For some people, there seems to be a positive impact while, for other people, there seems to be a negative impact. These people’s social outcomes and contacts are increased by their usage of the internet.
