Internet information flow and potential educational value
Internet is a very crucial communication instrument nowadays foreveryone. It has totally changed our ordinary life especially at home, schooland at work since the 90s.
Since the late 1990s, the internet continued to growand many were proclaiming about the vast benefits of computer and internetaccess would have on schools and academic performance (Amin et al, 2014). Notonly the internet has provided many applications in our daily life, but also offersspecial and unique features that has doubled its attractions.The internet has become a basic tool for trading, entertainment,communication, as well as education in this contemporary world.
Today,communication through computer and internet is a part of life reality. Nevertheless,despite the high speed of information flow and potential educational value ofthe internet, there are several attributes of the internet which that may causean addictive behavior. The last decade saw a large increase on new emerging ofmental sickness problem that was called internet addiction (Kuss, Griffiths& Binder, 2013).
Most students spend a lot oftime on the internet conducting researches as well as fulfilling theireducational needs. The rampant usage of theinternet affects their behaviourhrm1 when searching for informationhrm2 such as surfing for sales or discount or promotion code on online shoppingwebsites such as Lazada, Lelong, Zalora and much more especially at the end ofthe year. In relation to addiction, internet uses have both short term andlong-term effects that include forgotten responsibilities, weight gain,backache, neck pain, chronic fatigue syndromehrm3 andvision problems. On the other hand, the internet allows us to be moreproductive and actually saves us a lot more time as we carry out our variousday to day tasks (Brent, 2017).
Usually the starting phase of internet addiction is that thestudents use any gadgets that connects to the internet such as smartphones,laptop, computer and tablet for a long time either to use it for communication,research, educational purposes or entertainment. The effect of internetaddiction is dangerous especially on students and adolescents, for example,playing computer games for a long time until they forgot their responsibilitiesand how to socialize with other person of their age (Catherine, 2015). For theperson who has internet addiction, they need to receive full attention fromtheir parent and adult who take care of them, to give them advice frequently and limit theirtime of playing games. The use of internet has increased considerably over the last fewyears.
The growth of internet users has been exponential. With this growth, come a number of questions about the impact ofinternet use. There are a lot of issues coming from internet addiction and oneof them is it leads to a symptoms such as addictions to turn on and check outnotification on the smartphones every minute, mood modification that oftenhappens to students and adolescent that sleep late at night and have a job orclass in the next morning, salience, tolerance, withdrawal disorder, oftencause or meet conflict in their daily life, and a relapse on their routine thatis internet addicting (Kuss, Griffiths & Binder, 2013).Internet addiction will affect the students greatly especiallyuniversity students. It is because the students have a lot of classes,assignments, quizzes every week and project that needs to be completed on time.Therefore, students need to take care of themselves and know when to use the internet.
Research has proved that 6 out of 10 students jeopardize their academic andprofessional performance because of their internet habits (Kuss, Griffiths & Binder, 2013). hrm4 Studentsneed to be monitored by their parents or the university so that they will notbe distracted with stuffs that they are not supposed to open on the internetand need to be control strictly when surfing on theentertainment part of the internet.hrm5 Overuse of internet causes physical effect due to the sedentarylifestyle. These people may create a heightened level of psychological arousal,resulting in very little sleep, failure to eat for long period, and limitedphysical activity may lead to heartattack or obesity, possibility leading to the user experiencing physical andmental health problems (Amin et al, 2014).
On the same note, some internetaddicts have improper posture due to too much leaning forward, hence causesback and neck problems.Other issues that are caused by internet addiction is that internetaddiction will negatively influence life routines, health, and parentalrelationship with their family members that may spend so much time on theinternet hrm6 (Aminet al, 2014). These people have developed poor relationships due to too muchusage of internet to an extent of spending less time with their family members.In addition, most addicted internet users spend solitary seclusions, have notime to spend with real people, hence they become socially irrelevant or awkward.The much time spent on the internet instead of spending time with peopleincreases distrust and disturbance for the ample time in a relationship. These people create their own secret life since they suffer fromlow-self-esteem, feelings of inadequacies, depressed and have anxiety as wellas fearful for being disapproved by their colleagues or family members.
Besidesthat, the impact of online affairs on relationships, the academic impact ofstudents’ internet abuse on campuses, and the effect of employee internet abuseare also explored in the internet addiction problems (Kimberly, 2004).There are a lot of websites and applications on the internet thatare good and have helped make people’s life easier but there are also somethings that are not good for people. The cause is mainly identified in thecategories of internet addiction such as gaming for long period of time, socialnetworking not at the right time, email, blogging, online shopping for a longtime, and inappropriate internet pornography use (Christina, 2017).
Excessive use of internet can significantly interfere withfunctioning in other areas of life such as relationship with your friends orfamily, education may be interfered greatly and cause you to get bad grades,work such as your work will not be in good quality, physical health will bepoor and emotional well-being may also be bad because of internet addiction(Brent, 2017). People who lose control over their actions in life, and ingeneral, spend more than 38 hours a week online, are considered to suffer frominternet addiction.Based on this thesis statement, this paper will only discuss the particular activities on the internet thatmight be potentially addictive and what will link them to personal traits thatmight predispose individuals to internet addiction. Problematic internet usemay be associated with subjective distress.
The review of related literatureindicated that internet addiction will negatively influence life routines,health, and parental relationship in relation to their addiction.hrm7 Based on the social perspective, it is focusing more on internetaddiction. Besides, people might become addictive to the internet because oftheir particular activities on the internet. Usually, people do not addict tothe medium, but to the actual behaviour they engage in online. For example,usage of social application like online chatting, social network sites, andonline instant messengers.
It is to communicate with other people rather byusing verbally and it is considered to be associated with internet addiction (Kuss, Griffiths & Binder, 2013).hrm8 u9 Moreover, despite the highspeed of information flow that can be used for educational purposes, there areseveral attributes of the internet which may lead to addictive behaviour, suchas the students have too much free timein their daily lives and got an unlimited access to the internet, have flexibleschedule and freedom from their parental interference maybe because they do notstay with their parents anymore and this will lead them to internet addiction (Kuss, Griffiths &Binder, 2013; Amin et al, 2014).Additionally, the students’ activities are not being externallycontrolled by the university bodies but the university bodies expect that allthe students will make use of the technology without any problems and the university do not look on the part that their students may get the socialintimidation and alienation from other people.(Kuss, Griffiths , 2013).Besides that, there are also the kind of people who want to escape from their emotionaldifficulties, problematic situations and personal hardship. They usually needto express their problems and emotions through the social websites orapplications such as Whatsapp, Instagram, Facebook and much more.
These kind ofpeople may have a big chance of getting internet addictions (Kuss, Griffiths& Binder, 2013).From the technological perspective, there are applications that arespecifically predictive of internet addiction such as gaming for a long time,online chatting, social networking sites and online instant messengers (Kuss,Griffiths & Binder, 2013 and Christina, 2017). Daria and Mark (2011) statedthat Social Networking Sites(SNShrm10 )addiction can be classified within the larger framework of internet addictions,and second, that it is a specific internet addiction, alongside other addictiveinternet applications such as internet gaming addiction, internet gamblingaddiction, and internet sex addiction.
There are many symptoms that can beidentified if you are addicted to the internet, for example, depression,anxiety, and insomnia. Internet addiction needs to be avoided as it can affectour health physically and mentally.In this fast-growing technology era, the student is likely tocreate new learning cultures that require the internet as a tool forcommunicating, sharing information and community formation (Kuss, Griffiths& Binder, 2013). Anne (2013) stated that Facebook, Twitter, YouTube andmany other social networking sites allow users to share and interact withonline content and to connect with like-minded people. There are many mediumsthat student can use to communicate and share information, for example, social medialike Facebook, WhatsApp, and Telegram. We can do many things quickly and easilywith the social media. Previously, group discussions were usually conducted bygathering in one place before discussing it.
With the growing technology now,discussions can be done anywhere and anytime with the internet.In addition, the use of the internet can also provide the benefitand convenience as students can obtain information and knowledge easily andefficiently by just typing in the web browser about what we want to know (Amin,2014). The internet is too large for any individual to know all the important resourcesthat can be found there (Wayne & Margaret, 2006). Everything that we wantto know can be searched on the internet.
We can just simply type the keywordabout the information that we want to find and it will give us the result. Forexample, the search engine that we can use to search the information on theinternet is Google.There are also critiques from both perspectives which are students mightmisuse the internet (Kuss, Griffiths & Binder, 2013; Amin et al, 2014). Ankita(2017) stated that with the advantages of the internet, comes its disadvantagestoo. No invention of man can be perfect. There are a lot of ways the internet canbe misused, for example, e-mail spamming, well of negativity, pranksters, timewastage, hacking, posting fake advertisements, cyberbullying, piracy, identitytheft and porn. Student nowadays is likely to explore new things on theinternet. This thing happens due to the high curiosity and influence of peers.
There are many things that can be done only with the internet. Therefore, as aninternet user, you need to be careful in disseminating or sharing anyinformation on the social media. In addition, we also need to distanceourselves or avoid from doing things that are not beneficial and harmful toothers.Next, hardware that can connect to the internet will make studentsdistracted during the study (Brent, 2017).
Susan (2017) stated that surfing theinternet during class and connecting with friends, shopping or streaming moviescould also prove to be a source of distraction and hinder learning. There are alot of devices that we can use to access the internet. With the creation ofdevices, it is certain that many people will buy it as it will enable us toaccess the internet. In that case, the device will also neglect people,especially students. This will cause their learning time to be interruptedbecause it is fun to play with the device connected to the internet. It iscertain that their test results will drop as a result of spending too much timeplaying with the device. It does not matter if the device is correctly used tosearch any information on the internet.
The problems will arise when thestudents ignore their homework and lessons.Internet addiction will also cause students’ academic andprofessional performance to drop (Kuss, Griffiths & Binder, 2013; Kimberly,2004). Patricia (2014) stated that young people seem especially vulnerable,with case studies highlighting students whose academic performance plummets asthey spend more and more time online. We can do anything if there is theinternet, for example, playing online games, watching online movies andaccessing social media. If we are already addicted to the internet, we willfeel uneasy if there is no internet. We need to avoid from internet addictionbecause it will affect our study performance and it will trouble us in future. As a student, we need to remember howimportant is the lesson for our bright future. We need to avoid ourselves fromusing the internet for too long because it will cause us to be addicted to theinternet.
Furthermore, the internet can cause social problem in communities(Catherine, 2015). From the research that has been done by Igor (2014), onlinesocial networking has caused profound changes in the way people communicate andinteract. With the internet, it will enable us to connect directly with ourfriends on the social media. We can also get acquainted with new people throughsocial media but we cannot increase our self-confidence to communicate withpeople in real life. If we can communicate well in social media, it does notmake us a person that can communicate well with anybody in real life. Therefore,do not spend our time on the internet too often. We need to spend our time withfriends and neighbors so we can improve more on our soft skills to communicate.
The internet addiction had been found to be correlated highly withimpaired academic performance. On the contrary, it was suggested that studentshad a positive effect than negative effect of internet addiction in relation totheir academic performance. If students are using the internet properly for thepurpose of studying and doing their homework, it is certain that their resultswill be excellent. It depends on the individual himself on how he is using the internet. If the individual isusing the internet for the wrong purpose, then he will only have a negativeimpact compared to the positive effect. Therefore, students should have anawareness of using the internet in the right way.As a conclusion, the internet has a lot of disadvantages but italso has a lot of advantages such as using the internet as a tool to finduseful knowledge for everyone. People who use the internet need to use them wiselyand limit their time on internet usage every day.
This is to prevent them frominternet addiction and to perpetuate the physical and mental well-being. Weneed to use the internet for good thing and do not do bad thing on the internetthat will harm others because it will give negative impact on us. hrm1British English spelling hrm2Explain how searching for information affect students’ behaviour. hrm3What kind of syndrome? hrm4Sentence is too long and it has become fragmented.
Rephrase intoshort sentences. hrm5Unclear. Rephrase. hrm6Unclear. Explain further. hrm7Addiction? hrm8Sentence is too long and has become fragmented.
Rephrase into shortersentences. u9 hrm10What does this stand for?
