The Social Impact of the Internet

The Internet: A wide area network of computer networks, allowing the free exchange of large amounts of data across the world.

The Internet is more than the World Wide Web. You can use the Internet to send and receive electronic mail, participate in discussions through newsgroups and even control other computers and devices remotely.

Who uses the Internet?

Different people use the Internet to help them do their jobs in a variety of ways:

A lawyer might interrogate a huge database of the results of cases held in different courts nationwide.

A doctor could get in touch with specialists and patients when trying to treat extremely rare diseases.

A teacher can control a university’s radio telescope with a science class without leaving their own classroom.

Positive and Negative

As with all tools, the Internet is not always used for good purposes. Different crimes, like identity theft can be done much more easily over the Internet because people may not realize that they are sending sensitive personal information to someone who is not who they claim to be.

Questions

1. List three jobs that have been created through the introduction of the Internet.
2. List one job which is threatened by increased use of the Internet.
3. Describe five ways in which different professions have found that using the internet helps them to achieve much more than before.
4. Describe two ways that the Internet can be used to enhance leisure time.
5. Describe two ways in which the Internet can be misused and discuss the ways these problems can be dealt with.