What happens when you ask people what are the most important things in their lives? They probably will respond and say food, water, shelter, and other necessities they use in their lives to keep themselves away from death. But one thing that you will rarely hear from anyone’s mouth is one of the most important and used-thing “internet technology”.
This is sort of ironic because according to a Nielsen Company audience report, the average person in the United States spends approximately 10 hours and 39 minutes each day using internet technology daily.
Additionally, even countries with a lot of cultures that use internet technology rarely compared to others like India, still use internet technology a lot. Live Mint says that the average Indian uses internet technology for an average of 5 hours and 20 Minutes. (https://sites.psu.edu/)
Nowthat you think of it, that is around ¼ of somebody’s day in the average world and nearly ½ of it in America. Although this may seem like a normal number in the world, remember that this number is currently rising by a big amount due to quarantine and that the average human spends around ⅓ of their lives sleeping.
An estimate from the World Health Organization currently in 2020, shows that the average person spends 6.5875 years on social media by itself.
Although these numbers seem disturbing, most of the use of internet technology is really helpful. Half of the time used for technology is actually communication, this includes chatting with your friends, calling your family, asking your teacher or boss some questions etc. Online communication is something important and includes many other great things to offer.
One of those things is Social Media. Social Media is a great way to communicate, see what people are up to as well as many other things. One thing to remember is that even though there are terrible people on social media, there are countless more good people trying to interact with many others. Social Media is just a great global community with everybody meeting new people and trying to interact with each other.
As long as people are taught to be cautious with handling unknown people, they will have a great time and learn a lot from using social media. As it says in the name, social media is all about interaction, therefore when using social media, anyone can learn social etiquette, facts, things about people, and more!
Social media is just one of the great things online communication has to offer. There are many more like personal chatting software like Discord to keep in touch with your friends and family, and software like Zoom to keep in touch with your organization wherever you are!
Another great thing about internet technology is the great number of things you can learn. Due to web browsers, search engines, and educational apps, humans have learned a lot from internet technology. A report from ‘medhucation.com’ states that 81% of college students find that their grades improve when using digital learning technology.
An advantage internet technology has that is a massive benefit to learning is its portability. As long as you have the Internet you can learn nearly everything from a laptop or phone. You can use internet technology anywhere to learn from needing to search a definition of a word to look for the method to a Math problem, internet technology can easily help you with that.
Additionally, even schools a place where most people think is guided by textbooks and papers use internet technology a lot to educate.
Around 98% of all schools use computers and that 68% of schools use google classroom for organizing their studies and classes. (nces.ed.gov and kajeet.net + ets.org). Due to apps and websites like Microsoft and Google Suite, it has been much easier to make reports, documents, presentations, etc. while easily being able to share them.
Also due to technology instead of writing with 2 people on one paper, everyone can write, improvise, etc to a document with ease from different devices.
There are many apps these days meant for learning where people can easily learn what they put their mind to, lastly, websites like youtube make learning easier through videos which can make learning much more engaging and easier to understand. Internet technology not only can help people to learn but can organize it in a better way.
Although there is lots of mistrust and skeptics to use internet technology, there are many more benefits that dramatically improve qualities in life and comfort in humanity.
Therefore, instead of viewing internet technology as a negative thing, it should be taught wisely to exploited in the best possible way and should be seen as a positive opportunity.
(The views expressed are the writer’s own)
Dihaan Patra
Grade 7
American Community School Beirut
Beirut, Lebanon
( Images from the net)
