In the mid-2000s, I was coming home from school and right as I took my key out to open our door, a CTM* employee was making his way out of our flat. I had no idea who that man was, nor had any clue what CTM even meant. But something new was in our household.
As I entered, I took one look at our computer desk and there was a small white object. It had small slits that looked like eyes that glowed green and blinked every now and then. A tail made up of a few wires was connected to our central processing unit (CPU). Confused, I asked my father, a tech geek and lover of computers, what this strange thing was, and to that, he replied that we now had the power of the internet at home.
That didn’t mean much to me back then, but after learning from a group of uncles who were also tech geeks, a few peers at school, and eventually, from the bevy of shenanigans that my classmates would get into during my primary school’s computer class, I finally understood that the internet was this new, at least to me, wonderful thing.
The internet meant being able to hop on the early stages of YouTube, Facebook, and several flash game websites that were beginning to pop up and make waves. As the years went on, there were more and more reasons to stay online while glued to a screen, which also became ubiquitous. And with offerings ranging from rising social media platforms to the development of streaming services, everything just kept getting better. The internet also of course served as one of the most valuable and useful resources when it came to research and studies. It was just a vast, limitless sea that I could not stop sailing.
However, this came with some serious caveats. Like many, as the internet increasingly became a more prominent of my life, it gave way to issues such as being constantly distracted, internet addiction, being overly fed misinformation through several social media platforms, and blurring the lines between what to care and what not to care about, just to name a few. This was mostly due to the fact that I could not control my internet use back then, especially when smartphones began to make it so much easier to hop on the web at any time. This went on to affect my life, cause a dwindling attention span, and even take a toll on my mental health.
With that, one can see that the internet is not always this wonderful thing without its share of negative impacts. Although it isn’t entirely bad either, without caution and the right amount of supervision, especially nowadays where young children have access to things beyond Paw Patrol and Cocomelon, issues may arise down the line that may prove to be detrimental.
The internet definitely provides a raft of uses and goes beyond entertainment options. But without control and the right middle ground, it can lead to more harm than good. Striking a balance is therefore of utmost importance in order to make the best out of internet use.
*CTM is Macau’s main telecommunications operator
Photo courtesy by Unsplash
