benefits of using internet essay

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Essay on Importance of Internet: Samples for Students

Updated on
Jun 20, 2024

Internet is not just a need or luxury, it has become a household necessity. It was used as a source of entertainment but now it is impossible to work in offices or study without the Internet. When the global pandemic locked everyone in their house, it became an important medium to connect, study and work. Students were able to study without the risk of catching COVID-19 because of the Internet. The importance of the internet is also a common topic in various entrance exams such as SAT , TOEFL , and UPSC . In this blog, you will learn how to write an essay on the importance of the Internet.

This Blog Includes:

Tips to write the perfect essay on internet, sample 1 of essay on the importance of the internet (100 words), sample essay 2 – importance of the internet (150 words), sample essay 3 on use of internet for student (300 words).

Nikita Puri

Nikita is a creative writer and editor, who is always ready to learn new skills. She has great knowledge about study abroad universities, researching and writing blogs about them. Being a perfectionist, she has a habit of keeping her tasks complete on time before the OCD hits her. When Nikita is not busy working, you can find her eating while binge-watching The office. Also, she breathes music. She has done her bachelor's from Delhi University and her master's from Jamia Millia Islamia.

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800 Words Essay On Internet in English for Students

The internet has transformed the world in ways that were unimaginable just a few decades ago. It has revolutionized how we communicate, access information, conduct business, and even how we entertain ourselves. The internet has become an integral part of our daily lives, and it’s hard to imagine a world without it.

At its core, the Internet is a vast network of interconnected computers and servers that allows for the exchange of information and data across the globe. It was originally conceived as a way for researchers and scientists to share information and collaborate on projects, but it has since evolved into a ubiquitous platform that has permeated every aspect of modern life.

One of the most significant impacts of the internet has been on communication. Before the internet, communication was limited by geography and time zones. People had to rely on physical mail, telephone calls, or face-to-face meetings to communicate with one another. The internet has made communication instantaneous and borderless. With the rise of email, instant messaging, video conferencing, and social media platforms, people can communicate with each other from anywhere in the world, at any time.

The internet has also revolutionized the way we access information. In the past, people had to rely on physical libraries, books, and other printed materials to access information. Today, with the internet, a wealth of information is available at our fingertips. From online encyclopedias to news websites, academic journals, and online databases, the internet has made it possible to access information on virtually any topic imaginable.

Another significant impact of the internet has been on the economy and the way we conduct business. The rise of e-commerce has made it possible for businesses to reach a global market and sell their products and services online. Online shopping has become increasingly popular, and many traditional brick-and-mortar stores have had to adapt to this new reality by establishing an online presence.

Furthermore, the internet has enabled the rise of the gig economy, where people can work as freelancers or contractors for multiple clients and projects simultaneously. This has created new opportunities for individuals to earn a living and has allowed businesses to access a global talent pool.

The internet has also had a profound impact on education. Online learning platforms and distance education programs have made it possible for students to access educational resources and attend classes from anywhere in the world. This has opened up new opportunities for people who may not have had access to traditional educational institutions due to geographical or financial constraints.

However, the internet has also brought with it a number of challenges and concerns. One of the biggest concerns is privacy and security. With so much personal information being shared online, there is a risk of data breaches and cyber attacks. Companies and individuals need to be vigilant about protecting their personal information and implementing strong cybersecurity measures.

Another concern is the spread of misinformation and fake news. The internet has made it easier for anyone to publish and share information, regardless of its accuracy or credibility. This has led to the proliferation of fake news and conspiracy theories, which can have serious consequences for individuals and society as a whole.

There is also concern about the impact of the internet on mental health and well-being. The constant exposure to social media and the pressure to curate a perfect online persona can lead to feelings of anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem. Additionally, the addictive nature of the internet and the constant stream of information can contribute to decreased attention spans and difficulty focusing on tasks.

Despite these challenges, the internet has proven to be an invaluable tool that has transformed the way we live, work, and interact with the world around us. It has opened up new opportunities for communication, education, and economic growth, and has made it possible for people to connect and collaborate in ways that were previously unimaginable.

As we move forward, it is important to address the challenges and concerns surrounding the internet while also embracing its potential for innovation and progress. This may involve implementing stronger cybersecurity measures, promoting digital literacy and critical thinking skills, and encouraging responsible and ethical use of the internet.

In conclusion, the internet has had a profound impact on virtually every aspect of modern life. It has revolutionized communication, education, business, and access to information. While it has brought with it a number of challenges and concerns, the internet has proven to be an invaluable tool that has transformed the way we live and interact with the world around us. As we continue to navigate the digital age, it is important to embrace the opportunities that the internet provides while also addressing its challenges and promoting responsible and ethical use.

Uses of Internet

In the 21st century, the internet has become an indispensable part of our daily lives, revolutionizing the way we connect, learn, work, and entertain ourselves. Its multifaceted uses have permeated every aspect of society, bringing about unprecedented convenience and opportunities.

Communication stands out as one of the internet’s most significant uses. Instant messaging, video calls, and social media platforms have transcended geographical barriers, allowing people to stay connected with friends and family across the globe. The internet has turned the world into a global village, fostering a sense of unity and understanding among diverse cultures.

Education has undergone a remarkable transformation due to the internet. Online courses, tutorials, and educational resources have made learning accessible to anyone with an internet connection. Students can pursue degrees, acquire new skills, and access a wealth of information at their fingertips, democratizing education and breaking down traditional barriers to learning.

The internet has also redefined the way we work. Remote collaboration tools, cloud computing, and virtual offices have become essential components of the modern workplace. This shift has not only increased efficiency but has also opened up new opportunities for freelancers and remote workers, contributing to the rise of the gig economy.

In the realm of information, the internet has become an unparalleled resource. Search engines allow us to access vast amounts of information on any topic imaginable. This democratization of information has empowered individuals, encouraging critical thinking and facilitating informed decision-making.

Entertainment has undergone a digital revolution, with streaming services, online gaming, and social media platforms providing endless avenues for amusement. The internet has not only transformed how we consume content but has also given rise to new forms of artistic expression and creativity.

In conclusion, the internet’s uses are multifaceted and far-reaching, impacting every facet of our lives. From connecting people across the globe to revolutionizing education, work, and entertainment, the internet continues to be a transformative force, shaping the present and influencing the future. As we navigate the digital landscape, it is essential to harness the potential of the internet responsibly, ensuring that it remains a force for positive change in the years to come.

Convenience Due to Internet

The advent of the internet has ushered in an era of unprecedented convenience, transforming the way we live, work, and interact with the world. In our fast-paced lives, the internet has become a cornerstone of efficiency and ease, offering a multitude of conveniences that have reshaped our daily routines.

Communication is perhaps the most obvious and impactful convenience brought about by the internet. Instant messaging, email, and social media platforms have revolutionized the way we connect with others. Whether it’s staying in touch with loved ones, collaborating with colleagues, or reaching out to friends across the globe, the internet has made communication instantaneous and seamless.

The convenience of online shopping has fundamentally altered the retail landscape. With just a few clicks, consumers can browse, compare prices, and purchase a vast array of products from the comfort of their homes. The rise of e-commerce platforms has not only made shopping more convenient but has also introduced the concept of doorstep delivery, saving time and eliminating the need for physical store visits.

Information retrieval has been transformed by the internet’s vast repository of knowledge. Search engines provide instant access to information on any conceivable topic, enabling users to quickly find answers, conduct research, and stay informed. This ease of information retrieval has empowered individuals, making knowledge more accessible than ever before.

The workplace has undergone a paradigm shift with the internet, enabling remote work and flexible schedules. Online collaboration tools, cloud computing, and virtual communication platforms have made it possible for individuals to work from virtually anywhere, reducing the constraints of traditional office settings and commuting.

Entertainment has also become infinitely more convenient through streaming services, online gaming, and digital media platforms. The ability to access a diverse range of content on-demand has given consumers unprecedented control over their entertainment choices, eliminating the need to adhere to fixed schedules or physical media.

In conclusion, the internet has woven a tapestry of convenience into the fabric of our lives. From streamlined communication and effortless online shopping to boundless information access and flexible work arrangements, the conveniences offered by the internet have become integral to our modern existence. As we navigate this digital landscape, the ongoing evolution of internet technologies continues to enhance and redefine the meaning of convenience in our interconnected world.

Also Read: Rabindranath Tagore Essay in English For Students 500+ Words Essay on Mother Teresa in English For Students Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru Essay in English For Students APJ Abdul Kalam Essay For Students: Check 500 Words Essay

Essay On Internet- FAQs

What is internet short essay.

In the modern time, internet has become is one of the most powerful and interesting tools all across the world. The Internet is a network of networks and collection of many services and resources which benefits us in various ways. Using internet we can access World Wide Web from any place.

What is Internet in 150 words?

The internet is the most recent man-made creation that connects the world. The world has narrowed down after the invention of the internet. It has demolished all boundaries, which were the barriers between people and has made everything accessible. The internet is helpful to us in different ways.

What is internet 100 words?

A. The internet, a recent man-made marvel, has brought the world closer. It has shattered all barriers and made everything accessible. The internet serves us in countless ways, from sharing information with people across the world to staying connected with our loved ones.

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Short Essay on Advantages and Disadvantages of the Internet [100, 200, 400 Words] With PDF

In this lesson, you will learn how you can write short essays on the advantages and disadvantages of the Internet. I will write three sets of sample essays here in very simple words for a better understanding of all kinds of students.

Short essay on advantages and disadvantages of the internet in 100 words, short essay on advantages and disadvantages of the internet in 200 words, short essay on advantages and disadvantages of the internet in 400 words.

Feature image of Short Essay on Advantages and Disadvantages of the Internet

Today any mode of communication happens through the use of the internet. The internet is a gigantic network that connects the entire world and brings the world into our grip. We are aware of everything because of the internet. It has its own merits and demerits. If we think of the advantages of the internet then there are many.

It helps us to connect, learn, contact, and also send messages to the farthest places. Without it, we are simply blind. Again excessive use of the internet is dangerous. It creates an addiction in users and pulls them towards harmful circles. Their lives are destroyed. Too much internet can create mental disorders. So we must be careful in using this useful product and maintain our own safety.

Today modern systems are controlled by the Internet. Without it, we can’t even lead our basic needs. The Internet is a huge global network system that has the following advantages and disadvantages.

The Internet provides us with faster communication to connect with anyone using different calling modes. Businesses are getting benefited because of the communication facility provided by the internet. The internet is now helping in online education as well. Students can now access many books online without spending a penny. Trade and commerce are easier now. Also, we are receiving information every day through online news. Online banking, ordering foods, clothes, medicines, and groceries, all have become easier due to the internet facility.

However, every boon has its own disadvantages as well. Due to excess use of the internet people are becoming lazy and homebound. The greatest problem with the internet is the lack of privacy. At any moment private information can be leaked and exploited to harm others. Youngsters are getting into unnecessary addiction to online games and dangers. Frauds and online looting are daily incidents. Bank details are often getting destroyed and misused.

Hence we must remember science is supposed to be a boon and not a curse. Humans are given the power to control the world of the Internet and save others from its exploitation. The internet must be used for overall well-being without any harm

The Internet is one of the most useful and important communication setups in our lives. By the internet, we mean a huge global connecting system or a network that joins everyone together in one string. The Internet has lots of facilities as well as disadvantages. Like any scientific invention, it helps in several ways and also destroys our lives. The following advantages and disadvantages are described.

The greatest gift that the internet has given us is the facility to communicate easily with anyone around the world. Earlier it was impossible to even think about this. But now with the help of the internet, we can chat, make video calls, send voice messages, and also entertain ourselves with different sorts of communication applications. Huge business organisations and other setups are getting lots of facilities due to the internet.

The internet again is used for education. Today online education is a way of learning. Due to the internet, one can surf through Wikipedia and different documents available online and get knowledge of several things in the world. Lots of expensive books can be accessed online through the internet. So it enables many poor children to learn better.

Banking is one of the significant aspects of the internet. Earlier people has to stand in long queues and wait for banking work to be done. But now just sitting at home, one can do any bank work through the internet. Receiving groceries and medicine of any kind online is more accessible due to internet availability.

However, the internet has several disadvantages and dangerous consequences. The world is extremely open through the internet and so anything can happen at any time. Youngsters get addicted to online games which harms them mentally and physically. They forget their studies and get involved completely in the world of the internet and suffer from severe depression and their future is destroyed.

Online theft and fraud cases are quite common on the internet. Nowadays all official documents are available online and hence due to online fraud, many people lose their hard-earned money. Banking frauds can also create dangerous results.

The Internet is also a place with no privacy. So people are criticized often and as a result many commit suicide for trolling. People become extremely harsh on the Internet and this lack of care for the other person pulls them away from nature.

So it is always advisable to use the internet with caution. Anything that is good can create a disaster at any moment. So a humble use of the internet is the best choice.

Hopefully, after going through this lesson, you have a holistic idea of this topic. If you still have any doubts regarding this context, kindly keep me posted through some quick comments below.

Thank you.

The Advantages and Disadvantages of the Internet Essay

To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
As a template for you assignment

Introduction

Some of the advantages, the disadvantages and drawbacks.

Since the advent of humans on this planet, a long way has been passed during the journey that has progressed from the Iron Age until the present era of information technology. During this passage of time, more facilities and amenities have been developed by man, which has revolutionized and benefited the human race around the world. The invention of computers has been considered one of the major twists during the twentieth century. Approximately two decades back, most of the populace was practically unknown with the term of internet. However, nowadays, this term has been enveloped in almost all the homes, offices, malls, and several places around the world. Man has been benefiting from the abovementioned term that has powerfully provided an informative as well as an interactive platform throughout the globe. (Gattiker, pp. 55-61, 2001).

Briefly, various services and resources have been collected and provided by the internet for the improvement and promotion of humankind. In the history of humankind, the field of communication has developed a lot, and one of the most outstanding innovations is conceivable the Internet. However, everything has its advantages, as well as, disadvantages, and it depends upon the person to either benefit from it or allows the matter to harm the surroundings. Thus, the internet has also advantages, as well as, drawbacks; however, disadvantages have been outweighed by the superior enormity of its advantages.

Although, it is a common thought that the principal ingredients of the internet are e-mail, chat rooms, search engines, and the World Wide Web. However, the internet constitutes more than the abovementioned tools and resources, which will be discussed in this paper. Nowadays, the contemporary state of affairs has been benefiting from this tool, which has proved itself as one of the best among the rest of the world. Today, a single room has been presented as a new and innovative appearance of the whole globe. Currently, a student can acquire his education on the internet without even standing up from his chair. On the other hand, a businessperson can make a deal on the internet with the best suppliers around the world without any visa application, as well as, without any traveling expenses, which was not possible some decades ago.

Moreover, a South African can catch the latest news of an event occurring in an American part of the world, which has only become possible due to the availability of the internet in almost every corner of the world. In addition, thousands of books can be read and studied within mouse clicks, and without collecting these books in bookshelves that require lots of space. Interestingly, shopping can also be done within minutes with the help of credit cards without roaming in the rush of shopping malls, which has been greatly appreciated by the female populace of the globe. Thus, the internet has become a matter of just fingertips and has promoted, as well as, assisted humans in achieving a better and improved place in their lives.

In other words, a small global village has been formed by the creation and introduction of the internet into human lives. Communication has become a matter of seconds from one corner of the world to another. Reliability and speed are being innovated and improved day by day, which has changed the perceptions of humans at all. It is now just a fraction of a second to greet loved ones or study the African culture while residing in the United States. One of the biggest advantages of the internet is the plenty of information that has been provided by this platform. (Gattiker, pp. 23-29, 2001) A virtual library of millions of books has been an innovative wardrobe of the internet, which is one of the major reasons for its popularity and demand around the world. As the result, internet surfing has become one of the common and popular habits of students and children around the world. Today, research work is carried out by the utilization of internet libraries and virtual tours that are provided to internet users. One of the advantages of the internet is its reliability, as the data and information on the internet are updated within seconds. Businesspersons can be informed of trade fairs and exhibitions that would be organized shortly. Thus, the internet has become a necessity, rather than a luxury in almost every part of the world.

Until now, we have described and discussed some of the advantages of the internet, such as communication, information, entertainment, services, e-commerce, etc. Now, the disadvantages and drawbacks of the internet will be discussed in the following pages. As the internet has masses of advantages that have benefited almost every sector of the planet, it has become an addiction and a compulsion for several people. As the result, the internet has become one of the places for theft of personal information that is available on the internet. Nowadays, schools and colleges do not observe fights in their classrooms or grounds, which was a common habit in previous years. One of the reasons is that nowadays, hacking has become an alternative way for many students, and even professionals to take revenge on other persons by stealing their personal information, which can result in emotional trauma or psychological disorder.

Secondly, spamming is another disadvantage of the internet. Several experts have evaluated and noted that frustration and anxiety have been the outcomes of spamming, as the entire system of internet users is obstructed by the illegal act of spamming. Thirdly, one of the basic requirements of the internet is the utilization of computers, which is made difficult by the viruses that threaten and harm computer systems. It has been observed that several internet systems and businesses attached to the internet have been destroyed and deteriorated due to these virus programs. (Gattiker, pp. 100-107, 2001).

Moreover, pornography is another gigantic weakness and annoyance of the internet. It has been observed by several medical experts that the healthy mental lives of children are being threatened by the abovementioned drawback of the internet. One of the main downsides is that pornographic sites can be found with several easy mouse clicks and can easily endanger the lives of children, which has become a serious issue and concern of most parents around the world.

Several disadvantages have been studied in this paper, which can deteriorate human lives. Havoc and destruction can be created by the internet, and fatal outcomes can be observed by the misuse of this informative and interactive world. Moreover, it has been observed that the attractive world of the internet has resulted in the avoidance of family members by internet-addicted persons, which has worsened the emotional lives of thousands of families around the world. The time of exercise is now given to the chat rooms with unknown internet chatters, who can be nerds, professionals, and sometimes, even criminals.

It has been observed by most professionals that chatting is one of the main factors that have deteriorated and addicted masses of students, children, and internet users around the world. In this regard, different programs and activities are being introduced by the schools, colleges, and universities, to avoid any obsession related to the internet from these students. Thus, the advantages of the internet have outweighed the disadvantages, and humankind has benefited a lot from this informative and resourceful platform, which is still being innovated and improved every day.

Urs E. Gattiker. (2001). The Internet as a Diverse Community. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

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IvyPanda. (2021, September 19). The Advantages and Disadvantages of the Internet. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-advantages-and-disadvantages-of-the-internet/

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IvyPanda . 2021. "The Advantages and Disadvantages of the Internet." September 19, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-advantages-and-disadvantages-of-the-internet/.

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Essay on Benefits of Internet

Students are often asked to write an essay on Benefits of Internet in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Benefits of Internet

Introduction.

The internet is an amazing tool that has transformed our world. It has made information easily accessible and has connected people globally.

The internet has revolutionized education. It provides endless resources for learning, making education more accessible to everyone, regardless of location.

Communication

The internet has made communication faster and easier. With email, video calls, and social media, we can connect with anyone, anywhere, anytime.

Entertainment

The internet offers countless entertainment options, from movies and music to games and social media, keeping us engaged and entertained.

The benefits of the internet are vast and varied, making it a vital tool in our modern world.

250 Words Essay on Benefits of Internet

The internet, a global network of interconnected computers, has revolutionized the way we live, work, and communicate. It has opened up a world of possibilities and opportunities that were previously unimaginable.

Access to Information

One of the primary benefits of the internet is the unprecedented access to information. It has become a vast repository of knowledge, with millions of websites, blogs, and forums that provide information on every conceivable topic. This allows us to learn new skills, stay updated with world news, research complex topics, and access educational resources that enhance our knowledge and understanding.

Communication and Collaboration

The internet has also transformed the way we communicate and collaborate. Email, social media, video conferencing, and instant messaging have made it possible to connect with people anywhere in the world in real-time. This has not only made communication more efficient but also fostered global collaboration and cultural exchange.

Online Services

The internet has led to the emergence of many online services that have made our lives easier. We can shop online, book tickets, pay bills, and access banking services from the comfort of our homes. Additionally, the rise of telemedicine and e-learning has made healthcare and education more accessible.

In conclusion, the internet has numerous benefits that have significantly improved our lives. It has democratized access to information, facilitated global communication, and made a multitude of services accessible online. As we continue to innovate and evolve, the internet’s role in our lives will only continue to grow.

500 Words Essay on Benefits of Internet

The Internet, a vast network of interconnected computers, has revolutionized the way we live, work, and communicate. It has become an indispensable tool in our daily lives, offering a plethora of benefits. This essay explores the various advantages of the Internet, focusing on aspects such as information access, communication, education, and e-commerce.

Information Access

One of the most profound benefits of the Internet is the accessibility to an infinite amount of information. Search engines like Google make it possible for individuals to find information on virtually any topic in seconds. This has not only enhanced our knowledge but also allowed us to make more informed decisions. Moreover, the Internet provides a platform for the sharing of ideas, fostering global awareness and understanding.

The Internet has transformed the way we communicate. Email, social media platforms, and instant messaging apps have made it possible to interact with anyone, anywhere, anytime. The speed and ease of online communication have facilitated international collaboration and made the world seem smaller. Furthermore, the rise of video conferencing technologies has enabled remote work and learning, breaking down geographical barriers.

The advent of e-commerce is another significant benefit of the Internet. Online shopping offers convenience and a wider range of products than traditional retail stores. Consumers can compare prices and read reviews before making a purchase, ensuring they get the best value for their money. Moreover, e-commerce has opened up new opportunities for businesses, allowing them to reach a global customer base.

In conclusion, the Internet offers numerous benefits, from easy access to information and enhanced communication to improved education and e-commerce opportunities. It is a powerful tool that has transformed every aspect of our lives, making the world more interconnected and information more accessible. As we continue to navigate the digital age, it is crucial to harness the potential of the Internet while being mindful of the challenges it presents. Its benefits are a testament to human innovation and the limitless possibilities of technology.

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14 Ways the Internet Improves Our Lives

March 1, 2022
Advocacy , General

The internet is a near ubiquitous aspect of modern life — making it easy to take for granted all the skills, tools, opportunities, and benefits that it provides. In celebration of CTN’s 14 years of digital inclusion work, we’ve compiled 14 ways that internet access and digital skills can improve someone’s quality of life and h ow the internet helps us in our daily life.

Table of Contents

14 Benefits of the Internet and How the Internet Has Made Society Better:

Providing better access to health information and options..

Telemedicine can offer convenient, flexible, and more affordable care options to millions of Americans — especially those who lack accessible and quality healthcare in their region or need to stay at home due to health concerns or disabilities. While the benefits of this online tool are clear, they often go underutilized by the people who need it most due to lack of internet access.

Making it easier to communicate with friends and family.

one of the good things about the internet is that the Internet has made it easier to communicate with friends and family

From video call platforms to social media outlets, friends and family can connect more easily than ever before. For people who are not physically located near their community or have family members in other countries, the internet provides a bridge of connection.

Offering a wealth of online activities and experiences to enjoy remotely.

For older adults or people who might have difficulty leaving the house, the digital world is a gateway to exploration and enjoyment. One of CTN’s learners, Brenda Joyce , uses her tablet and digital skills to join virtual events, like collaging classes and the Frick Museum’s Cocktails with a Curator.

Promoting workforce development skills.

A report by Burning Glass Technologies found that more than 8 in 10 middle-skill jobs require digital skills. With access to the internet and the knowledge to use it, people can work towards higher-paying jobs, develop new skills, and better participate in a digital workforce.

Increasing access to social services and benefits.

There are a lot of helpful resources available that people might not know about or access if they’re not online. Benefits and social services — like the Affordable Connectivity Program — typically have portals, streamlined applications, and qualification info online.

Decreasing isolation and loneliness.

According to our partner Metta Fund , 7% of older adults spend one hour or less socializing with friends or family in one week. This is especially troubling when loneliness is linked to serious mental and physical health conditions.

Empowering people with a sense of agency.

For Luis , one of CTN’s Home Connect learners, the internet prompted a shift in his daily life. He uses his device to listen to music, audiobooks, and religious services. He was able to update his resume and apply for jobs. He even assisted others in getting registered online for vaccine appointments! With the tools of technology, older adults like Luis can independently pursue opportunities and interests online.

Improving education and learning opportunities.

why the internet is good, the Internet has improved education and learning opportunities

The pandemic revealed just how essential internet access is for k-12 students, and its importance will not fade in the coming years. In a 2019 Gallup survey, an overwhelming majority of teachers (85%), principals (96%), and administrators (96%) favored increased use of digital learning tools.

Participating in democracy and civic duties.

According to the Center for American Progress , those who register to vote online are more likely to participate in elections. Not only does the internet make it easier and more accessible to register to vote, but it also helps provide thorough information on candidates and upcoming elections.

Searching and applying for jobs.

The internet is now essential for finding new job opportunities, writing resumes, and submitting applications. Before getting connected to our Sunnyvale program, Laurie Rehaney was struggling to get back on her feet. When she received a Chromebook and training, she was able to find a full-time position working in home care!

Maintaining curiosity, finding new interests, and pursuing hobbies.

The highly connected nature of the web lends itself to discovery. One of our Texas-based learners, Patricia Blaine , uses her tablet to take virtual piano lessons. She was excited to discover how easy it is to record and upload videos to YouTube and is hoping to share her music with others.

Improving the economy for everyone.

A Deloitte study found that a 10% increase in broadband access in 2014 would have resulted in more than 875,000 additional U.S. jobs and $186 billion more in economic output in 2019. Not only is access to the internet helpful for individuals’ economic well-being, but it is also essential for growing our digital economy.

Strengthening communities and social ties.

The internet helps people organize, collaborate, and share information with large numbers of people. For our partner Calle 24 — the leading nonprofit of San Francisco’s Latino Cultural District — lacking the internet puts older businesses at a disadvantage when competing with new, trendy spots. With social media and emails, the Latino Cultural District can distribute information about upcoming events to a wider audience while better engaging with the established community.

Creating a better world.

one of the positive effects of the internet is that it has made the world a better place

While the benefits of the internet and technology are clear, accessing them is still a challenge for millions of Americans. This means we must work to build an equitable and inclusive internet that improves the lives of all people — regardless of their age, income level, or primary language. Want to help us expand digital equity and inclusion? Check out our volunteer and partner opportunities to get involved!

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Essay On Internet for Students and Children

500+ words essay on internet.

We live in the age of the internet. Also, it has become an important part of our life that we can’t live without it. Besides, the internet is an invention of high-end science and modern technology . Apart from that, we are connected to internet 24×7. Also, we can send big and small messages and information faster than ever. In this essay on the Internet, we are going to discuss various things related to the internet.

Reach of Internet

It is very difficult to estimate the area that the internet cover. Also, every second million people remain connected to it with any problem or issue. Apart from that, just like all the things the internet also has some good and bad effect on the life of people. So the first thing which we have to do is learn about the good and bad effect of the internet.

Good effects of the internet mean all those things that the internet make possible. Also, these things make our life easier and safer.

Bad effects of the internet mean all those things that we can no longer do because of the internet. Also, these things cause trouble for oneself and others too.

You can access in any corner of the world. Also, it is very easy to use and manage. In today’s world, we cannot imagine our life without it.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Uses Of Internet

From the time it first came into existence until now the internet has completed a long journey. Also, during this journey, the internet has adopted many things and became more user-friendly and interactive. Besides, every big and small things are available on internet and article or material that you require can be obtainable from internet.

Tim Berners-Lee can be called one of the main father of internet as he invented/discovered the WWW (World Wide Web) which is used on every website. Also, there are millions of pages and website on the internet that it will take you years to go through all of them.

The Internet can be used to do different things like you can learn, teach, research, write, share, receive, e-mail , explore, and surf the internet.

Read Essay on Technology here

Convenience Due To Internet

Because of internet, our lives have become more convenient as compared to the times when we don’t have internet. Earlier, we have to stand in queues to send mails (letters), for withdrawing or depositing money, to book tickets, etc. but after the dawn of the internet, all these things become quite easy. Also, we do not have to waste our precious time standing in queues.

Also, the internet has contributed a lot to the environment as much of the offices (government and private), school and colleges have become digital that saves countless paper.

Although, there is no doubt that the internet had made our life easier and convenient but we can’t leave the fact that it has caused many bigger problems in the past. And with the speed, we are becoming addict to it a day in will come when it will become our basic necessity.

{ “@context”: “https://schema.org”, “@type”: “FAQPage”, “mainEntity”: [ { “@type”: “Question”, “name”: “What are the limitation of internet?”, “acceptedAnswer”: { “@type”: “Answer”, “text”: “Although internet can help you with anything but there are certain limitation to it. First of it does not have a physical appearance. Secondly, it does not have emotions and thirdly, it can’t send you to a place where you can’t go (physically).” } }, { “@type”: “Question”, “name”: “What is the ideal age for using internet?”, “acceptedAnswer”: { “@type”: “Answer”, “text”: “Nowadays everybody from small kids to adult is internet addicts. So it is difficult to decide an ideal age for using internet. However, according to researches using internet from an early age can cause problems in the child so internet usage of small children should be controlled or banned.” } } ] }

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The Importance of The Internet in The Modern World

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Published: Sep 19, 2019

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The Changes That the Internet Has Brought to Our Lives

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Need editing and proofreading services, 10 best ai essay outline generators of 2024.

Tags: Artificial Intelligence , Essay , Writing Tips

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Also read: Compare and Contrast Essay | Quick Guide with Examples

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You might find the following articles helpful:

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100 Best College Essay Topics & How to Pick the Perfect One!
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The internet has become an essential part of our lives, and it has brought about many benefits for people of all ages. In particular, students have greatly benefited from the advent of the internet. The internet has opened up a vast amount of information and resources that can aid students in their studies. In this essay, I will discuss the advantages of the internet for students.

First and foremost, the internet provides students with access to a wealth of information. Gone are the days when students had to rely solely on textbooks and the knowledge of their teachers. With the internet, students can now access millions of pages of information on any topic imaginable. This has greatly enhanced the learning experience, as students can now research topics in greater depth, and they have access to a wider range of resources.

Secondly, the internet has made education more accessible to students. Online courses and tutorials are now widely available, and students can take advantage of these resources from the comfort of their own homes. This has made education more affordable and convenient, as students no longer have to travel to attend classes.

Thirdly, the internet has enabled students to collaborate with their peers more easily. Online forums and chat rooms provide students with a platform to discuss topics and exchange ideas with others from all over the world. This has helped to broaden students’ perspectives and has enabled them to learn from each other.

Fourthly, the internet has made it easier for students to communicate with their teachers. Email and video conferencing have made it possible for students to ask questions and receive feedback from their teachers outside of class time. This has provided students with greater support and has helped to enhance their learning experience.

Finally, the internet has provided students with access to a vast range of multimedia resources. Videos, podcasts, and interactive simulations can aid students in their learning, and they can provide a more engaging and interactive experience than traditional textbooks.

In conclusion, the internet has greatly benefited students in many ways. It has provided them with access to a wealth of information, made education more accessible, enabled collaboration with peers, facilitated communication with teachers, and provided access to multimedia resources. As such, it is essential that students make use of the internet to enhance their learning experience.

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The Internet is the decisive technology of the Information Age, as the electrical engine was the vector of technological transformation of the Industrial Age. This global network of computer networks, largely based nowadays on platforms of wireless communication, provides ubiquitous capacity of multimodal, interactive communication in chosen time, transcending space. The Internet is not really a new technology: its ancestor, the Arpanet, was first deployed in 1969 (Abbate 1999). But it was in the 1990s when it was privatized and released from the control of the U.S. Department of Commerce that it diffused around the world at extraordinary speed: in 1996 the first survey of Internet users counted about 40 million; in 2013 they are over 2.5 billion, with China accounting for the largest number of Internet users. Furthermore, for some time the spread of the Internet was limited by the difficulty to lay out land-based telecommunications infrastructure in the emerging countries. This has changed with the explosion of wireless communication in the early twenty-first century. Indeed, in 1991, there were about 16 million subscribers of wireless devices in the world, in 2013 they are close to 7 billion (in a planet of 7.7 billion human beings). Counting on the family and village uses of mobile phones, and taking into consideration the limited use of these devices among children under five years of age, we can say that humankind is now almost entirely connected, albeit with great levels of inequality in the bandwidth as well as in the efficiency and price of the service.

At the heart of these communication networks the Internet ensures the production, distribution, and use of digitized information in all formats. According to the study published by Martin Hilbert in Science (Hilbert and López 2011), 95 percent of all information existing in the planet is digitized and most of it is accessible on the Internet and other computer networks.

The speed and scope of the transformation of our communication environment by Internet and wireless communication has triggered all kind of utopian and dystopian perceptions around the world.

As in all moments of major technological change, people, companies, and institutions feel the depth of the change, but they are often overwhelmed by it, out of sheer ignorance of its effects.

The media aggravate the distorted perception by dwelling into scary reports on the basis of anecdotal observation and biased commentary. If there is a topic in which social sciences, in their diversity, should contribute to the full understanding of the world in which we live, it is precisely the area that has come to be named in academia as Internet Studies. Because, in fact, academic research knows a great deal on the interaction between Internet and society, on the basis of methodologically rigorous empirical research conducted in a plurality of cultural and institutional contexts. Any process of major technological change generates its own mythology. In part because it comes into practice before scientists can assess its effects and implications, so there is always a gap between social change and its understanding. For instance, media often report that intense use of the Internet increases the risk of alienation, isolation, depression, and withdrawal from society. In fact, available evidence shows that there is either no relationship or a positive cumulative relationship between the Internet use and the intensity of sociability. We observe that, overall, the more sociable people are, the more they use the Internet. And the more they use the Internet, the more they increase their sociability online and offline, their civic engagement, and the intensity of family and friendship relationships, in all cultures—with the exception of a couple of early studies of the Internet in the 1990s, corrected by their authors later (Castells 2001; Castells et al. 2007; Rainie and Wellman 2012; Center for the Digital Future 2012 et al.).

Thus, the purpose of this chapter will be to summarize some of the key research findings on the social effects of the Internet relying on the evidence provided by some of the major institutions specialized in the social study of the Internet. More specifically, I will be using the data from the world at large: the World Internet Survey conducted by the Center for the Digital Future, University of Southern California; the reports of the British Computer Society (BCS), using data from the World Values Survey of the University of Michigan; the Nielsen reports for a variety of countries; and the annual reports from the International Telecommunications Union. For data on the United States, I have used the Pew American Life and Internet Project of the Pew Institute. For the United Kingdom, the Oxford Internet Survey from the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, as well as the Virtual Society Project from the Economic and Social Science Research Council. For Spain, the Project Internet Catalonia of the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3) of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC); the various reports on the information society from Telefónica; and from the Orange Foundation. For Portugal, the Observatório de Sociedade da Informação e do Conhecimento (OSIC) in Lisbon. I would like to emphasize that most of the data in these reports converge toward similar trends. Thus I have selected for my analysis the findings that complement and reinforce each other, offering a consistent picture of the human experience on the Internet in spite of the human diversity.

Given the aim of this publication to reach a broad audience, I will not present in this text the data supporting the analysis presented here. Instead, I am referring the interested reader to the web sources of the research organizations mentioned above, as well as to selected bibliographic references discussing the empirical foundation of the social trends reported here.

Technologies of Freedom, the Network Society, and the Culture of Autonomy

In order to fully understand the effects of the Internet on society, we should remember that technology is material culture. It is produced in a social process in a given institutional environment on the basis of the ideas, values, interests, and knowledge of their producers, both their early producers and their subsequent producers. In this process we must include the users of the technology, who appropriate and adapt the technology rather than adopting it, and by so doing they modify it and produce it in an endless process of interaction between technological production and social use. So, to assess the relevance of Internet in society we must recall the specific characteristics of Internet as a technology. Then we must place it in the context of the transformation of the overall social structure, as well as in relationship to the culture characteristic of this social structure. Indeed, we live in a new social structure, the global network society, characterized by the rise of a new culture, the culture of autonomy.

Internet is a technology of freedom, in the terms coined by Ithiel de Sola Pool in 1973, coming from a libertarian culture, paradoxically financed by the Pentagon for the benefit of scientists, engineers, and their students, with no direct military application in mind (Castells 2001). The expansion of the Internet from the mid-1990s onward resulted from the combination of three main factors:

The technological discovery of the World Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee and his willingness to distribute the source code to improve it by the open-source contribution of a global community of users, in continuity with the openness of the TCP/IP Internet protocols. The web keeps running under the same principle of open source. And two-thirds of web servers are operated by Apache, an open-source server program.
Institutional change in the management of the Internet, keeping it under the loose management of the global Internet community, privatizing it, and allowing both commercial uses and cooperative uses.
Major changes in social structure, culture, and social behavior: networking as a prevalent organizational form; individuation as the main orientation of social behavior; and the culture of autonomy as the culture of the network society.

I will elaborate on these major trends.

Our society is a network society; that is, a society constructed around personal and organizational networks powered by digital networks and communicated by the Internet. And because networks are global and know no boundaries, the network society is a global network society. This historically specific social structure resulted from the interaction between the emerging technological paradigm based on the digital revolution and some major sociocultural changes. A primary dimension of these changes is what has been labeled the rise of the Me-centered society, or, in sociological terms, the process of individuation, the decline of community understood in terms of space, work, family, and ascription in general. This is not the end of community, and not the end of place-based interaction, but there is a shift toward the reconstruction of social relationships, including strong cultural and personal ties that could be considered a form of community, on the basis of individual interests, values, and projects.

The process of individuation is not just a matter of cultural evolution, it is materially produced by the new forms of organizing economic activities, and social and political life, as I analyzed in my trilogy on the Information Age (Castells 1996–2003). It is based on the transformation of space (metropolitan life), work and economic activity (rise of the networked enterprise and networked work processes), culture and communication (shift from mass communication based on mass media to mass self-communication based on the Internet); on the crisis of the patriarchal family, with increasing autonomy of its individual members; the substitution of media politics for mass party politics; and globalization as the selective networking of places and processes throughout the planet.

But individuation does not mean isolation, or even less the end of community. Sociability is reconstructed as networked individualism and community through a quest for like-minded individuals in a process that combines online interaction with offline interaction, cyberspace and the local space. Individuation is the key process in constituting subjects (individual or collective), networking is the organizational form constructed by these subjects; this is the network society, and the form of sociability is what Rainie and Wellman (2012) conceptualized as networked individualism. Network technologies are of course the medium for this new social structure and this new culture (Papacharissi 2010).

As stated above, academic research has established that the Internet does not isolate people, nor does it reduce their sociability; it actually increases sociability, as shown by myself in my studies in Catalonia (Castells 2007), Rainie and Wellman in the United States (2012), Cardoso in Portugal (2010), and the World Internet Survey for the world at large (Center for the Digital Future 2012 et al.). Furthermore, a major study by Michael Willmott for the British Computer Society (Trajectory Partnership 2010) has shown a positive correlation, for individuals and for countries, between the frequency and intensity of the use of the Internet and the psychological indicators of personal happiness. He used global data for 35,000 people obtained from the World Wide Survey of the University of Michigan from 2005 to 2007. Controlling for other factors, the study showed that Internet use empowers people by increasing their feelings of security, personal freedom, and influence, all feelings that have a positive effect on happiness and personal well-being. The effect is particularly positive for people with lower income and who are less qualified, for people in the developing world, and for women. Age does not affect the positive relationship; it is significant for all ages. Why women? Because they are at the center of the network of their families, Internet helps them to organize their lives. Also, it helps them to overcome their isolation, particularly in patriarchal societies. The Internet also contributes to the rise of the culture of autonomy.

The key for the process of individuation is the construction of autonomy by social actors, who become subjects in the process. They do so by defining their specific projects in interaction with, but not submission to, the institutions of society. This is the case for a minority of individuals, but because of their capacity to lead and mobilize they introduce a new culture in every domain of social life: in work (entrepreneurship), in the media (the active audience), in the Internet (the creative user), in the market (the informed and proactive consumer), in education (students as informed critical thinkers, making possible the new frontier of e-learning and m-learning pedagogy), in health (the patient-centered health management system) in e-government (the informed, participatory citizen), in social movements (cultural change from the grassroots, as in feminism or environmentalism), and in politics (the independent-minded citizen able to participate in self-generated political networks).

There is increasing evidence of the direct relationship between the Internet and the rise of social autonomy. From 2002 to 2007 I directed in Catalonia one of the largest studies ever conducted in Europe on the Internet and society, based on 55,000 interviews, one-third of them face to face (IN3 2002–07). As part of this study, my collaborators and I compared the behavior of Internet users to non-Internet users in a sample of 3,000 people, representative of the population of Catalonia. Because in 2003 only about 40 percent of people were Internet users we could really compare the differences in social behavior for users and non-users, something that nowadays would be more difficult given the 79 percent penetration rate of the Internet in Catalonia. Although the data are relatively old, the findings are not, as more recent studies in other countries (particularly in Portugal) appear to confirm the observed trends. We constructed scales of autonomy in different dimensions. Only between 10 and 20 percent of the population, depending on dimensions, were in the high level of autonomy. But we focused on this active segment of the population to explore the role of the Internet in the construction of autonomy. Using factor analysis we identified six major types of autonomy based on projects of individuals according to their practices:

a) professional development b) communicative autonomy c) entrepreneurship d) autonomy of the body e) sociopolitical participation f) personal, individual autonomy

These six types of autonomous practices were statistically independent among themselves. But each one of them correlated positively with Internet use in statistically significant terms, in a self-reinforcing loop (time sequence): the more one person was autonomous, the more she/he used the web, and the more she/he used the web, the more autonomous she/he became (Castells et al. 2007). This is a major empirical finding. Because if the dominant cultural trend in our society is the search for autonomy, and if the Internet powers this search, then we are moving toward a society of assertive individuals and cultural freedom, regardless of the barriers of rigid social organizations inherited from the Industrial Age. From this Internet-based culture of autonomy have emerged a new kind of sociability, networked sociability, and a new kind of sociopolitical practice, networked social movements and networked democracy. I will now turn to the analysis of these two fundamental trends at the source of current processes of social change worldwide.

The Rise of Social Network Sites on the Internet

Since 2002 (creation of Friendster, prior to Facebook) a new socio-technical revolution has taken place on the Internet: the rise of social network sites where now all human activities are present, from personal interaction to business, to work, to culture, to communication, to social movements, and to politics.

Social Network Sites are web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system.

(Boyd and Ellison 2007, 2)

Social networking uses, in time globally spent, surpassed e-mail in November 2007. It surpassed e-mail in number of users in July 2009. In terms of users it reached 1 billion by September 2010, with Facebook accounting for about half of it. In 2013 it has almost doubled, particularly because of increasing use in China, India, and Latin America. There is indeed a great diversity of social networking sites (SNS) by countries and cultures. Facebook, started for Harvard-only members in 2004, is present in most of the world, but QQ, Cyworld, and Baidu dominate in China; Orkut in Brazil; Mixi in Japan; etc. In terms of demographics, age is the main differential factor in the use of SNS, with a drop of frequency of use after 50 years of age, and particularly 65. But this is not just a teenager’s activity. The main Facebook U.S. category is in the age group 35–44, whose frequency of use of the site is higher than for younger people. Nearly 60 percent of adults in the U.S. have at least one SNS profile, 30 percent two, and 15 percent three or more. Females are as present as males, except when in a society there is a general gender gap. We observe no differences in education and class, but there is some class specialization of SNS, such as Myspace being lower than FB; LinkedIn is for professionals.

Thus, the most important activity on the Internet at this point in time goes through social networking, and SNS have become the chosen platforms for all kind of activities, not just personal friendships or chatting, but for marketing, e-commerce, education, cultural creativity, media and entertainment distribution, health applications, and sociopolitical activism. This is a significant trend for society at large. Let me explore the meaning of this trend on the basis of the still scant evidence.

Social networking sites are constructed by users themselves building on specific criteria of grouping. There is entrepreneurship in the process of creating sites, then people choose according to their interests and projects. Networks are tailored by people themselves with different levels of profiling and privacy. The key to success is not anonymity, but on the contrary, self-presentation of a real person connecting to real people (in some cases people are excluded from the SNS when they fake their identity). So, it is a self-constructed society by networking connecting to other networks. But this is not a virtual society. There is a close connection between virtual networks and networks in life at large. This is a hybrid world, a real world, not a virtual world or a segregated world.

People build networks to be with others, and to be with others they want to be with on the basis of criteria that include those people who they already know (a selected sub-segment). Most users go on the site every day. It is permanent connectivity. If we needed an answer to what happened to sociability in the Internet world, here it is:

There is a dramatic increase in sociability, but a different kind of sociability, facilitated and dynamized by permanent connectivity and social networking on the web.

Based on the time when Facebook was still releasing data (this time is now gone) we know that in 2009 users spent 500 billion minutes per month. This is not just about friendship or interpersonal communication. People do things together, share, act, exactly as in society, although the personal dimension is always there. Thus, in the U.S. 38 percent of adults share content, 21 percent remix, 14 percent blog, and this is growing exponentially, with development of technology, software, and SNS entrepreneurial initiatives. On Facebook, in 2009 the average user was connected to 60 pages, groups, and events, people interacted per month to 160 million objects (pages, groups, events), the average user created 70 pieces of content per month, and there were 25 billion pieces of content shared per month (web links, news stories, blogs posts, notes, photos). SNS are living spaces connecting all dimensions of people’s experience. This transforms culture because people share experience with a low emotional cost, while saving energy and effort. They transcend time and space, yet they produce content, set up links, and connect practices. It is a constantly networked world in every dimension of human experience. They co-evolve in permanent, multiple interaction. But they choose the terms of their co-evolution.

Thus, people live their physical lives but increasingly connect on multiple dimensions in SNS.

Paradoxically, the virtual life is more social than the physical life, now individualized by the organization of work and urban living.

But people do not live a virtual reality, indeed it is a real virtuality, since social practices, sharing, mixing, and living in society is facilitated in the virtuality, in what I called time ago the “space of flows” (Castells 1996).

Because people are increasingly at ease in the multi-textuality and multidimensionality of the web, marketers, work organizations, service agencies, government, and civil society are migrating massively to the Internet, less and less setting up alternative sites, more and more being present in the networks that people construct by themselves and for themselves, with the help of Internet social networking entrepreneurs, some of whom become billionaires in the process, actually selling freedom and the possibility of the autonomous construction of lives. This is the liberating potential of the Internet made material practice by these social networking sites. The largest of these social networking sites are usually bounded social spaces managed by a company. However, if the company tries to impede free communication it may lose many of its users, because the entry barriers in this industry are very low. A couple of technologically savvy youngsters with little capital can set up a site on the Internet and attract escapees from a more restricted Internet space, as happened to AOL and other networking sites of the first generation, and as could happen to Facebook or any other SNS if they are tempted to tinker with the rules of openness (Facebook tried to make users pay and retracted within days). So, SNS are often a business, but they are in the business of selling freedom, free expression, chosen sociability. When they tinker with this promise they risk their hollowing by net citizens migrating with their friends to more friendly virtual lands.

Perhaps the most telling expression of this new freedom is the transformation of sociopolitical practices on the Internet.

Communication Power: Mass-Self Communication and the Transformation of Politics

Power and counterpower, the foundational relationships of society, are constructed in the human mind, through the construction of meaning and the processing of information according to certain sets of values and interests (Castells 2009).

Ideological apparatuses and the mass media have been key tools of mediating communication and asserting power, and still are. But the rise of a new culture, the culture of autonomy, has found in Internet and mobile communication networks a major medium of mass self-communication and self-organization.

The key source for the social production of meaning is the process of socialized communication. I define communication as the process of sharing meaning through the exchange of information. Socialized communication is the one that exists in the public realm, that has the potential of reaching society at large. Therefore, the battle over the human mind is largely played out in the process of socialized communication. And this is particularly so in the network society, the social structure of the Information Age, which is characterized by the pervasiveness of communication networks in a multimodal hypertext.

The ongoing transformation of communication technology in the digital age extends the reach of communication media to all domains of social life in a network that is at the same time global and local, generic and customized, in an ever-changing pattern.

As a result, power relations, that is the relations that constitute the foundation of all societies, as well as the processes challenging institutionalized power relations, are increasingly shaped and decided in the communication field. Meaningful, conscious communication is what makes humans human. Thus, any major transformation in the technology and organization of communication is of utmost relevance for social change. Over the last four decades the advent of the Internet and of wireless communication has shifted the communication process in society at large from mass communication to mass self-communication. This is from a message sent from one to many with little interactivity to a system based on messages from many to many, multimodal, in chosen time, and with interactivity, so that senders are receivers and receivers are senders. And both have access to a multimodal hypertext in the web that constitutes the endlessly changing backbone of communication processes.

The transformation of communication from mass communication to mass self-communication has contributed decisively to alter the process of social change. As power relationships have always been based on the control of communication and information that feed the neural networks constitutive of the human mind, the rise of horizontal networks of communication has created a new landscape of social and political change by the process of disintermediation of the government and corporate controls over communication. This is the power of the network, as social actors build their own networks on the basis of their projects, values, and interests. The outcome of these processes is open ended and dependent on specific contexts. Freedom, in this case freedom of communicate, does not say anything on the uses of freedom in society. This is to be established by scholarly research. But we need to start from this major historical phenomenon: the building of a global communication network based on the Internet, a technology that embodies the culture of freedom that was at its source.

In the first decade of the twenty-first century there have been multiple social movements around the world that have used the Internet as their space of formation and permanent connectivity, among the movements and with society at large. These networked social movements, formed in the social networking sites on the Internet, have mobilized in the urban space and in the institutional space, inducing new forms of social movements that are the main actors of social change in the network society. Networked social movements have been particularly active since 2010, and especially in the Arab revolutions against dictatorships; in Europe and the U.S. as forms of protest against the management of the financial crisis; in Brazil; in Turkey; in Mexico; and in highly diverse institutional contexts and economic conditions. It is precisely the similarity of the movements in extremely different contexts that allows the formulation of the hypothesis that this is the pattern of social movements characteristic of the global network society. In all cases we observe the capacity of these movements for self-organization, without a central leadership, on the basis of a spontaneous emotional movement. In all cases there is a connection between Internet-based communication, mobile networks, and the mass media in different forms, feeding into each other and amplifying the movement locally and globally.

These movements take place in the context of exploitation and oppression, social tensions and social struggles; but struggles that were not able to successfully challenge the state in other instances of revolt are now powered by the tools of mass self-communication. It is not the technology that induces the movements, but without the technology (Internet and wireless communication) social movements would not take the present form of being a challenge to state power. The fact is that technology is material culture (ideas brought into the design) and the Internet materialized the culture of freedom that, as it has been documented, emerged on American campuses in the 1960s. This culture-made technology is at the source of the new wave of social movements that exemplify the depth of the global impact of the Internet in all spheres of social organization, affecting particularly power relationships, the foundation of the institutions of society. (See case studies and an analytical perspective on the interaction between Internet and networked social movements in Castells 2012.)

The Internet, as all technologies, does not produce effects by itself. Yet, it has specific effects in altering the capacity of the communication system to be organized around flows that are interactive, multimodal, asynchronous or synchronous, global or local, and from many to many, from people to people, from people to objects, and from objects to objects, increasingly relying on the semantic web. How these characteristics affect specific systems of social relationships has to be established by research, and this is what I tried to present in this text. What is clear is that without the Internet we would not have seen the large-scale development of networking as the fundamental mechanism of social structuring and social change in every domain of social life. The Internet, the World Wide Web, and a variety of networks increasingly based on wireless platforms constitute the technological infrastructure of the network society, as the electrical grid and the electrical engine were the support system for the form of social organization that we conceptualized as the industrial society. Thus, as a social construction, this technological system is open ended, as the network society is an open-ended form of social organization that conveys the best and the worse in humankind. Yet, the global network society is our society, and the understanding of its logic on the basis of the interaction between culture, organization, and technology in the formation and development of social and technological networks is a key field of research in the twenty-first century.

We can only make progress in our understanding through the cumulative effort of scholarly research. Only then we will be able to cut through the myths surrounding the key technology of our time. A digital communication technology that is already a second skin for young people, yet it continues to feed the fears and the fantasies of those who are still in charge of a society that they barely understand.

These references are in fact sources of more detailed references specific to each one of the topics analyzed in this text.

Abbate, Janet. A Social History of the Internet. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999.

Boyd, Danah M., and Nicole B. Ellison. “Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13, no. 1 (2007).

Cardoso, Gustavo, Angus Cheong, and Jeffrey Cole (eds). World Wide Internet: Changing Societies, Economies and Cultures. Macau: University of Macau Press, 2009.

Castells, Manuel. The Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture. 3 vols. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996–2003.

———. The Internet Galaxy: Reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.

———. Communication Power. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

———. Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2012.

Castells, Manuel, Imma Tubella, Teresa Sancho, and Meritxell Roca.

La transición a la sociedad red. Barcelona: Ariel, 2007.

Hilbert, Martin, and Priscilla López. “The World’s Technological Capacity to Store, Communicate, and Compute Information.” Science 332, no. 6025 (April 1, 2011): pp. 60–65.

Papacharissi, Zizi, ed. The Networked Self: Identity, Community, and Culture on Social Networking Sites. Routledge, 2010.

Rainie. Lee, and Barry Wellman. Networked: The New Social Operating System. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012.

Trajectory Partnership (Michael Willmott and Paul Flatters). The Information Dividend: Why IT Makes You “Happier.” Swindon: British Informatics Society Limited, 2010. http://www.bcs.org/upload/pdf/info-dividend-full-report.pdf

Selected Web References. Used as sources for analysis in the chapter

Agência para a Sociedade do Conhecimento. “Observatório de Sociedade da Informação e do Conhecimento (OSIC).” http://www.umic.pt/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3026&Itemid=167

BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT. “Features, Press and Policy.” http://www.bcs.org/category/7307

Center for the Digital Future. The World Internet Project International Report. 4th ed. Los Angeles: USC Annenberg School, Center for the Digital Future, 2012. http://www.worldinternetproject.net/_files/_Published/_oldis/770_2012wip_report4th_ed.pdf

ESRC (Economic & Social Research Council). “Papers and Reports.” Virtual Society. http://virtualsociety.sbs.ox.ac.uk/reports.htm

Fundación Orange. “Análisis y Prospectiva: Informe eEspaña.” Fundación Orange. http://fundacionorange.es/fundacionorange/analisisprospectiva.html

Fundación Telefónica. “Informes SI.” Fundación Telefónica. http://sociedadinformacion.fundacion.telefonica.com/DYC/SHI/InformesSI/seccion=1190&idioma=es_ES.do

IN3 (Internet Interdisciplinary Institute). UOC. “Project Internet Catalonia (PIC): An Overview.” Internet Interdisciplinary Institute, 2002–07. http://www.uoc.edu/in3/pic/eng/

International Telecommunication Union. “Annual Reports.” http://www.itu.int/osg/spu/sfo/annual_reports/index.html

Nielsen Company. “Reports.” 2013. http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/reports/2013.html?tag=Category:Media+ and+Entertainment

Oxford Internet Surveys. “Publications.” http://microsites.oii.ox.ac.uk/oxis/publications

Pew Internet & American Life Project. “Social Networking.” Pew Internet. http://www.pewinternet.org/Topics/Activities-and-Pursuits/Social-Networking.aspx?typeFilter=5

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The Internet, Politics and the Politics of Internet Debate

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Benefits Of Internet (Essay/Paper Sample)

Table of Contents

Introduction

It is no secret that society benefits from the Internet. Since its inception, Internet technology has revolutionized the simple ways we used to do things. It follows the footsteps of the instant gratification model, where everything is handed to you in a much shorter span of time.

This essay discusses in detail the advantages of the Internet and explains its practical implications on our way of life.

Want to share your own thoughts on the uses of the Internet? Get in touch with us for custom essay writing services . We can team you up with a writer who can help.

Benefits of Internet Connection

The Internet is one of the most useful tools in the present century because of its numerous benefits. Internet services have made it possible for us to do what used to be impossible things.

Woman Using Laptop while Lying Down on a Brown Leather Couch

The accessibility and availability of information through the World Wide Web has significantly transformed the world, making it a global village where everyone and everything is somehow interconnected. With the advent of social media networking, it is now possible to keep in touch with a friend who moved thousands of miles away several years ago. Family group chats are also now a popular trend, especially for those scattered all around the globe.

At the same time, the Internet has changed the way business is conducted. Now, it is possible for companies from different parts of the world to collaborate or even merge because the Internet is there to make meetings easier. Video conferencing is incredibly easy to set up, and even when you are somewhere else in the world, you can easily access your work emails or check in on your teams. Job-hunting has also become much more convenient. Gone are the days when you would have to physically go from office to office to hand in your resume. Today, you can simply upload it as a file and wait for the company to revert to you.

Practical day-to-day transactions such as banking and e-commerce are now done online. You can skip the lines at the banks, transfer money, and even scan and deposit checks from the comfort of home. You can pick out that special outfit for a party you’re attending, all from the store’s mobile app. You can pay all your utility bills from your mobile phone as well.

The Internet has also improved communication, making it one of the cheapest and most convenient means to send and receive messages. You only need to make sure that you pay your monthly Internet bill, and chatting with people online need not get interrupted. Thanks to web forums, people also now have online platforms to share their thoughts and exchange ideas.

Man in Blue and Orange Jacket Using Black Laptop

One of the biggest changes in our lives since the Internet came along is our overwhelming access to all sorts of data – good or bad. Search engines have become our allies in ensuring that we have everything we need to make a decision. We use them to access the latest news, get recommendations, and more, all at the click of a button. You can even use the Internet to get help with your schoolwork, with custom essay writing services ready to match you with a writer who can help.

Another way the Web has changed us is our understanding and expectation of speed. This, again, can be a good or bad thing. Thanks to Wi-Fi, we can now access information within seconds, as well as do our other transactions in minutes when it would have usually taken us the whole day to accomplish. The fact that this saves us a lot of time, money, and energy is already a big win in itself. Most businesses and industries have already caught on, so in this day and age, most transactions and errands can be done online.

Because of the dynamic nature of financial markets, investors prefer using the Internet to stay informed about ever-changing market trends. They can receive instant stock quotes and market analyses from financial experts using their mobile devices without having to move around. Investors can log into the electronic transaction platform of any bank and make timely investment decisions.

Thanks to modern technology, the Web has changed our lives for the better. Not only do we have an avenue for creative and meaningful dialogue with people from around the world, but we also have an engine where every kind of information imaginable can be easily accessed. It has also improved our lives and allowed us to enjoy amazing conveniences and efficiencies that we used to long for. The key to maximizing the potential of the Internet is to use it wisely. Its features can be a double-edged sword, so we need to ensure that the benefits we get from using it are channeled into healthy productivity.

Importance Of Internet

The Web has completely changed the way we go about our daily life. The emergence of the online world has created many opportunities for Internet users who are benefiting from its many advantages.

For young adults, online shopping, online banking, online gaming, and social media platforms have made life more seamless, convenient, and easy. While going to the mall and seeing other people in person will always be their own unique experience, there is something to be said about being able to pick out your outfits and connect with different people from the comfort of your own home. Of course, it goes without saying that being able to access online services is a great help.

While there is much to be praised about the digital world, it also has its downsides. Some disadvantages of the Internet include Internet addiction and a decline in the quality of relationships. Those who are particularly hooked on online gaming can end up being consumed in this activity for hours on end, killing productivity and making them lethargic and unhealthy. At the same time, getting used to shallow relationships online can cause us to forget how to cultivate friendships in the real world.

What are popular uses of the Internet?

There are a variety of ways to use this amazing global network. Personal Internet usage can include engagement in social media websites, accessing search engines, playing online games, doing a transaction online, watching movies, participating in chat rooms, e-commerce, and checking e-mail. Businesses also benefit from the speed of the Web by training their staff through online courses, doing online business, holding multinational meetings via video communication, and offering their services on the World Wide Web.

What is the impact of the Internet on our life?

The World Wide Web has affected our lives in good and not-so-good ways. Its biggest advantages are the convenience, speed, and efficiency it offers. A lot of our errands and transactions can now be done from the comfort of home so we can reallocate the time and energy we spend on them into other more productive things. However, it also has a few disadvantages, one of which is the emergence of cyber crime. Mental health issues among the young generation are also linked to the Web, with many being prey to cyber-bullying. Finally, a popular disadvantage is a tendency for addiction to form. It is easy to get hooked to the online world. Young or old, there is always something online that captures your attention. The more you pay attention to it, the more you become hooked. Like many types of addiction, this intense need to stay on the net is a subtle shift in behavior.

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Internet Essay

Essay on Internet

Introduction The Internet is a system of interconnection of computer networks that link several billion devices worldwide. It is a global network of networks that consists of millions of non-public, public, academic, business and government packet switched networks, joined by a broad array of electronic, wireless and optical networking technologies. The Internet carries an intensive variety of information resources and services, like applications of world wide web (www), the infrastructure to support email, peer-to-peer networks for file sharing and telephony. It has become an important part of our life and we cannot live without it. Internet can be called as the discovery of man that has revolutionized his style of working and living.

The Internet was started as the creation of a small band of dedicated researchers and has grown to be a commercial success with billions of dollars of annual investments. It has completely reduced distance, minimized all limitations and made our world relatively a smaller place. The Internet has brought information at our doorstep at the click of a button. The Internet revolutionized the computer and world of communication like never before.

The Internet is replete with countless advantages. It has made possible man’s access to countless websites, information programs, scientific discoveries, global political, social, economic and cultural developments and happenings, libraries, entertainment and much more.

The Internet boom in India has become one of the major contributors towards the economic growth of the country. It has revolutionized the metros, the towns and the villages. The Internet has contributed massively to the employment sector across the country. The need for professionals has increased who would feed the information into the web. Content writing and management, web page designing, Internet advertisements have become booming sectors within the IT industry.

In the education field, learners can coordinate projects with classrooms all over the globe. Students across the globe do research works online and all information related to research is accessible on the web at the touch of a button. Not only for the students, the Internet has become an incredible tool for the job seekers.

The Internet is being used for finding people, place or information on any subject. One can use the directory services to search phone books of any country together with zip codes. People are connecting with friends and families by exchanging emails to facilitate letter writing, keeping down the cost of phone calls.

In the field of travel, cities, towns, states and countries are using the web to post detailed tourist and event information. Travelers can easily find information on weather, maps, timings for events and transportation schedules and buy tickets to various tourists’ spots.

Today the Internet is used for shopping, paying utility bills, credit card bills, admission fees, E-commerce, online banking facility. In the world of marketing and sales, companies are marketing and selling their products and creating brands over the net.

Patients and doctors keep up-to-date with the latest medical findings, share treatment information and give one another support in medical problems.

Furthermore, people are also finding partners through matchmaking sites.

Today, people are doing financial research; trading like buying and selling stock and investing money.

However, the Internet has some setbacks too, which is a threat to the entire mankind. People, especially youngsters are getting addicted to the Internet and thus causing problems to their health. It is making this generation lazy. Internet hackers are on the rise, creating nuisance in the world of business and communication. There are a lot of thefts, frauds and unscrupulous businesses cropping up that are taking undue advantage of innocent people. Anti-social elements of society and cyber crime are also using the Internet against humanity.

Internet is a great tool that man has discovered but its wrong use and negative impact must be minimized.

FAQs on Internet Essay

1. What is the Internet?

The Internet is a computerized network of information. It is a system of interconnection of computer networks that link several billions of devices.

2. What are the Advantages of the Internet?

The Internet has brought information to our doorstep. It has made possible man’s access to countless websites, information programs, scientific discoveries, global political, social, economic and cultural developments and happenings, libraries, entertainment and much more.

3. What are the Disadvantages of the Internet?

Some of the disadvantages of the Internet: people especially, the youngsters are getting highly addicted to the Internet. There are a lot of thefts, fraudulent activities and unscrupulous business happening, which have become a threat to humankind.

4. How has the Internet has Become a Boon to India?

The Internet in India has made revolutionary changes in the metros, small towns and villages. It has created a plethora of job opportunities. The rise in the use of the Internet has led to the growth of cyber cities, cyber cafes and Internet parlors across the country.

Children and the internet: helping kids navigate this modern minefield

Senior Researcher at the Children's Institute, University of Cape Town

Senior Lecturer in Bioethics, Department of Medicine, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Cape Town

Contributor

Medical doctor and postgraduate student in epidemiology and clinical neurosciences, University of Oxford

Disclosure statement

Wakithi Mabaso receives funding from the Rhodes Trust.

Heidi Matisonn and Lucy Jamieson do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

University of Cape Town provides funding as a partner of The Conversation AFRICA.

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A smiling mum and daughter wave at the digital tablet the mother is holding

The United States’ most senior public health official, surgeon-general Vivek Murthy, believes social media platforms should come with warning labels . The United Nations’ education, science and culture agency says smartphones should be banned in schools . Chinese regulators are pushing to limit children’s smartphone use to just two hours a day .

These are just a few high profile examples of growing global concerns about the risks young people face when using the internet. Those worries are backed by a large, global body of research . Social media use has been linked to feelings of envy , depression and anxiety among young people all over the world, including those in African countries .

This evidence can make for depressing reading, especially if you’re the parent or caregiver of a teenager. Many may be tempted to confiscate their teens’ cellphones, lock away their tablets and keep them as far away from the internet as possible. But that’s neither practical nor helpful in a hyper-connected, digital world.

Though we come from different academic disciplines as a children’s rights researcher , a moral philosopher and a clinical researcher , our current work focuses on the same thing: the ethics of new and emerging technologies and their impact .

We know that protecting children is a shared responsibility. Government, service providers and education systems all have a role to play. But parents are key. So, drawing from our ongoing research, we have three messages for parents trying to navigate this modern minefield.

One, the internet and social media are not all bad for children. Some online spaces may even help young people to manage their mental health .

Two, children and teens have rights to access information, share their views and have those views respected.

Three, by creating a strong foundation of open, loving and trusting communication, you help your children navigate the risks, identify the ethical pitfalls and enjoy the benefits of social media platforms.

Benefits of online spaces

While it is true that internet use comes with risks, there’s also evidence that it can benefit young people.

For instance, interactive features and user-generated content platforms such as social media, blogs and forums enable social interaction and connection. These online spaces allow children to engage with peers, share interests and build communities. They also provide outlets for creativity and self-expression, helping kids to develop digital literacy skills and shape their identities.

Some internet spaces may help children and teens to manage their mental health. The COVID pandemic accelerated the development of digital mental health services like free platforms that connect children to counsellors, chat bots, text tools and apps that offer support for children and parents. Childline South Africa’s free online chat service is one example.

Children’s rights

Too many societies and communities forget that children, like adults, have rights.

In South Africa, for instance, children’s rights are enshrined in section 28 of the constitution .

Globally, the Convention on the Rights of Children (which was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1989) guarantees children’s rights to access information, to freedom of association, to share their thoughts freely and to have their views respected, to health, including mental health, and to privacy, non-discrimination, protection, education and play.

More recently, the United Nations issued guidance on children’s rights in the digital environment.

Several countries (among them Australia , Brazil , Canada , China and the UK now have online safety legislation aimed at protecting kids and teens.

Some parents may wonder why all countries don’t simply make laws to reduce the risks posed by social media platforms. The reality is that it is difficult to implement and enforce these regulations.

African countries have been slow to regulate online safety for minors. South Africa is working on a White Paper that aims to protect children from harmful content and ensure that content meets their needs. However, it is still a draft; new legislation and regulation are years away.

But there is no need for parents to wait before starting to teach their children how to safely use the internet.

Trust and communication

Some parents may fear that they don’t have the skills and knowledge to properly support their teens. Just remember that parents find their way around new things all the time: setting boundaries for young children, teaching them to read and write, and, later on, managing adolescent mood swings, discussing sexuality or counselling teens through their first heartbreaks.

A young girl stands against a white wall, clutching her backpack while engrossed in her phone

When it comes to safe internet navigation and use, parents and caregivers can help children in two main ways.

The first is by prioritising open, trusting and loving communication from when your children are young. Since children are constantly developing, the kinds of things you discuss will shift over time. You can start talking about the internet and social media when you think your children are ready. This will differ from child to child.

Read more: Social media for sex education: South African teens explain how it would help them

The second is to develop their critical thinking skills so they can analyse and evaluate information and arguments in a clear, rational and objective manner. Parents and caregivers can encourage children to ask questions, challenge assumptions and explore different ways of seeing things. There are also programmes like Web Rangers that help children to develop these skills so they can become responsible digital citizens.

Children who can think critically will gain the confidence to rely on their own reasoning rather than just unthinkingly adopting others’ attitudes. These skills will help them to make responsible choices.

Spending time building a trusting relationship with your children is also crucial. Parenting for a digital future goes beyond the fear-driven response of regulating screen time and parental policing. Critical capacity is developed through negotiation and engagement. And of course these skills are universally applicable, protecting children in other aspects of their lives, too.

Social media
Critical thinking
Children's rights
Critical thinking skills
Internet safety
Children online
Social media bans
TikTok bans
Parenting matters

Manager, Regional Training Hub

Head of Evidence to Action

Supply Chain - Assistant/Associate Professor (Tenure-Track)

OzGrav Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Casual Facilitator: GERRIC Student Programs - Arts, Design and Architecture

2020 Impact Report

The internet is a lifeline, try to imagine living through 2020 without the internet..

Medical researchers, loved ones, and even work acquaintances would have been hard to reach, or even worse, cut off. There would have been a total stop to education, with young people losing a crucial year. Our society would have been faced with a terrible choice between economic or medical collapse. The Internet did not make everything perfect. This year has shown us that nothing could. But without it, we would have fared much worse. The Internet is a force for good in society, for sure.

At the start of 2020, the Internet Society reaffirmed our goals for the Internet to be open, globally-connected, secure, and trustworthy. In service of those goals, we committed to our Action Plan https://www.internetsociety.org/action-plan/2020/ .

“The Internet Society supports and promotes the development of the Internet as a global technical infrastructure, a resource to enrich people’s lives, and a force for good in society.” Internet Society Mission Tweet

This Impact Report shows what we have achieved together. When the pandemic hit, the whole Internet Society responded to the challenge. From the Smart Mom program developed by our Haiti Chapter, to the changes that Loretta Odame in Ghana made to improve her online security; from improvement of digital literacy in Yemen, to the chapters who made their websites more accessible and reliable – all these activities show how, by working together in the Internet Way, we can make sure the Internet is for everyone. I find it inspiring, and I hope you do, too.

But our work is not done. The Internet still faces threats, both from governments who want to shut it down or control it, and from industrial interests that want to own it all. Nearly half the world had to live through 2020 without Internet access. We must keep working in 2021 to make the Internet bigger and stronger – to make our vision true: The Internet is for everyone.

Andrew Sullivan, President and CEO

The Internet is for everyone.

THE STORY OF 2020

More than any year in history, 2020 showed that the Internet is indispensable.

The year changed the way we live, work, study, advocate, and communicate in fundamental ways that are likely to persist. It forced physical distance between us while bringing us closer together online. For all its contradictions, 2020’s impact on the Internet has been a rapid acceleration of trends already in motion.

The Internet became a virtual lifeline, giving people vital health information and access to medical care. It allowed people to telework and enabled businesses to stay afloat through online sales. It heralded unprecedented e-learning. It allowed isolated people to connect with loved ones. The Internet has also allowed people to continue to exercise their rights and advocate for change.

However, this was only the reality for people with Internet connectivity.

For those without it, closing the digital divide has never been more urgent. Internet access should not be a luxury, and it can no longer be neglected.

As more people shifted their lives online, it was initially unclear if the Internet could withstand the increased demand. The answer was a resounding yes. It allowed people to be more resilient to the social and economic shocks of the pandemic.

The Internet remained reliable while our world became increasingly unpredictable.

The Internet’s resilience is a reflection of the people who developed it and who work to strengthen it and keep it growing.

Chapters, individual and organization members, partners, communities of interest, and staff around the world worked together to meet challenges and overcome obstacles with energy, vision, and determination.

Our annual Impact Report tracks our work by actions and impacts, organized by major shifts in the way people used the Internet compared to years prior. While the projects we highlight in the 2020 report touch on particular successes, they represent only a fraction of our activities.

Surge in Internet Usage

U.S. & EU Broadband Consumption

tbps World-Record Data Consumption

Globally, lockdowns caused Internet use to surge up to 70% by one account Mark Beech, “COVID-19 Pushes Up Internet Use 70% And Streaming More Than 12%, First Figures Reveal” FORBES, 25 MAR 2020, https://www.forbes.com/sites/markbeech/2020/03/25/covid-19-pushes-up-internet-use-70-streaming-more-than-12-first-figures-reveal/?sh=2ef2fbe83104 . In the U.S. and Europe, first quarter average subscriber usage data Broadband Insights Report (OVBI) OPENVAULT, Q1 2020, https://openvault.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Openvault_Q120_DataUsage_FINAL.pdf revealed that broadband consumption increased 47%, from 273.5 GB in 2019 to 402.5 GB in 2020. The Deutsche Commercial Internet Exchange (DE-CIX) in Frankfurt even set a new world record DE-CIX sets a new world record: More than 9 Terabits per second data throughput at Frankfurt Internet Exchange DE-CIX website, 11 MAR 2020, https://www.de-cix.net/en/about-de-cix/media-center/press-releases/de-cix-sets-a-new-world-record for data consumption in March, hitting more than 9.1 Terabits per second.

With Internet resilience thrust into the spotlight like never before, these usage spikes pushed providers to enhance their networks in order to minimize connection and speed hiccups. With the African Union Commission (AUC) and African Telecommunications Union (ATU), the Internet Society organized a series of seven seminars on African Internet resilience https://www.internetsociety.org/events/african-internet-resilience/ to keep networks up and strong. Participants explored solutions ranging from shared spectrum strategies https://www.internetsociety.org/events/african-internet-resilience/shared-spectrum-strategies-to-increase-affordable-access-in-rural-areas/ to complementary access models https://www.internetsociety.org/events/african-internet-resilience/what-about-complimentary-access-models/ to fiberoptic backbone infrastructure https://www.internetsociety.org/events/african-internet-resilience/the-role-of-fibre-optic-backbone-infrastructure-in-affordable-access/ .

HOW DID INTERNET FARE?

A record number of people were online in 2020.

While Internet usage was up, the number of routing incidents reported worldwide dropped – from more than 5,000 in 2017 to fewer than 4,000 at the end of 2020 .

Participant Growth

Network Operators Trained

PARTICIPATION IN MUTUALLY AGREED NORMS FOR ROUTING SECURITY (MANRS) GREW OVER THE YEAR, DOUBLING ITS REACH FROM 317 TO 588 PARTICIPANTS FROM OVER 60 COUNTRIES.

MANRS launched Ambassador https://www.manrs.org/ambassadors-program/ and Fellowship https://www.manrs.org/ambassadors-program/fellows/ programs, bringing together 17 seasoned practitioners. They jointly organized 58 workshops and engaged over 1,400 network operators around the world. Seventy-five Internet Society chapters took part in a global training workshop in March, after which the UbuntuNet Alliance partnered with Internet Society to subsequently train 18 network engineers “NREN engineers hail MANRS training workshop”, UBUNTUNET ALLIANCE, 1 SEP 2020, https://ubuntunet.net/2020/09/nren-engineers-hail-manrs-training-workshop/ from national research and education networks (NRENs) in eight African countries in July.

In addition, Akamai, Amazon Web Services, Azion, Cloudflare, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Netflix, and other Internet leaders are now working together to secure large portions of cloud infrastructure – thanks to the new MANRS program for content delivery networks and cloud providers https://www.internetsociety.org/news/press-releases/2020/leading-cdn-and-cloud-providers-join-manrs-to-improve-routing-security/ .

Internet exchange points (IXPs) keep traffic local and improve network resiliency.

We supported IXPs with technical expertise, training, and equipment in 26 countries, including 12 in Africa, 3 in Asia-Pacific, 2 in Europe, 8 in Latin America and the Caribbean, and 1 in North America.

We trained more than 600 individuals and organized 20 virtual meetings with peering, network operator, and NREN communities with our partners. We also teamed up with the Asia Pacific Internet Exchange Association (APIX) to study the impact of COVID-19 on IXP operations in 12 countries across the region https://www.internetsociety.org/blog/2020/07/ixps-keeping-local-infrastructure-resilient-during-covid-19/ .

Countries Supported

Individuals Trained

Virtual Community Meetings

Countries Studied for Impact of COVID-19 on IXP Operations

IMPACT SPOTLIGHT

New IXP gains momentum in Guatemala

“The IXP.GT is the best thing that happened to us in 2020! Since we connected in August, we’ve doubled [or tripled] the average bandwidth,” says Ariel Tello, engineer and Project Manager at Señal Nacional, Guatemala’s third-largest residential Internet service-provider (ISP) and one of 10 organizations connected to IXP.GT.

He says connecting to IXP.GT has reduced their payments to international suppliers by at least 15%, allowing them to lower prices and improve capacity. In July, a 1 Mbps monthly download plan ran 149 quetzales (US$19). Now, customers pay that price for triple the download (3 Mbps). If costs fall further, Tello says they’ll be able to invest in expanding to more places without Internet access.

A Facebook node is now being installed – the first Point of Presence in Central America – and connections are being negotiated with other content delivery networks, with help from the Internet Society and the Latin American and Caribbean Internet Exchange Association.

“Before the IXP, it took 30 to 40 milliseconds to receive content, but it takes 2 milliseconds or less now,” explains Marco Antonio To, engineer, professor and IXP.GT President. IXP.GT also enhances security by keeping sensitive data within the country.

IXP.GT also makes participants less vulnerable to natural disasters, says To. Severe hurricane-related flooding in December damaged several international fiber-optic cables, causing delays for non-IXP operators.

Marco Antonio To (IXP.GT President) – Julio Ramírez (Intertelco) – Iván Morales (IXP.GT Technical Director) – Ervin Jiménez (Comnet)

Organizations Connected

Times Average Bandwidth

Decrease in Payments to International Suppliers

Decrease in Speed to Receive Content

Business not as usual

With numerous stores, banks, and government offices closed during the pandemic, many people shifted to paying bills, collecting benefits, and shopping online. As a result, the first half of 2020 saw an increase in e-commerce equivalent to that of the previous 10 years “The next normal arrives: Trends that will define 2021—and beyond”, MCKINSEY & COMPANY, 4 JAN 2021, ACCESSED 3 FEB 2021, https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/leadership/the-next-normal-arrives-trends-that-will-define-2021-and-beyond . An UNCTAD survey of nine countries “COVID-19 has changed online shopping forever, survey shows “, UNCTAD, 8 OCT 2020, https://unctad.org/news/covid-19-has-changed-online-shopping-forever-survey-shows found more than half of respondents now shop online more frequently, and a survey in Brazil “Painel TIC COVID-19, 1ª Edição”, CETIC.BR, ACCESSED 3 FEB 2021, https://cetic.br/pt/tics/tic-covid-19/painel-covid-19/1-edicao/C6W/ revealed that 54% of people were paying bills or taxes online and 71% were banking or doing financial transfers online.

As the months dragged on, the Great Work-from-Home Experiment became reality. With many workplaces closed, half of the workforce or more was working from home – one global survey found that 45% of respondents worked from home in 2020, while another found that 47% of businesses would allow their employees to work remotely full-time, moving forward, and 82% would allow it at least some of the time. With so many people working and transacting online, the need for online privacy and security has become even more critical.

Spain was among the first countries to be devastated by COVID-19. Amid lockdowns, people suddenly had to adapt to working, buying groceries and paying bills online. For many seniors and small businesses in particular, the learning curve was steep. To help them navigate the transition, 67-year-old retired IT veteran Paulino Moreno, delivers workshops and seminars for Cibervoluntarios (Cyber-volunteers), a Spanish non-profit and Internet Society organization member that provides international technology training and awareness-raising. Moreno was among the 85 participants in an encryption webinar https://youtu.be/nADsFZl1bMY delivered jointly by Internet Society and Cibervoluntarios in May 2020, their first joint activity since partnering in 2019. “The way they explained how to transmit data and documents safely has been useful to me, especially the six-point recommendations from the Internet Society https://www.internetsociety.org/encryption/protect-encryption-protect-yourself/ on how to keep your communications safe,” explains Moreno. He has since incorporated these tips into at least six of his own talks and workshops for audiences ranging from seniors to young entrepreneurs.

Cibervoluntarios, an Internet Society organization member, has also joined the Global Encryption Coalition ( GEC https://www.globalencryption.org/ ) which was launched in May in an effort to challenge laws and proposals that could weaken encryption. Led by a Steering Committee composed of the Internet Society, the Center for Democracy and Technology, and Global Partners Digital, the GEC has grown from 30 members to a diverse array of more than 100 like-minded organizations. The GEC has already made gains in promoting and defending encryption. In November, a group of 50 expert members of the Coalition issued a technical report analyzing and debunking a leaked European Commission document, which analyzed different ways to spot illegal content in encrypted private communications. The Coalition also engaged in lobbying and issued a joint statement https://www.globalencryption.org/2020/10/cdt-gpd-and-internet-society-reject-time-worn-argument-for-encryption-backdoors/ after the “Five-Eyes” intelligence alliance, plus India and Japan, called on companies to create backdoor access for law enforcement to their encrypted devices and services.

While governments and law enforcement agencies continued to call for backdoor access to encrypted communications, we issued policy recommendations https://www.internetsociety.org/covid19-policy-recommendations/ urging lawmakers and network operators to protect the trustworthiness of the Internet .

The recommendations called for policies and regulations to support the use of end-to- end encryption. Our encryption work intensified in 2020 with global advocacy, regional messaging consultations, and global encryption training https://www.internetsociety.org/blog/2020/09/chapter-leaders-worldwide-make-the-case-for-strong-encryption/ for 139 participants from 66 chapters. Training participants went on to engage in advocacy or organize their own local sessions, including in Ghana and Nicaragua.

Internet Society chapters also responded with tenacity and innovation to the turmoil of 2020, creating initiatives to help see their communities through times of crisis and recovery.

One of the three winning Chapterthon projects in 2020 Chapterthon is an opportunity for Internet Society chapters to engage with their members to create projects around a central theme. https://www.internetsociety.org/grants/chapterthon/2020/ https://www.internetsociety.org/grants/chapterthon/2020/projects/ focused on making sure people could use the Internet productively and securely. The Haiti Chapter developed the Smart Mom 2020 program https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zE5E7awrhA , training 20 mothers to use online banking or mobile money accounts.

The Bangladesh Chapter hosted a workshop for journalists working from home https://youtu.be/TQoa5fzfoEc at a time when most were using personal devices to publish news, leaving them prone to cyber attacks and disinformation. And the Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Chapter produced a tutorial on automating small businesses’ booking services https://youtu.be/c96Q18riufI , with tips to help small businesses enhance their efficiency by using free digital tools.

The Internet Society hosted a series of virtual trainings which over 70 chapter representatives attended to learn how to improve the overall security and availability of their websites and web servers. As a result of the training, many chapters significantly increased their websites’ compliance with open, secure standards. “After the training session, our chapter made several changes,” says Kolkata India Chapter participant Rittika Ratawa. Indeed, the Kolkata Chapter took its website from 32% compliance to an impressive 100% https://www.internetsociety.org/blog/2020/07/open-standards-everywhere-how-the-kolkata-chapter-got-a-perfect-score/ .

Strengthening the Internet so it remains a force for good.

Students and journalists secure their online communications after encryption training.

Loretta Odame, a 28-year-old student at the Ghana Institute of Journalism, previously used social media without much thought about security or privacy. But after taking an Internet Society-sponsored workshop on encryption, organized by one of her professors, she has since made “a complete change” in the information she shares online and how she uses social media.

“The program helped us see the reasons why encryption matters, because it protects our privacy. That has given us an awareness that there are certain things that we used to do and are not doing anymore. And we are aware of the need to secure our data.”

The workshop content largely replicated the Internet Society’s encryption training course, which was delivered to more than 90 chapter representatives around the world in May. One of the participants in that training was 26-year-old Theorose Elikplim Dzineku, Chair of Programs and Communications for Internet Society Ghana.

Dzineku, who regularly teaches a second-year new media class to 120 students at the Ghana Institute of Journalism, went on to write a research paper examining how Ghanaian journalists understand encryption and apply it to their work. The topic was timely as the pandemic had forced many to use online means of communicating with sources,

and misinformation was rife. She was surprised to learn that most working journalists had no knowledge of encryption.

She put together a proposal and won a $3,000 small grant from the Internet Society Foundation to implement an encryption workshop at the Ministry of Communications.

“I really wanted to use the knowledge that I gained to make a change. I didn’t just want to be part of the numbers who do a training and just go home with a certificate without doing anything,” she says.

Vincent Amedzake is a 24-year-old freelance journalist who attended one of Dzineku’s encryption workshops.

“Before the workshop, we exchanged messages and information using mediums that we didn’t know weren’t secure,” he says, adding that he now relies on basic encryption techniques he learned in the workshop. He’s also changed the way he uses social media and now uses password-secured public WiFi connections.

“One very valid and important thing we learned was that protection is key – encryption is key,” he says.

Education in a pandemic

Amid the global wave of pandemic lockdowns, there was an unprecedented rise in e-learning. As of 1 April, nearly 1.5 billion children in 173 countries “Global monitoring of school closures caused by Coronavirus (Covid-19),” UNESCO [see interactive map data for 1 April 2020], ACCESSED 2 APR 2021, https://en.unesco.org/covid19/educationresponse were affected by school closures. In China, the largest “online movement” in the history of education Cathy Li and Farah Lalani, “The COVID-19 pandemic has changed education forever. This is how,” WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM, 29 APR 2020, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/04/coronavirus-education-global-covid19-online-digital-learning/ occurred in mid-February after the government instructed a quarter of a billion full-time students to resume their studies online.

Having students of all ages studying, submitting homework, and videoconferencing with teachers and classmates online has heightened awareness of the need for safe communications.

The pandemic ushered in a pressing need to improve the digital literacy of children, teachers, and parents. To address these needs, we hosted a Kids, the Internet, and COVID-19 https://www.internetsociety.org/events/kids-the-internet-covid-19-how-to-keep-our-children-safe-online/ webinar to show parents how they can protect their children’s privacy and security online via encryption. The video of the webinar was viewed nearly 3 million times , setting a record for the Internet Society as the most viewed video content.

Further, the original webinar content was replicated by members of the community, including our Japan Chapter which translated the English version into Japanese.

Internet Society chapters devised a number of education-focused projects to keep kids learning and teachers educating online – and to ensure this happened safely and effectively. The Chapter in the Democratic Republic of Congo prepared a video guide to help teachers use Zoom https://youtu.be/fwCv1Om9PYI . The Sri Lanka Chapter developed a blueprint for a catalogue of online educational resources to help school teachers use online tools https://youtu.be/3ohnlal4mtI and catch up on missing lessons. In Trinidad and Tobago, the Chapter developed a crowdsourcing project to build a repository of shared teaching resources https://youtu.be/fUtRIkMkX9E , help teachers access online training, and find other experts. And to empower educators to safely navigate online teaching amid the pandemic, the Uganda Chapter delivered a training on digital safety for 50 educators from 38 schools https://youtu.be/nztoCfYQ9w8 .

Since most schools weren’t closed for the entire year, ensuring connectivity was also a continued priority. To help, the Armenia Chapter provided computers, WiFi connections, and training for rural art schools and libraries https://youtu.be/gDd8qsd3-ps , while the Gambia Chapter refurbished and networked computer labs and donated computers to three schools “Internet Society Gambia Chapter- ISOC Gambia Chapterthon 2020 project, in Partnership with MCJSupport Org”, MCJSUPPORT ORGANIZATION, https://mcjsupport.org/2021/02/16/internet-society-gambia-chapter-isoc-gambia-chapterthon-2020-project-in-partnership-with-mcjsupport-org/ for children with disabilities.

Helping students continue their education amid twin crises in Yemen

More than 150 elementary and high-school students at five different public schools in war-ravaged and pandemic-ridden Yemen now know how to use the Internet safely and effectively to learn.

This was the result of Chapterthon-winning training sessions organized by the Yemen Chapter: Reinforcing digital awareness in Yemeni schools https://youtu.be/yTvQJwAS2-Q . The lessons focused on digital security, privacy, online search techniques, and free e-learning tools such as Zoom and Google Classroom.

When one in five schools in Yemen can no longer be used as a direct result of conflict “As school year starts in Yemen, 2 million children are out of school and another 3.7 million are at risk of dropping out”, UNICEF, SEP 2019, https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/school-year-starts-yemen-2-million-children-are-out-school-and-another-37-million , the Internet is enabling students to continue their education remotely when they can’t physically attend school.

The training sessions have also faced obstacles. They’ve had to be planned around ceasefires or rescheduled due to the eruption of violence. Another challenge was convincing school principals and directors that e-learning training was needed.

“Lots of people have Internet access through mobile phones, tablets, and laptops. There is a big gap in knowledge between parents and their children, as well as teachers,” says Internet Society Yemen Chapter President Sharaf Azzain. “When we realized that the teachers were interested and needed training as well, we included them.”

After the first Chapterthon project, undertaken in the capital of Sanaa, Azzain says the project team went on to organize a similar project in the opposition-recognized capital of Aden. There, four trainers reached more than 120 students and 20 teachers at four schools, providing training on computer literacy and safe Internet use.

Keeping healthcare secure

Increase of “Ping An Good Doctor” app users in China

Increase of demand for telehealth services in US

At a time when COVID-19 information was crucial, there was substantial growth in telemedicine. Additionally, doctors’ inability to see patients face-to-face catapulted online video consults to record-setting figures. The number of new users on a Chinese healthcare app rose nearly 900% in January 2020 compared to December 2019 Vikram Kapur and Alex Boulton, “Covid-19 Accelerates the Adoption of Telemedicine in Asia-Pacific Countries,” BAIN & COMPANY. APR 2020, https://www.bain.com/insights/covid-19-accelerates-the-adoption-of-telemedicine-in-asia-pacific-countries/ , and visits to a Singaporean telemedicine platform rose more than 160% from the beginning of 2020. A May report showed demand for telehealth services would grow 64.3% in the US in 2020 alone Mike Miliard, “Telehealth set for ‘tsunami of growth,’ says Frost & Sullivan,” HEALTHCARE IT NEWS, MAY 2020, https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/telehealth-set-tsunami-growth-says-frost-sullivan – and a staggering seven-fold increase was predicted by 2025. Meanwhile, COVID-19 contact-tracing, testing, vaccine development, and vaccination scheduling were all made easier thanks to the Internet.

But people need to know how to use and benefit from these new health apps and services. And with so many people using telehealth, confidential health records must stay private and secure.

The Internet Society, the Center for Democracy and Technology, and Global Partners Digital hosted a webinar series with leading security and technology experts that explored topics like Health, Encryption, and COVID-19: Keeping people and countries safer online https://www.internetsociety.org/events/health-encryption-covid-19/ . Another focused on Health, the Internet and COVID-19: Government backdoor access proposals that threaten Canadian health and security online https://livestream.com/accounts/686369/events/9128375/videos/206047873/player?width=640&height=360&enableInfo=false&defaultDrawer=&autoPlay=false&mute=false .

In addition, the Internet Society’s webinar in the African Internet resilience series explored digital health services and solutions for the medical industry during the pandemic https://www.internetsociety.org/events/african-internet-resilience/digital-solution-for-health-services-and-the-medical-industry-during-the-covid-19-pandemic/ .

Chapters championed health-related projects. In Guinea, they provided community healthcare centers with an Internet connection, an interactive web platform, and messaging services to facilitate interactions between patients and health entities https://youtu.be/3fdzMsKJauY . In Somalia, efforts focused on educating and informing the community about privacy, online security, and getting reliable health information https://youtu.be/ajtsrev02T8 . Meanwhile, the Togo Chapter’s DokitaEyes community digital school project https://youtu.be/N84eTrNJnoM trained community health workers on digital tools to help implement the “Health of Mothers and Children of Togo” project.

How a remote rural town prepared for a pandemic and improved its connectivity

Imagine facing COVID-19 without the Internet. That could have been the reality in El Cuy, a remote town in southern Argentina, had the Internet Society not helped deploy its community network in 2019. Its impact was magnified in 2020.

Maria Goicochea, Director of the El Cuy Hospital, says being connected has allowed doctors to do online consults with specialists, get statistical reports, send urgent patient or administrative records, and find suppliers. They can also access training and Ministry of Health teleconferences. She says without the Internet, COVID-19’s impact would have been unthinkable. “We would have been disarmed, stressed, and helpless!”

Nearly half of El Cuy’s population is over the age of 60 – a high-risk group. People used to have to travel 130 km to a nearby city to get medical prescriptions approved. This is now done online, eliminating long, risky, and costly travel.

The network initially used a 10 Mbps connection borrowed from an Internet Exchange Point (IXP) 200 km away, and the increased traffic amid lockdowns made the connection slow and patchy. In May, the Internet Society published a blog by Nelso Rodríguez, a nurse at the hospital and one of the network’s founders, where he called for more capacity, and placed an article about El Cuy’s network “Cuando una conexión a Internet es el único lazo al mundo en cuarentena: el caso de El Cuy, en Río Negro “, LA NACION, MAY 2020, https://www.lanacion.com.ar/tecnologia/cuando-conexion-internet-es-unico-lazo-al-nid2363234/ in an important Argentine newspaper – La Nación . Soon after, a local Internet service provider upped El Cuy’s backhaul through the IXP by 50% and expanded the number of connections.

For Rodríguez, empowerment has been the greatest impact. “We realized that we could accomplish things and organize our community around a common good,” he said.

Mobilizing—at a safe distance

Being able to raise our voices is a human right and a cornerstone of democracy. But at a time of restricted movement, typical ways of organizing and mobilizing for change have had to adjust.

STAYING HOME HASN’T MEANT STAYING SILENT.

The boom in Internet-based advocacy was accelerated in 2020. U.S. citizens used digital advocacy to engage with all levels of government, undertaking eight times more digital actions in the first half of 2020 than in the last presidential election year in 2016 “State of Advocacy 2020: The year of Digital Advocacy,” PHONE2ACTION, ACCESSED 24 FEB 2021, https://phone2action.com/state-of-advocacy-2020/ . In a Gallup poll Abby Kiesa, “Lack of Voting Information Could Hamper Youth Turnout,” GALLUP 14 JUL 2020, https://news.gallup.com/poll/315761/lack-voting-information-hamper-youth-turnout.aspx , 79% of young people said “the coronavirus pandemic has helped them realize how much political leaders’ decisions impact their lives.” And with the #BlackLivesMatter movement gaining broad public support Nate Cohn and Kevin Quealy, “How Public Opinion Has Moved on Black Lives Matter”, NEW YORK TIMES, 10 JUNE 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/10/upshot/black-lives-matter-attitudes.html globally, a Pew Research survey Brooke Auxier, “Americans’ activism on social media differs by race, age, party,” PEW RESEARCH CENTER, 13 JUL 2020, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/07/13/activism-on-social-media-varies-by-race-and-ethnicity-age-political-party/ in the U.S. in June found that 54% of social media users aged 18-29 reported using social media to look for information about rallies or protests in their area.

times more digital action than in last U.S. presidential election

of young people realized impact of political leaders’ decisions

of young adult social media users use social platforms to find local rally/protest information

With activities moving online amid the pandemic, the Internet has become more crucial to awareness-raising and advocacy – and advocates’ data and communications must be kept safe and private.

This is even more urgent for marginalized communities and professional advocates, such as journalists, who need to be safe online in order to exercise their rights, engage in advocacy, and hold governments and institutions accountable . We produced factsheets on encryption for LGBTQ+ communities https://www.internetsociety.org/resources/doc/2019/encryption-factsheet-essential-for-lgbtq-community/ and how encryption can protect journalists and the free press https://www.internetsociety.org/resources/doc/2020/fact-sheet-how-encryption-can-protect-journalists-and-the-free-press/ so that more people can securely tell their impactful stories.

In 2020, the Internet Society launched two critical resources to support policy and advocacy.

Internet Society Pulse https://pulse.internetsociety.org/ , launched in December 2020, provides deeper, data-driven insights into the Internet. The platform includes data about the health, availability, and evolution of the Internet, including Internet shutdowns and the deployment of key technologies that enable the Internet’s scalability and security. Policymakers, researchers, journalists, network operators, and civil society groups can gain insights and context to better inform stories, research, and policies – and advocate for undisrupted Internet access.

As the first organization to officially call for an Impact Assessment and work to integrate it into regulatory processes, the Internet Society developed the Internet Impact Assessment Toolkit https://www.internetsociety.org/issues/internet-way-of-networking/internet-impact-assessment-toolkit/ (IIAT). The IIAT assesses the potential effects of emerging policy and technical proposals on critical properties of the Internet . Over time, the IIAT will strengthen accountability in the regulatory process by enabling policymakers and technologists to make more informed, conscious decisions about how to keep the Internet healthy.

Growing the Internet so everyone can benefit from it

A Harlem community news streaming project empowers advocacy, while serving as a virtual lifeline amid the pandemic.

Across the United States, communities were shaken by the homicide of George Floyd “George Floyd death: Violence erupts on sixth day of protests “, BBC NEWS, 1 JUN 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52872401 by a police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in May. A smartphone recording of the event went viral, triggering worldwide protests “How George Floyd Was Killed in Police Custody “, THE NEW YORK TIMES, 31 MAY 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/31/us/george-floyd-investigation.html against racism and police brutality and reigniting the Black Lives Matter movement.

In the past, the Black community’s lack of access to media made advocacy difficult. It’s one of the reasons the Internet Society’s New York Chapter applied for an Internet Society Foundation grant https://www.isocfoundation.org/2019/12/internet-society-foundation-announces-300000-in-grants/ for a Streaming Station Community News Project in Harlem. According to Stuart Reid, a community technologist and board member of the New York Chapter, roughly two-thirds of residents are Black and nearly a third are Latino. Half are unemployed and half live below the poverty line. The chapter won a $30,000 grant to help underserved communities produce and stream programs for and about their community.

Pivoting during the pandemic

Weeks into the project, COVID-19 hit, so the project was adapted https://www.isocfoundation.org/story/in-coronavirus-hit-harlem-community-streaming-gives-residents-a-virtual-lifeline/ by shifting from physical studio settings to online applications like Zoom, Facebook Live, YouTube, and various websites, such as www.safensmart.org https://www.safensmart.org/ , to host the community-produced content. News broadcasts, discussions, and motivational shows kept local residents informed about everything from health and safety precautions to local food distribution.

According to Polly Spain, President of the Federal 8 Housing Group, this information has “made a world of difference – it’s been a matter of life and death, really! … We set up access to food, figured out who needed health services…and lawyers, because many people are facing eviction after losing their jobs…. It’s truly been a lifeline.”

The Wisdom Table, co-hosted by Brother Leroy, produced by and for senior citizens, invited a cavalcade of doctors to speak about COVID-19 prevention. Viewers could ask questions of medical providers online.

“Everyone was scared because we’re in the epicenter,” says project manager and Digital Divide Partners co-Chair Doug Frazier.

“Once we got all these doctors on, it helped calm people down. At the time, you couldn’t see a doctor, and you couldn’t go to the emergency room if you didn’t have COVID… so being able to talk to a doctor was worth its weight in gold.”

These shows also debunk misinformation, while dealing with angles not covered by mainstream media, such as how the East Harlem zip code was the hardest-hit by COVID-19 in Manhattan. They’ve also covered the Black Lives Matter movement, with shows like Community & Technology discussing racial equity, policing, corporate sponsorship, and a universal basic income.

“It’s been electricity in terms of the engagement and enthusiasm,” says Brother Leroy, adding that having the community tell its own stories makes the project “a game changer.”

The New York Chapter also engaged in advocacy of its own, issuing a public statement http://lists.isoc-ny.org/pipermail/announce-isoc-ny.org/2020/000795.html in response to the George Floyd killing.

Expanding community networks

Up to one in three Harlem households Household Internet Access , KEEPING TRACK ONLINE, https://data.cccnewyork.org/data/map/1325/household-internet-access#1325/a/3/1547/62/a/a do not have home Internet access – either via computer or mobile phone. Among low-income households, only half are connected.

Under a previous project by Digital Divide Partners https://www.digitaldividepartners.org/ , the Y-Fi Community Network was established, with 500 nodes across New York City. The recent Internet Society Foundation grant helped to expand its coverage by 25 nodes. As a result, more than 75,000 public housing residents can now watch community-produced programming, many of them using the Y-Fi in 10 public housing developments in Harlem and South Bronx.

“We don’t think people should pay a private operator to get Internet access, be safe or to get educated,” says Frazier. “So, we built something so that people could be informed and help and empower themselves. The residents help build the network so you build their skills in the process, and then hopefully get jobs to keep maintaining the network.”

For all the ways the Internet was a lifeline amid the pandemic, the reality is that less than half of the world’s population had access to this lifeline in 2020.

Connecting the unconnected

Completing schoolwork on a cellphone

Unable to do schoolwork because of no at-home computer

Worried about high-speed Internet bill payment

Further, there were gaping inequalities in access between, and within, developed and developing countries. According to a UNICEF-ITU report “Two thirds of the world’s school-age children have no internet access at home, new UNICEF-ITU report says,” UNICEF, 30 NOV 2020, https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/two-thirds-worlds-school-age-children-have-no-internet-access-home-new-unicef-itu , 63% of the world’s school-age children – 1.3 billion children aged 3 to 17 – have no Internet access at home. The gap is greatest in poor and rural households: fewer than 1 in 20 school-age children from low-income countries have Internet at home, compared with nearly 9 in 10 from high-income countries. Even in developed countries, connectivity is low among those with low incomes.

According to a Pew Research Center survey “53% of Americans Say the Internet Has Been Essential During the COVID-19 Outbreak”, PEW RESEARCH CENTER, 30 APR 2020, https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2020/04/30/53-of-americans-say-the-internet-has-been-essential-during-the-covid-19-outbreak/ in the United States in April, 43% of lower-income parents with children whose schools were shut down said their kids would have to do schoolwork on their cellphones and 36% said their children would be unable to do schoolwork because they lacked access to a computer at home. Among those with Internet, 52% of lower-income broadband users said they worried about being able to pay for their high-speed Internet connection over the coming months.

Internet access is no longer optional.

When education, work, life-saving health information, and even medical attention have all shifted to digital platforms, connecting the unconnected is an urgent matter. The pandemic has laid bare the global failure in making “last mile” connectivity widely accessible and affordable.

To fill such gaps, in 2020, the Internet Society supported at least 25 new and existing community networks (CNs) around the world – in Argentina, Canada, the Galapagos Islands, Ethiopia, Georgia, Ghana, Greece https://www.internetsociety.org/blog/2021/03/sarantaporo-gr-community-network-tending-to-our-communities-needs-with-care-and-flexibility/ , Italy, Mexico, Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda Latanya Tower Construction 2020 video, BOSCO UGANDA, https://youtu.be/D80kWubF2jw , Zimbabwe, and in the United States ( New York City https://www.internetsociety.org/blog/2020/03/in-new-york-city-building-a-network-while-social-distancing/ , Baltimore “Community school, tech groups join forces to set up free Wi-Fi network in Sandtown”, BALTIMORE BUSINESS JOURNAL, 8 MAY 2020 https://www.bizjournals.com/baltimore/news/2020/05/08/community-school-tech-groups-join-forces-to-set-up.html , Seattle, and Hawaii).

The 2020 Chapterthon included several projects focused on providing Internet access to those who were offline, one of which was a community network in Salinas, Bolivia https://youtu.be/9Uo_LU6CxwU . A project in Turkey developed and deployed a blockchain network in four different cities https://youtu.be/ewkJK1SzzKA with a goal to help non-government agencies communicate and manage their resources efficiently when responding to disasters. The South Africa Chapter’s Internet-In-A-Box https://youtu.be/FJljDlPyuDk tutorial and the Panama Chapter’s manual for digital inclusion https://youtu.be/mueX5dGIeOA focused on Internet access through Raspberry Pi devices. The Panama Chapter also trained residents of Parara Puru, a local Indigenous community with no electricity, potable water, or Internet. “More than anything we need computers, electricity and technology, so our children can study,” said Brenio, one of the participants in the training.

We also improved know-how and helped CNs thrive through virtual meetings and expert advice exchange. Furthermore, we expanded the set of countries and intergovernmental organizations that recognize the value and support CNs.

More than 2,000 participants took part in the Community Network Exchange Asia-Pacific meeting, as well as a webinar to share Asian success stories https://www.internetsociety.org/blog/2020/07/how-community-networks-are-helping-during-covid-19/ . As part of the 2020 Indigenous Connectivity Summit https://www.internetsociety.org/events/indigenous-connectivity-summit/2020/ , 80 people completed courses on Community Networks https://www.internetsociety.org/events/indigenous-connectivity-summit/2020/trainings/community-networks-webinar/ and Policy&Advocacy https://www.internetsociety.org/events/indigenous-connectivity-summit/2020/trainings/policy-advocacy-webinar/ and agreed to a set of policy recommendations https://www.internetsociety.org/resources/doc/2020/2020-ics-policy-recommendations/ that could make it easier for Indigenous communities to get connected on their own terms. The Summit on Community Networks in Africa https://www.internetsociety.org/events/summit-community-networks-africa held three sessions in September-November; partner organizations conducted a series of webinars on CNs and access issues; and an interactive panel discussion on Building Community Networks in the Middle East and North Africa took place in December. In Latin America and the Caribbean, 295 people, including policymakers, took our “Building Wireless Community Networks” course, while our high-level webinar “Innovative Models to Connect the Unconnected” attracted 174 representatives from the Inter-American Telecommunications Commission from more than 20 countries.

Finally, we worked with governmental authorities to secure their support to CNs. At the local and regional levels, we partnered with key countries, such as Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, and Brazil, towards enabling regulatory environments. At the global level, we secured that the value of CNs was recognized in official outcomes of the ITU-D and the G20.

Bringing Internet access to homes when public access became impossible

Before the pandemic began, most residents of the town of Murambinda, eastern Zimbabwe, accessed the Internet at the local Cybercafé, the main public access point for Africa’s first community network. Others could connect through Murambinda Works hotspots in schools, government offices, and the district health centre.

But as pandemic-related lockdowns, quarantines and restrictions began, many residents realized they could no longer connect from these public places.

This “caused a major outcry from communities who needed to keep in contact with their loved ones,” says Joseph Bishi, who was the technical lead during the Murambinda Works CN expansion and training project https://www.internetsociety.org/blog/2018/12/murambinda-works-community-engagement-workshop/ sponsored by the Internet Society in 2018–2019. That project helped expand the community network along a 40-km radius, connecting four schools, a district referral hospital, some non-governmental organizations, and local government offices.

In 2020, with many residents unable to work and children unable to access e-learning, Bishi decided to approach the Internet Society to connect people from their homes.

He got a $10,000 grant, which enabled a mast with solar-powered systems to be installed in Murambinda from November through December. This has created residential hotspots that allow community residents to access public health education materials offline, through a platform developed in collaboration with TunapandaNET. Residents can access local content for free or the Internet for a fee.

“The support was of a great relief to us as a community ISP … to accommodate a new way of living for rural communities, so that you can work from home, attend church from home, and even [do] schooling,” says Bishi. “The availability of a community network in Murambinda has become the life hub of the community.”

Now, another platform allows students to access educational material through the school management system Murambinda Works developed in 2019. Students and teachers can experience a virtual classroom. Many children and teachers are already equipped for e-learning – a downwind impact of Internet Society’s earlier funding. Prior to the pandemic, at least 1,500 teachers out of 3,224 and over 400 health workers across the province had also been trained by Murambinda Works on basic ICT and computer literacy.

The school management system has also allowed district education inspectors to remotely access schools without the need for travel. Bishi says additional policy changes could be on the way that will benefit all underserved communities across the country.

The Internet was a cornerstone of 2020.

The pandemic created unique, and often surprising, challenges to our work. But we kept up the momentum, even if it meant we had to sometimes adjust our expectations.

The myriad challenges of 2020 have underscored the creativity, expertise, and perseverance of the Internet Society community and staff in the face of adversity. They fueled solutions that helped the world navigate this time of global confusion, anxiety, and insecurity. This drive will help navigate the recovery, in 2021 and beyond.

And while the world understands more than ever how essential and how powerful the Internet can be, it still cannot replace face-to-face interaction. Rather, it plays an important supporting role for human interaction that shines through during crises, and can be a beacon on our path back to normal.

As we work to overcome the barriers of the digital divide by building better and stronger networks, more people will have the means to weather future storms. Connecting the unconnected is especially pressing, to ensure no one is left behind.

Our mission — to ensure an open, globally-connected, secure, and trustworthy Internet for all — is as challenging as ever. But 2020 has helped the world understand its importance, and urgency, more clearly than ever.

We can’t do it alone.

Join our growing global movement of people committed to creating a bigger and stronger Internet for everyone. Become a member. Attend an Internet Society event. Become a partner. Follow us on social media. Above all, learn more and engage in the conversations that will help create an open and trusted Internet for everyone.

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The Internet and the Pandemic

90% of Americans say the internet has been essential or important to them, many made video calls and 40% used technology in new ways. But while tech was a lifeline for some, others faced struggles

Table of contents.

1. How the internet and technology shaped Americans’ personal experiences amid COVID-19
2. Parents, their children and school during the pandemic
3. Navigating technological challenges
4. The role of technology in COVID-19 vaccine registration
Acknowledgments
Methodology

Pew Research Center has a long history of studying technology adoption trends and the impact of digital technology on society. This report focuses on American adults’ experiences with and attitudes about their internet and technology use during the COVID-19 outbreak. For this analysis, we surveyed 4,623 U.S. adults from April 12-18, 2021. Everyone who took part is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the ATP’s methodology .

Chapter 1 of this report includes responses to an open-ended question and the overall report includes a number of quotations to help illustrate themes and add nuance to the survey findings. Quotations may have been lightly edited for grammar, spelling and clarity. The first three themes mentioned in each open-ended response, according to a researcher-developed codebook, were coded into categories for analysis.

Here are the questions used for this report , along with responses, and its methodology .

Technology has been a lifeline for some during the coronavirus outbreak but some have struggled, too

The coronavirus has transformed many aspects of Americans’ lives. It shut down schools, businesses and workplaces and forced millions to stay at home for extended lengths of time. Public health authorities recommended limits on social contact to try to contain the spread of the virus, and these profoundly altered the way many worked, learned, connected with loved ones, carried out basic daily tasks, celebrated and mourned. For some, technology played a role in this transformation.

Results from a new Pew Research Center survey of U.S. adults conducted April 12-18, 2021, reveal the extent to which people’s use of the internet has changed, their views about how helpful technology has been for them and the struggles some have faced.

The vast majority of adults (90%) say the internet has been at least important to them personally during the pandemic, the survey finds. The share who say it has been essential – 58% – is up slightly from 53% in April 2020. There have also been upticks in the shares who say the internet has been essential in the past year among those with a bachelor’s degree or more formal education, adults under 30, and those 65 and older.

A large majority of Americans (81%) also say they talked with others via video calls at some point since the pandemic’s onset. And for 40% of Americans, digital tools have taken on new relevance: They report they used technology or the internet in ways that were new or different to them. Some also sought upgrades to their service as the pandemic unfolded: 29% of broadband users did something to improve the speed, reliability or quality of their high-speed internet connection at home since the beginning of the outbreak.

Still, tech use has not been an unmitigated boon for everyone. “ Zoom fatigue ” was widely speculated to be a problem in the pandemic, and some Americans report related experiences in the new survey: 40% of those who have ever talked with others via video calls since the beginning of the pandemic say they have felt worn out or fatigued often or sometimes by the time they spend on them. Moreover, changes in screen time occurred for Americans generally and for parents of young children . The survey finds that a third of all adults say they tried to cut back on time spent on their smartphone or the internet at some point during the pandemic. In addition, 72% of parents of children in grades K-12 say their kids are spending more time on screens compared with before the outbreak. 1

For many, digital interactions could only do so much as a stand-in for in-person communication. About two-thirds of Americans (68%) say the interactions they would have had in person, but instead had online or over the phone, have generally been useful – but not a replacement for in-person contact. Another 15% say these tools haven’t been of much use in their interactions. Still, 17% report that these digital interactions have been just as good as in-person contact.

About two-thirds say digital interactions have been useful, but not a replacement for in-person contact

Some types of technology have been more helpful than others for Americans. For example, 44% say text messages or group messaging apps have helped them a lot to stay connected with family and friends, 38% say the same about voice calls and 30% say this about video calls. Smaller shares say social media sites (20%) and email (19%) have helped them in this way.

The survey offers a snapshot of Americans’ lives just over one year into the pandemic as they reflected back on what had happened. It is important to note the findings were gathered in April 2021, just before all U.S. adults became eligible for coronavirus vaccine s. At the time, some states were beginning to loosen restrictions on businesses and social encounters. This survey also was fielded before the delta variant became prominent in the United States, raising concerns about new and evolving variants .

Here are some of the key takeaways from the survey.

Americans’ tech experiences in the pandemic are linked to digital divides, tech readiness

Some Americans’ experiences with technology haven’t been smooth or easy during the pandemic. The digital divides related to internet use and affordability were highlighted by the pandemic and also emerged in new ways as life moved online.

For all Americans relying on screens during the pandemic, connection quality has been important for school assignments, meetings and virtual social encounters alike. The new survey highlights difficulties for some: Roughly half of those who have a high-speed internet connection at home (48%) say they have problems with the speed, reliability or quality of their home connection often or sometimes. 2

Beyond that, affordability remained a persistent concern for a portion of digital tech users as the pandemic continued – about a quarter of home broadband users (26%) and smartphone owners (24%) said in the April 2021 survey that they worried a lot or some about paying their internet and cellphone bills over the next few months.

From parents of children facing the “ homework gap ” to Americans struggling to afford home internet , those with lower incomes have been particularly likely to struggle. At the same time, some of those with higher incomes have been affected as well.

60% of broadband users with lower incomes often or sometimes have connection problems, and 46% are worried at least some about paying for broadband

Affordability and connection problems have hit broadband users with lower incomes especially hard. Nearly half of broadband users with lower incomes, and about a quarter of those with midrange incomes, say that as of April they were at least somewhat worried about paying their internet bill over the next few months. 3 And home broadband users with lower incomes are roughly 20 points more likely to say they often or sometimes experience problems with their connection than those with relatively high incomes. Still, 55% of those with lower incomes say the internet has been essential to them personally in the pandemic.

At the same time, Americans’ levels of formal education are associated with their experiences turning to tech during the pandemic.

Adults with a bachelor’s, advanced degree more likely than others to make daily video calls, use tech in new ways, consider internet essential amid COVID-19

Those with a bachelor’s or advanced degree are about twice as likely as those with a high school diploma or less formal education to have used tech in new or different ways during the pandemic. There is also roughly a 20 percentage point gap between these two groups in the shares who have made video calls about once a day or more often and who say these calls have helped at least a little to stay connected with family and friends. And 71% of those with a bachelor’s degree or more education say the internet has been essential, compared with 45% of those with a high school diploma or less.

More broadly, not all Americans believe they have key tech skills. In this survey, about a quarter of adults (26%) say they usually need someone else’s help to set up or show them how to use a new computer, smartphone or other electronic device. And one-in-ten report they have little to no confidence in their ability to use these types of devices to do the things they need to do online. This report refers to those who say they experience either or both of these issues as having “lower tech readiness.” Some 30% of adults fall in this category. (A full description of how this group was identified can be found in Chapter 3. )

‘Tech readiness,’ which is tied to people’s confident and independent use of devices, varies by age

These struggles are particularly acute for older adults, some of whom have had to learn new tech skills over the course of the pandemic. Roughly two-thirds of adults 75 and older fall into the group having lower tech readiness – that is, they either have little or no confidence in their ability to use their devices, or generally need help setting up and learning how to use new devices. Some 54% of Americans ages 65 to 74 are also in this group.

Americans with lower tech readiness have had different experiences with technology during the pandemic. While 82% of the Americans with lower tech readiness say the internet has been at least important to them personally during the pandemic, they are less likely than those with higher tech readiness to say the internet has been essential (39% vs. 66%). Some 21% of those with lower tech readiness say digital interactions haven’t been of much use in standing in for in-person contact, compared with 12% of those with higher tech readiness.

46% of parents with lower incomes whose children faced school closures say their children had at least one problem related to the ‘homework gap’

As school moved online for many families, parents and their children experienced profound changes. Fully 93% of parents with K-12 children at home say these children had some online instruction during the pandemic. Among these parents, 62% report that online learning has gone very or somewhat well, and 70% say it has been very or somewhat easy for them to help their children use technology for online instruction.

Still, 30% of the parents whose children have had online instruction during the pandemic say it has been very or somewhat difficult for them to help their children use technology or the internet for this.

Remote learning has been widespread during the pandemic, but children from lower-income households have been particularly likely to face ‘homework gap’

The survey also shows that children from households with lower incomes who faced school closures in the pandemic have been especially likely to encounter tech-related obstacles in completing their schoolwork – a phenomenon contributing to the “ homework gap .”

Overall, about a third (34%) of all parents whose children’s schools closed at some point say their children have encountered at least one of the tech-related issues we asked about amid COVID-19: having to do schoolwork on a cellphone, being unable to complete schoolwork because of lack of computer access at home, or having to use public Wi-Fi to finish schoolwork because there was no reliable connection at home.

This share is higher among parents with lower incomes whose children’s schools closed. Nearly half (46%) say their children have faced at least one of these issues. Some with higher incomes were affected as well – about three-in-ten (31%) of these parents with midrange incomes say their children faced one or more of these issues, as do about one-in-five of these parents with higher household incomes.

More parents say their screen time rules have become less strict under pandemic than say they’ve become more strict

Prior Center work has documented this “ homework gap ” in other contexts – both before the coronavirus outbreak and near the beginning of the pandemic . In April 2020, for example, parents with lower incomes were particularly likely to think their children would face these struggles amid the outbreak.

Besides issues related to remote schooling, other changes were afoot in families as the pandemic forced many families to shelter in place. For instance, parents’ estimates of their children’s screen time – and family rules around this – changed in some homes. About seven-in-ten parents with children in kindergarten through 12th grade (72%) say their children were spending more time on screens as of the April survey compared with before the outbreak. Some 39% of parents with school-age children say they have become less strict about screen time rules during the outbreak. About one-in-five (18%) say they have become more strict, while 43% have kept screen time rules about the same.

More adults now favor the idea that schools should provide digital technology to all students during the pandemic than did in April 2020

Americans’ tech struggles related to digital divides gained attention from policymakers and news organizations as the pandemic progressed.

On some policy issues, public attitudes changed over the course of the outbreak – for example, views on what K-12 schools should provide to students shifted. Some 49% now say K-12 schools have a responsibility to provide all students with laptop or tablet computers in order to help them complete their schoolwork during the pandemic, up 12 percentage points from a year ago.

Growing shares across political parties say K-12 schools should give all students computers amid COVID-19

The shares of those who say so have increased for both major political parties over the past year: This view shifted 15 points for Republicans and those who lean toward the GOP, and there was a 9-point increase for Democrats and Democratic leaners.

However, when it comes to views of policy solutions for internet access more generally, not much has changed. Some 37% of Americans say that the government has a responsibility to ensure all Americans have high-speed internet access during the outbreak, and the overall share is unchanged from April 2020 – the first time Americans were asked this specific question about the government’s pandemic responsibility to provide internet access. 4

Democrats are more likely than Republicans to say the government has this responsibility, and within the Republican Party, those with lower incomes are more likely to say this than their counterparts earning more money.

Video calls and conferencing have been part of everyday life

Americans’ own words provide insight into exactly how their lives changed amid COVID-19. When asked to describe the new or different ways they had used technology, some Americans mention video calls and conferencing facilitating a variety of virtual interactions – including attending events like weddings, family holidays and funerals or transforming where and how they worked. 5 From family calls, shopping for groceries and placing takeout orders online to having telehealth visits with medical professionals or participating in online learning activities, some aspects of life have been virtually transformed:

“I’ve gone from not even knowing remote programs like Zoom even existed, to using them nearly every day.” – Man, 54

“[I’ve been] h andling … deaths of family and friends remotely, attending and sharing classical music concerts and recitals with other professionals, viewing [my] own church services and Bible classes, shopping. … Basically, [the internet has been] a lifeline.” – Woman, 69

“I … use Zoom for church youth activities. [I] use Zoom for meetings. I order groceries and takeout food online. We arranged for a ‘digital reception’ for my daughter’s wedding as well as live streaming the event.” – Woman, 44

Among those who have used video calls during the outbreak, 40% feel fatigued or worn out at least sometimes from time spent on these calls

When asked about video calls specifically, half of Americans report they have talked with others in this way at least once a week since the beginning of the outbreak; one-in-five have used these platforms daily. But how often people have experienced this type of digital connectedness varies by age. For example, about a quarter of adults ages 18 to 49 (27%) say they have connected with others on video calls about once a day or more often, compared with 16% of those 50 to 64 and just 7% of those 65 and older.

Even as video technology became a part of life for users, many accounts of burnout surfaced and some speculated that “Zoom fatigue” was setting in as Americans grew weary of this type of screen time. The survey finds that some 40% of those who participated in video calls since the beginning of the pandemic – a third of all Americans – say they feel worn out or fatigued often or sometimes from the time they spend on video calls. About three-quarters of those who have been on these calls several times a day in the pandemic say this.

Fatigue is not limited to frequent users, however: For example, about a third (34%) of those who have made video calls about once a week say they feel worn out at least sometimes.

These are among the main findings from the survey. Other key results include:

Some Americans’ personal lives and social relationships have changed during the pandemic: Some 36% of Americans say their own personal lives changed in a major way as a result of the coronavirus outbreak. Another 47% say their personal lives changed, but only a little bit. About half (52%) of those who say major change has occurred in their personal lives due to the pandemic also say they have used tech in new ways, compared with about four-in-ten (38%) of those whose personal lives changed a little bit and roughly one-in-five (19%) of those who say their personal lives stayed about the same.

Even as tech helped some to stay connected, a quarter of Americans say they feel less close to close family members now compared with before the pandemic, and about four-in-ten (38%) say the same about friends they know well. Roughly half (53%) say this about casual acquaintances.

The majority of those who tried to sign up for vaccine appointments in the first part of the year went online to do so: Despite early problems with vaccine rollout and online registration systems , in the April survey tech problems did not appear to be major struggles for most adults who had tried to sign up online for COVID-19 vaccines. The survey explored Americans’ experiences getting these vaccine appointments and reveals that in April 57% of adults had tried to sign themselves up and 25% had tried to sign someone else up. Fully 78% of those who tried to sign themselves up and 87% of those who tried to sign others up were online registrants.

When it comes to difficulties with the online vaccine signup process, 29% of those who had tried to sign up online – 13% of all Americans – say it was very or somewhat difficult to sign themselves up for vaccines at that time. Among five reasons for this that the survey asked about, the most common major reason was lack of available appointments, rather than tech-related problems. Adults 65 and older who tried to sign themselves up for the vaccine online were the most likely age group to experience at least some difficulty when they tried to get a vaccine appointment.

Tech struggles and usefulness alike vary by race and ethnicity. Americans’ experiences also have varied across racial and ethnic groups. For example, Black Americans are more likely than White or Hispanic adults to meet the criteria for having “lower tech readiness.” 6 Among broadband users, Black and Hispanic adults were also more likely than White adults to be worried about paying their bills for their high-speed internet access at home as of April, though the share of Hispanic Americans who say this declined sharply since April 2020. And a majority of Black and Hispanic broadband users say they at least sometimes have experienced problems with their internet connection.

Still, Black adults and Hispanic adults are more likely than White adults to say various technologies – text messages, voice calls, video calls, social media sites and email – have helped them a lot to stay connected with family and friends amid the pandemic.

Tech has helped some adults under 30 to connect with friends, but tech fatigue also set in for some. Only about one-in-five adults ages 18 to 29 say they feel closer to friends they know well compared with before the pandemic. This share is twice as high as that among adults 50 and older. Adults under 30 are also more likely than any other age group to say social media sites have helped a lot in staying connected with family and friends (30% say so), and about four-in-ten of those ages 18 to 29 say this about video calls.

Screen time affected some negatively, however. About six-in-ten adults under 30 (57%) who have ever made video calls in the pandemic say they at least sometimes feel worn out or fatigued from spending time on video calls, and about half (49%) of young adults say they have tried to cut back on time spent on the internet or their smartphone.

Throughout this report, “parents” refers to those who said they were the parent or guardian of any children who were enrolled in elementary, middle or high school and who lived in their household at the time of the survey. ↩
People with a high-speed internet connection at home also are referred to as “home broadband users” or “broadband users” throughout this report. ↩
Family incomes are based on 2019 earnings and adjusted for differences in purchasing power by geographic region and for household sizes. Middle income is defined here as two-thirds to double the median annual family income for all panelists on the American Trends Panel. Lower income falls below that range; upper income falls above it. ↩
A separate Center study also fielded in April 2021 asked Americans what the government is responsible for on a number of topics, but did not mention the coronavirus outbreak. Some 43% of Americans said in that survey that the federal government has a responsibility to provide high-speed internet for all Americans. This was a significant increase from 2019, the last time the Center had asked that more general question, when 28% said the same. ↩
Quotations in this report may have been lightly edited for grammar, spelling and clarity. ↩
There were not enough Asian American respondents in the sample to be broken out into a separate analysis. As always, their responses are incorporated into the general population figures throughout this report. ↩

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Essay on Internet Uses For Students

500 + words internet essay.

The internet is described as a global network of computer systems interconnected and following the internet security protocol. However, have you ever considered why the internet is important? This 500+ Words Essay on internet advantages and disadvantages will help students ace essay writing during exams.

A combination of high-end science and advanced technology, the internet is a viral invention. Here, in an essay on the internet, students can learn about the uses and impact of the internet.

Why the Internet Is Important

The internet has undergone significant development from the time of its birth to the present. Over a period of time, the internet has become more interactive and user-friendly. It has also helped man in day-to-day transactions and interactions. The Internet is widely used for numerous functions such as learning, teaching, research, writing, sharing content or data, e-mails, job hunting, playing games, listening to music, watching videos, exploring and finally surfing the internet. Meanwhile, though it makes life easy for people, the internet also comes with a lot of pros and cons. Find the advantages and disadvantages of the internet from this essay.

Essay on Advantages of Internet

Read this essay on internet advantages to know the effects of using the internet. Look for the points mentioned below.

The internet has helped reduce the usage of paper and paperwork to a large extent by computerising offices, schools, NGOs, industries and much more.
Internet helps to provide updated information and news from all over the world
Education, business and travel have been thriving with the growth of the Internet
The internet is of high educational and entertainment value
The internet makes access to public resources, libraries and textbooks much easier
The internet makes it easy by reducing the time and energy taken to do work
Work has become more efficient, quick and accurate
Meetings and conferences are made easier with video calls and other brilliant tools

Apart from all these, as mentioned in the above paragraph on Internet uses, it helps carry out banking activities, exchange information, shop for various goods and more.

Essay on Internet Disadvantages

Despite the use of the internet and its positives, there are also some internet disadvantages. Continuous use of the internet can affect our lifestyle and health. Let us check out the disadvantages of the internet from this paragraph.

Over-dependence on the internet can lead to many health problems
People tend to spend more of their productive time doing nothing but browsing
Even if the internet is now used extensively at work, overuse of the internet could lead to depression
Quality time with friends and relatives is primarily reduced due to the use of the internet
Cybercrime has also increased as internet security and privacy are compromised

Thus, we have seen the uses of the internet and its impact on students and working professionals. While we know that overuse of the internet should be avoided, we also have to acknowledge that the internet has still not been exploited to its full potential, despite its massive growth. In conclusion, we can state that to make internet use more comfortable and pleasurable, school students should be taught about the pros and cons of using the internet, thus ensuring that they can stand up against cybercrime and ensure safety.

Also Read: Social Media Essay | Essay on Women Empowerment | Essay On Constitution of India

Frequently asked Questions on Internet Essay

What is the internet.

The internet is a global system of interconnected computers and this system uses a standardised Internet Protocol suite for communication and sharing information.

What are the top 5 uses of the Internet?

The Internet is mostly used by people to send emails and to search on any topic. It can be used to download large files. People depend on the internet for electronic news and magazines these days. A lot of people, especially the young generation use it to play interactive games and for entertainment.

What is WiFi?

WiFi is the latest wireless technology used to connect computers, tablets, smartphones and other electronic devices to the internet.

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Niche marketing: How brands can use influencers to reach niche pockets of the internet

Written by by Jasmine Williams

Published on August 28, 2024

Reading time 7 minutes

Table of Contents

As the saying goes, when you try to appeal to everyone, you appeal to no one. Niche marketing is a highly targeted form of advertisement. With niche marketing, businesses promote their products and services to a small, specific and well-defined audience.

As social media algorithms become increasingly specific and personal, it gets harder for brands to cut through the noise. Companies need to tap into these distinct niches with highly relevant marketing campaigns to compete in today’s environment.

Fortunately, influencer marketing helps brands get in front of these niche communities. By working with popular social media figures who have already grown a loyal following of these target demographics, brands can boost their visibility and reach niche audiences authentically.

This article will cover everything you need to know about niche marketing. You’ll also get a step-by-step plan for developing niche influencer partnerships, along with some campaign examples to inspire your work.

What is niche marketing?

Consumers in a niche market have specific preferences or needs that differ from the broader sector. Brands divide almost every market into subsections according to things like:

Geographic location
Psychographic data (interests, attitudes‌ and values)
Demographic base (age, income level, gender, education level)
Quality level (premium, moderate, high, low)
Price (high, discount, wholesale)

Niche marketing is often easier than promoting to a wide audience. Niche audiences have very specific needs and wants.

For instance, a company that simply sold handbags would need to appeal to a broad range of tastes and expectations. However, a business selling handbags for new moms that also work as diaper bags has more of a focus. Niche marketing has also become easier with tools like Facebook ad targeting and social media monitoring.

The benefits of niche marketing

Niche marketing allows companies to understand the specific needs of their audience and speak to them directly. It’s all about making the right connections, which is why many social media channels have improved their targeting options for niche markets. With niche marketing and a social strategy, companies can reap the following benefits:

Develop greater brand loyalty

Fewer people in a niche audience mean more chances to develop intimate, valuable relationships Take the company Black Girl Sunscreen, for example.

There are plenty of sunscreen brands on the market, but few are created with the needs of Black skin in mind. Most use ingredients that oxidize on the skin, leaving a white cast or grayish tint on deeper skin tones. Black Girl Sunscreen created a product specifically for Black women and has become a cult-followed product as a result.

An Instagram Reel showing a Black Girl Sunscreen Employee rearranging bottles in a store.

Compete against fewer brands

The more specialized your business is, the fewer competitors you’ll have offering the exact same products or services. A niche reinforces your unique selling proposition, allowing your brand to differentiate itself in the marketplace.

Humankind, for example, is a gender-inclusive swimwear and apparel brand. Instead of competing with every other clothing brand, it creates stylish, comfortable and inclusive clothing that appeals to people who don’t want to be limited by traditional gender norms.

Because they cater specifically to people looking for gender-neutral clothing, they face less competition than swimwear brands looking to appeal to everyone.

An Instagram post from inclusive swimwear and apparel company Humankind, showing models of different sizes and skin tones in their swim tops.

Optimize marketing spend

Ads tailored to a niche audience are more likely to be relevant and appealing, leading to better performance metrics, such as higher click-through rates (CTR) and lower bounce rates. Similarly, working with niche influencers offers a higher return on investment because their rates are typically much lower than those of macro-influencers with mass appeal.

This cost-effectiveness doesn’t come at the expense of impact. Niche influencers often have highly engaged audiences who trust their recommendations. According to the 2024 Influencer Marketing Report , nearly half (49%) of consumers of all ages make purchases at least once a month because of influencer posts, highlighting the significant influence that well-targeted, authentic content can have on driving conversions.

How brands can use influencers to connect with niche markets

There are many benefits to niche marketing and working with niche influencers, but there’s a learning curve. Plus, while you might already know of some well-known broad influencers, finding an influencer within a specific niche requires a little more digging.

Here’s what you need to do to get started.

Identify a niche within your target audience

The niche pockets within your target audience have unique preferences and needs. For instance, the makeup sector is broad, but within that market, there’s makeup for acne-prone skin, professional artists, older skin—and that’s just scratching the surface.

To identify niches thriving within your target audience, start with native platform research. Unless you’re looking into a specific hunch, there’s no need to start off with a hyper-structured approach. Instead, consume content with an open mind for potential brand applications.

Scroll through the comment sections of your brand profiles. Check out competitor profiles or use the “see similar accounts” feature to see what’s trending.

Build on any hunches using a social listening tool . Social listening data can summarize the conversations surrounding a topic and reveal the insights that matter most for your strategy.

Sprout Social's social listening Word Cloud feature, which allows you to see which phrases and hashtags are popular with your audience.

Find influencers trending within the niche

Once you’ve identified a niche you want to target, start looking for influencers. Native platform research is also critical during this step. Use relevant hashtags to discover top posts in a specific niche. You could also go through the comment sections of trending posts to find prominent influencers in the space.

If you’re strapped for time, an influencer marketing too l like Tagger by Sprout Social can speed up this process. Its profile discovery tool simplifies influencer research through smart filters that sort and analyze creators who have built audiences relevant to your brand or a specific niche.

Conduct influencer outreach

At this point, you should have a shortlist of potential influencers with whom to collaborate. Before contacting them, ensure your social media profiles and existing social content are up-to-date. You can also set a foundation for warmer outreach by preemptively engaging with their content from your brand accounts.

When you start the outreach process, check to see if they’ve shared guidelines around communication preferences. For example, some prefer you email their management company or agent instead of contacting them directly. Then, send a friendly message that clearly states why you think they’re a great fit for your brand, what you’re offering and what you hope to achieve with the collaboration.

If you get stuck on what to say, try out these influencer outreach email templates .

Collaborate on content

We know it’s tough to relinquish creative control, but Forrester research found that overdirection is the most common pitfall for brands engaging in creator partnerships.

Influencers know their audience better than anyone else. They know what they like and what content resonates with them. When brands allow influencers to create content in their style, it feels more authentic and genuine, leading to better results.

Fans also prefer this. Our influencer marketing report shows that more than two-thirds (67%) of consumers believe the best influencer-brand partnerships are honest and unbiased.

Engage with the niche’s community

There’s still more work to do once the campaign goes live. When brands actively engage with influencer partners and their fans, it shows that you genuinely care about connecting with that community (and aren’t just there to cash in).

Engagement can take many forms, from responding to TikTok comments to participating in social media conversations and sharing user-generated content. Being active and present online through the campaign will build trust with that community, leading to increased loyalty and brand visibility through word-of-mouth marketing.

Niche marketing examples to inspire your strategy

What could your niche marketing campaign look like? Here are some examples to get your creative juices flowing.

1. e.l.f. ’s Make up over Makeup campaign

Ian Paget ( @ianpaget ) and Chris Olsen ( @chrisolsen ) were a famous social media couple with over 12.7 million TikTok followers and 327,000 subscribers on a co-managed YouTube channel. When they broke up, fans were devastated. However, cosmetic brand e.l.f. saw an opportunity for a unique brand partnership.

The “Make up over Makeup” campaign brought together the two social media stars for a YouTube video in which they rehashed their breakup while applying each other’s makeup. By partnering with two prominent creators within the LGBTQ+ community, the campaign helped e.l.f. reach a niche audience in the beauty industry.

A YouTube video of e.l.f.’s “Make up over Makeup” campaign featuring TikTok influencers Chris Olsen and Ian Paget

2. Dunkin Donuts x Corporate Natalie

Natalie Marshall ( @corporatenatalie ) is a content creator with over a million followers across TikTok and Instagram. She’s known for her humorous videos about work-from-home corporate life.

Recently, food brand Dunkin Donuts partnered with Natalie and actor Will Arnett on a short commercial featuring a cast of up-and-coming stars posing as “summer interns.” Considering Natalie’s strong appeal with fans of corporate humor, the partnership helps Dunkin connect with this audience in a relatable way.

A YouTube video from Dunkin Donuts, featuring a collaboration with influencer Corporate Natalie and actor Will Arnett

3. Ring x Pet-fluencers

Home security company Ring asked pet parents to share videos or pictures from their Ring camera on Instagram or TikTok with the hashtag #RingPets . For each submission, Ring pledged a donation to the ASPCA (the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) and local animal shelters. In total, the brand donated $500,000.

As an added plus, contestants who used the hashtag #contest were entered into a competition for their pet to appear in an upcoming Ring commercial. Since many customers use their Ring device to monitor their furry friends, the campaign helped raise awareness for their pet protection features and aligned the company with this niche audience.

A close-up image of a grey and white cat captured by a Ring camera.

Kick start your niche influencer marketing strategy

You don’t have to cast a wide net to create a lasting brand. One of the best and quickest paths to marketing success is focusing on a specific segment of customers. You’ll earn their trust and loyalty, which can lead to increased revenue.

A clear niche will also help you identify influencers who have already built a following containing your target customers. Partnering with them will increase your growth, getting you in front of an engaged audience of loyal fans.

Ready to get started? Download our influencer marketing toolkit for resources that’ll help you find and connect with influencers to grow your brand with audiences that matter.

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The Advantages and Disadvantages of the Internet Essay

Introduction

Essay on Benefits of Internet

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Communication

Entertainment

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Access to Information

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Online Services

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14 Ways the Internet Improves Our Lives

14 Benefits of the Internet and How the Internet Has Made Society Better:

Making it easier to communicate with friends and family.

Offering a wealth of online activities and experiences to enjoy remotely.

Promoting workforce development skills.

Increasing access to social services and benefits.

Decreasing isolation and loneliness.

Empowering people with a sense of agency.

Improving education and learning opportunities.

Participating in democracy and civic duties.

Searching and applying for jobs.

Maintaining curiosity, finding new interests, and pursuing hobbies.

Improving the economy for everyone.

Strengthening communities and social ties.

Creating a better world.

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We also improved know-how and helped CNs thrive through virtual meetings and expert advice exchange. Furthermore, we expanded the set of countries and intergovernmental organizations that recognize the value and support CNs.