Tuesday, 5 February 2013

The Social Impacts of the Use of IT


There are advantages and disadvantages in the use of IT. It has socially impacted people in both ways.
Before computers, most children spent most of their time watching television, but now, almost every child spends time on computers. We spend a lot of time on these devices such as computers, and is even possible to get addicted to it. People who are computer addicts can be the cause for families to break up, or for the addicts to lose their jobs, as they might forget to check the time, and either not go to work, or go to work late. Some addicts even don’t go to sleep, and just stay on the computer, so the ones that have to go to work may be too tired to work.

Even if there are computer addicts and such, IT has improved our lives, as there is freedom in Self Expression, in the form of videos, pictures, blogs, tweets and many more ways.

You can also stay up-to-date with information from websites such as Wikipedia, which you can use to learn from or also use to help you in the work you have. You can also use Internet Banking instead of going to a bank, which helps when going on sites such as E-Bay, where you can buy and sell stuff online.

Most teenagers these days seem to be using social networking such as Twitter and Facebook to improve relationships or create new ones, but social networks are some of the locations with a lot of cyber bullying. Cyber bullying is a huge issue for children, teenagers and even some adults, as people can be verbally abused over the internet. It is usually on social networking websites, as mentioned before, or also on Instant Messaging programs, where the person being cyber bullied is threatened, verbally abused or even worse. And even if most of the people on the internet are from 14 to 16 years old, there are still many children on the internet. Some children may be even exposed to violence, racism, pornography, and more on social networks, websites or over instant messages, meaning that the internet can be very dangerous for children.

Personal Privacy has also become a problem, as a lot of information about you is on computers. This means if someone had access to your data you may have to face a lot of problems such as blackmail, as whoever has the information can just spread it publicly on the internet.

Also, sometimes poor families may not be able to get computers because of their cost, and old people may have problems learning how to use computers. Computers also contribute to climate change, as they use up a lot of electricity, as there are a lot of computers worldwide. There are also some people that throw old computers away in places such as fields, causing the chemicals to pollute the soil.

Copyright law is very important for creators of art, games, music and more.  Now that almost all is virtual, this law helps protect all of the original work, even though the internet has websites such as PirateBay that are meant to copy files into for the public for free.

Without IT in the work industry businesses would find it very hard to make a profit. The internet is by far the biggest source of income for most of the large businesses, as shopping online is becoming more and more popular, more and more small shops have to close down because of lack of customers. Large businesses can manage to stay open thanks to the internet. Although new jobs are being created because of IT, and a lot of old jobs are requiring IT skills, but thanks to the internet, home working is now a viable option, as you can do your work and email them to your boss and such.  Since the work is virtual, your work hours can be a lot more flexible.
Computers and other IT devices have impacted our life socially and emotionally, with good and bad effects, but as long as IT is used correctly, no problems should occur.



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